Chapter 68 My Heart in Your Hands
Chapter 68 My Heart in Your Hands
My true name hit the chamber like a key turning in a lock.
For one impossible second, everything stopped.
The army below went rigid.
The robed figure froze.
The first heir went still in a way I had not seen from it yet, like even it had not expected the world to answer that name out loud.
And the girl in my arms stared at me as if the sound had reached somewhere deep inside her before it had reached her ears.
Her lips parted.
Her breath caught.
“Justin…”
The way she said it did not sound like a name.
It sounded like a memory clawing its way out of a grave.
My chest tightened.
The glow around my body pulsed hard once, then again.
The Root World responded.
Lights flickered across the city below. The rings overhead flared silver-white, then dimmed, as if the whole place had just been forced to remember something it had been trying very hard to forget.
The first heir stepped forward slowly.
Not threatening.
Not hesitant.
Something worse.
Certain.
“It heard you,” it said quietly.
I looked at it.
The truth in its face was almost unbearable.
The robed figure recovered first. Its fractured mask turned toward the girl in my arms.
—So it begins.—
The boy, who had finally gone quiet, looked from me to her and then back again with the expression of someone trying very hard not to understand something that was already destroying him.
“…okay,” he said under his breath. “I officially hate this part.”
No one answered him.
The girl’s hand moved weakly against my chest.
She was staring at me now, but not at my face.
At the light under my skin.
At the lines that had changed when I transformed.
At the thing I had become.
Her expression was wrong.
Not fear.
Not recognition either.
Something in between.
Like she was trying to hold two memories in the same hand and both were cutting her.
The first heir lifted its chin.
“You still do not remember her.”
The words landed like a punch.
I turned my head slowly.
“…remember what?”
The girl’s throat moved.
Her eyes did not leave mine.
The robed figure answered instead.
—She was the blade.—
My blood ran cold.
The chamber seemed to narrow.
The army below shifted as one, but not in attack.
In reverence.
The first heir’s voice was flat now.
“It was her, or the throne would never have closed.”
The boy actually took a step back.
“…nope. I don’t like how that sentence sounds.”
The girl’s fingers went still against my shirt.
I could feel her pulse now.
Too fast.
Too shallow.
Like her body knew something her mind had not yet accepted.
The robed figure turned toward her.
—She was made to end the first sovereign.—
My breath caught.
No.
Not possible.
The girl’s eyes widened.
The first heir looked at me, and now there was no softness left in the expression at all.
Only truth.
“You died once,” it said. “She was there.”
Silence slammed through me harder than any blow.
I stared at it.
Then at her.
The shape of the words hit so hard they almost didn’t make sense.
She had been there.
At the beginning.
At the split.
At the death.
The memory I had seen was not enough. There had been more. So much more.
The girl’s mouth opened, but no sound came.
I felt her shaking now.
Not from pain.
From memory trying to wake up faster than she could survive it.
My grip tightened on her.
The first heir stepped closer.
“Do you understand yet?”
I didn’t answer.
Because part of me already did.
And I hated it.
The robed figure descended one more step from the throne platform. Its mask glowed with a cold silver line through the center fracture.
—The system you wore was a leash.—
The words struck something deep in my chest.
—The girl was the hand that held it.—
The chamber changed.
Not physically.
Conceptually.
The air thickened around us with the weight of a truth too large to fit inside one room.
The boy’s voice came out tight.
“…so what, she was controlling him?”
The robed figure did not bother answering directly.
—She was made to stop him from becoming whole.—
I looked down at the girl.
She had gone pale in a way I had never seen from her.
The mark beneath her skin flared once, then again, and the silver-black lines that had been fading after the curse now crawled in the opposite direction.
Up her wrist.
Her forearm.
Toward her throat.
My stomach dropped.
“No.”
The first heir’s expression sharpened.
“Too late.”
The girl gasped softly.
The world above us shuddered.
The city below lit up in a pulse of silver-white light, and every throne ring overhead burned at once.
Then the voice came again.
Not from the robed figure.
Not from the first heir.
From the girl.
But not her voice.
Older.
Colder.
Brighter.
—She remembers.—
The boy’s eyes widened.
“…what the hell was that?”
I barely heard him.
Because the girl had stiffened in my arms.
Her eyes were open wide now, but she wasn’t looking at me.
She was looking past me.
Somewhere far behind my shoulder.
At something that wasn’t there.
Until it was.
A memory.
