Chapter 221: The visions

Finn reached me and plucked the note from my trembling hand. He consumed the message in a second and his head jerked up.

“What… what’s the meaning of this?” his voice quaked like mine would if I dared to speak. “Why does this read like a suicide note?”

“It is.” I turned, heading for the door.

Promise me, Mordaine, If the day ever comes again that you have to choose, please let me die. It had been over a hundred years since she said that. Over a hundred years since I accepted I would rather die than let that happen. Literally.

I teleported to my study, and sheets of paper floated in the air upon my landing at my desk. Careening forward, I crashed against a wall and shoved open the secret door carved into the center of it.

Crystal.

My body pivoted left in the dim-lit room, rushing towards the black podium in the middle of the room.

“What do you want?” I said to the presence in the room without a backward glance.

“The councilor…” The Ashbound started to say.

“Send him in.” I snatched the black fabric off the crystal ball sitting atop golden fingers attached to the back podium. I watched impatiently as liquid light swirled inside it, converging to form a clear image.

“Draki.” My Ashbound councilor said from behind me with that solemnity he had assumed since his wrong analysis that Finn was Nymphaea. “We have the information on the person who stole the queen’s journal.”

I stiffened, staring at the image that had come together just at the same moment he said those words. Then I hunched, feeling a physical pain at the sledgehammer that slammed into my chest at this...

Hale.

I jerked my head up to the crystal again in disbelief, willing the lights to swirl again and show something else. Willing this to be a once-in-lifetime malfunction.

But the image stayed the same, assaulting my senses, twisting a hot knife deeper in my ribs. The man I loved, the man I would burn the world for, was right now placing a bleeding jewel around my wife's neck at the Porta Ultima.

"Go on," I choked out to the man who was becoming restless behind me.

“Cedric Claire,” the councilor said, and my eyes narrowed. I spun around to face him, my heart slamming painfully against my ribs at this point.

“I really will kill you this time if you're wrong,” I said in a low voice. It had been half a year since that thief broke into my vault. The day I met Lys to be exact. The last time I roared after nearly causing an earthquake.

The councilor dropped to his knees. “It is him. We have visual evidence.” He paused, and went on hurriedly. “Cedric Claire is the Pale King’s acolyte.”

A sharp crack went through me and my ears began to ring. The flesh below my shoulder blades were shifting as I struggled for control in a way I hadn't since I was a boy. Nonesense. This was all nonsense.

No stranger could gain access to my home, to my vault of all places.

Finn burst in through the door then, looking around wide-eyed. He was so pale that for a second I panicked he would pass out.

“What are you doing? We have to…”

I breezed up to him and grabbed his arm. The floor moved under us, and my stomach heaved as our bodies defied time, speed and space. At my age, I was wary about long-distance teleportation.

But when you were about to lose your wife to a damn backstabber, there were no safe choices. We arrived at the tiny Swedish village in a record time. My heart bled as I took in the surroundings, a place I visited only once every decade.

A place Lys would not have been able to reach on her own, because I saw her just this morning. Only teleportation could get her here so fast. Only a god could bring her here.

Finn lurched forward, and I grabbed his arm again.

I breezed down the valley, feeling the shift from cobblestone to greenery with the whispers of a creak flowing nearby.

We stopped at the belly of the valley where Porta Ultima stood. The place where over two dozen Ascendants had come to die since this madness started.

The stone building was cold even in the height of summer, with the scorching afternoon sun high up in the sky. Finn bent over, retching. Such long travel without any preparation would kill someone less powerful.

But my eyes were fixed on the door, staring at the man who got me my second strike with the universe. Who, up till a few minutes ago, I would have done even more heinous crimes to save.

Hale stood outside the door, barring the way. But when he opened his mouth, it was to whisper, “Please. It’s over, let it end.”

It was not over. I could still feel her heartbeat in my own chest. Slow, but it was there. I realized then I could not hear Finn anymore.

A quick glance over my shoulder showed he had disappeared. Knowing how his mind worked, he was finding some other way into the house.

But Hale did not seem to care when I faced him again. Finn could do nothing in this situation, only I could stop this.

“For the love we shared,” I was gripping onto my control with my last will. “Step out of my way.”

Tears ran down his cheeks, and I flinched at the sudden wave of déjà vu. The visions. It happened just like this in the visions. Those images I saw in her head that first day I kissed her.

"It’s what she wants. She is doing this for you.”

His eyes were raw, red. He had been crying long before I got here. The sight of this, however, caused the lava in my belly to erupt, and I bellowed.

His wolf rose to the challenge. His pupils slit in a vertical line, burning low in a rusty gold shade.

My breathing was labored at this point. The moment was playing out the exact way I had seen in the visions. He would not step out of the way, and I would have to kill him.

I would kill the man who was literally one half of me, housed half my soul, and my heart after what we did over two hundred years ago.

“Please,” he repeated.

My leash snapped, the control I had over it disintegrating like old ash. "You should have trusted my decision."

I shifted. My muscles tore, and my wings burst out of me. On the left, it slammed a wall with the force of its appearance and stone tumbled down as plaster coated the air, reminding me of that first day Nymphaea first died.

With an elongated spine, I stared at his head around my ribs.

“Step aside," I said one last time, the caution coming from the human which had shrunk into a tiny side of me. The part that still remembered this was the man I had loved for years, my other half.

But in response, he moved into a partial shift, the tears still running, repeating that word that would be the reason I killed him, over and over. “Please.”