Chapter 183 Final Days 4

Chapter 183 Final Days 4
Zevran POV

His hand tightens on her and I feel the worlds end.

"Don't," I'm saying, and it's not a command anymore, it's the thing under a command, the thing kings never let themselves say. "Please. Take me. Take anything. Don't..."

"There's nothing of yours I want," the Devil replies, gentle, not even looking at me, his attention all for her. "I keep telling you. This was always going to end exactly here, and your wanting is only the music it ends to."

As his fingers tightens, Ryn's eyes start to close.

In the blink of an eye, a knife comes through his chest.

It happens between one breath and the next, no warning, or sound until the all I hear is the wet impact of it, a blade punching out through the front of the Devil from somewhere behind him.

The blade looks demon-forged and is buried to the hilt. The Devil goes rigid, his hand spasming loose from Ryn's throat, and behind him, gripping the handle with both hands and every ounce of whatever he has left, is Sorin.

He's ruined, because of whatever the collar did to him written all over him. There's a broken thing around his neck which I'm guessing is where the binding used to be, and he's breathing like a man who ran to get here.

"You don't," Sorin gasps, "touch her."

The Devil makes a sound I'll hear for the rest of my life, not pain exactly, surprise, the surprise of a thing that hasn't been surprised in ages.

He turns, the blade still through him, turns on Sorin with an expression that promises the end of everything, and his hand comes off Ryn entirely now, both his hands, reaching for the demon who dared touch him.

That's the opening I need. Now that he's distracted, the current of air that pushed me back before stopped.

I don't waste time in crossing the six feet so before the Devil finishes turning, I'm at the chair, at Ryan's side, gathering her up out of the cold, and the moment she's against my chest the white fire wakes.

Not mine. Hers. It rises out of her the way it rose at the Renewal, except there's no one feeding it and no shed to power, it just comes, blazing up from her center where the curse was reaching.

The curse was a demon's working. The fire is hers, only hers, the one thing in her neither demon nor Ashveil nor anything he has a claim on, and it pours into the space the curse was trying to fill as it burns the cold out of her throat, out of her chest, drives the grey back down and out, and Ryn arches against me with a cry as the fire and the curse meet in her.

The fire wins, because for one stolen second the Devil's hand wasn't there to hold the scales.

One second of the Devil's attention turned away, and in that second her own fire did what nothing else in any world could.

The Devil rounds on Sorin fully now, and I don't watch what he does, I can't. I have Ryn in my arms with the colour coming back into her heart which stutters at first before steadying against my chest.

I hear the Devil's voice go from gentle to something that isn't a voice at all, and I hear Sorin, who has nothing left, who spent the nothing-after-his-last to put that blade through the one thing the worlds are afraid of, make a sound that isn't fear.

"Did it work?" Sorin says, somewhere behind me, ragged, barely sound. "Tell me it... is she..."

The Devil doesn't answer him. The Devil is past answering. And I understand, holding Ryn while her fire burns the death out of her, that the demon who saved her will never know he did.

He'll go into whatever the Devil does to a tool that turns on its master not knowing whether his last act bought anything at all.

"It worked," I whisper. I don't know if he can hear me but I say it anyway, the only mercy I have to give the man who saved the woman I love. "She's alive. You did it. She's alive."

I don't know if it reaches him. There's a loud sound, followed by loud screams and banging so when I make myself look there's no Sorin or the Devil, just the black blade lying on the floor where it fell.

The chamber is ordinary again, the thickness gone from the air, the cold gone, the terrible presence gone.

Gone. Not dead. I felt the difference. A thing like that doesn't die from a blade, mostly that kind of blade, even when driven by that hand.

He's been hurt, surprised, denied, sent back to wherever he came from to nurse a wound that's never been put in him before. But he isn't gone for good.

A creature owed a soul does not forget the debt. He'll come again, some year, some generation, for her or for the daughter or for the line that didn't end the way he meant it to.

Ryn's eyes open.

"Zevran." Her voice is a wreck. "Did I... is the baby... what happened, there was..."

"You're alive." It breaks out of me. "You're alive, you're here, the curse is gone, you're alive."

"Something saved me." Her eyes search my face, and even now, even weakened, she reads what I'm not saying. "Something happened. Who..."

And I have to decide, holding her, in the first second of the rest of our lives, whether she ever learns the name of the man who bought them.

Behind us, in the corner, our daughter is still crying, while I hold her mother and I don't answer the question yet.

Not yet.

Authors note: This is the end of the book. Sorry for rushing but the plan of book two didn't happen. I also want to give a special shout out to Tia, thank you for being a supportive readers. Reading all your comments were seriously the best parts of my day. Thank you for sticking with this story from beginning to end.

I also want to thank every silent reader, hopefully I get to see your comments from time to time.

Hopefully, my subsequent books captivate you as much as this one thing. Thank you guys so much.