It poured into the chamber with the force of a falling sky.
White stone.
A room.
Hands.
Chains.
A crown.
A boy with blood on his mouth, kneeling.
Me.
No.
Not me now.
Me then.
My younger face lifted toward her.
And she was standing over me with something silver in her hand.
The memory hit like a knife.
I saw her.
Not as she was now.
As she had been.
Standing in the broken room.
Tears on her face.
Hands shaking.
Not wanting to do it.
Doing it anyway.
My knees almost buckled.
The memory flashed again.
A voice.
Not mine.
Not hers.
The throne’s.
Cut the line.
Then her hand.
The silver blade.
My chest.
Blood.
Too much blood.
And the most devastating part—
she was crying.
Not because she hated me.
Because she didn’t.
The memory shattered.
I gasped and nearly dropped to one knee.
The girl in my arms was crying now too.
Quietly.
Absolutely silently.
And the look she gave me when the memory cleared was worse than any scream.
Because she knew.
“Oh no,” the boy whispered.
He had seen it too.
Or enough of it to understand the shape of the disaster.
The girl’s lips trembled.
“I…”
No sound came after that.
The first heir watched her like it had expected this for a very long time.
The robed figure did not move.
The army below began to rise, but slowly, like they were waiting for a command from somewhere deeper than the battlefield.
The girl kept staring at me.
“I remember the room,” she whispered.
My chest locked.
“I remember the blood.”
The words barely left her mouth.
“I remember…”
Her hand trembled against my chest.
“…you asking me not to.”
The chamber went dead silent.
The first heir closed its eyes.
Just once.
Like something had finally confirmed itself.
The robed figure spoke softly.
—The lock was never external.—
My throat went dry.
The girl’s tears started falling now.
Not dramatically.
Not quickly.
Just enough.
Just one by one.
“Justin…”
The way she said it broke something in me that had survived everything else.
I tightened my grip on her.
“No.”
She shook her head, and the next words came out in a whisper so thin I almost missed them.
“I killed you.”
The chamber cracked.
Not the floor.
Not the throne.
Reality.
A line split through the air between us and the first heir turned its head sharply toward the fracture.
The first sign of alarm.
The first sign of something going wrong.
The boy stared.
“What?”
The girl couldn’t look away from me now.
Her tears were still falling.
“I did,” she said, voice trembling harder now. “I was supposed to stop you. I was supposed to—”
She choked on the rest.
My blood ran cold.
The voice in the chamber came again, but this time it wasn’t the robed figure or the first heir or the Beast below.
It was the world itself.
She carried the blade.
She carried the fail-safe.
She carried the ending.
My chest tightened so hard it hurt.
The first heir’s voice turned sharper.
“And when you failed to die, they hid you both.”
The girl looked at it in horror.
“They…”
The robed figure answered.
—We buried the second key.—
My stomach dropped.
Second key.
Second key to what?
The throne?
The lock?
Me?
Her?
No.
All of it.
The meaning hit too hard and not hard enough at the same time.
The girl’s entire body went rigid in my arms.
Then she whispered, very softly, very clearly:
“…I was never your anchor.”
No one moved.
The boy looked like his soul had just fallen through the floor.
The first heir said nothing.
The robed figure did not breathe.
The girl stared at me with a grief so deep it almost looked like terror.
“I was your execution.”
The chamber exploded.
Not in fire.
In light.
Silver-black energy shot up from the throne platform and the ground beneath us answered with a violent pulse. The army below surged backward all at once. The Beast beneath the roots screamed so loud the entire Root World buckled.
The first heir’s face changed.
Not shock.
Not fear.
Recognition.
“Too late,” it said.
I looked up.
“What?”
The girl’s hand slid against my chest.
The mark beneath her skin had gone fully white now.
Not silver.
White.
The first sign of something not human and not Lycan and not anything either of us had named yet.
Her eyes widened.
So did mine.
Because the light was not just on her.
It was coming out of her.
The robed figure took a step back for the first time in memory.
—No.—
The first heir’s voice dropped, urgent now.
“Justin, move.”
I barely had time to turn.
The girl’s hand found the center of my chest.
And then—
she smiled.
Not like herself.
Not like the girl I knew.
Like someone waking up inside her body and finding the world already arranged for the wrong ending.
Her voice was no longer hers.
It was clear.
Cold.
Ancient.
—It’s time.—
The light in her eyes went white.
And she drove her hand straight through my chest.