Chapter 160 Hundred and sixty three
Chapter 160 Hundred and sixty three
“Don’t look at me like that,” Ryder muttered into the darkness, though no one stood near him, though Sienna’s breathing remained steady on the other side of the ruined altar. His voice was low, almost broken, barely held together by breath and will. “If you keep breathing like that… I’m never going to walk away.”
The moonlight, thin, ghost-pale, fractured through the shattered dome above, fell across the cracked temple floor. Sienna slept curled on her side, fingers stained with residual silver from whatever magic she’d forced herself to master before exhaustion claimed her. Her hair fanned across the cold stone like dark silk. Every rise of her chest was an anchor wrapped around his ribs.
He stood at the far edge of the chamber, one hand braced against the wall, fighting the tremors that crawled through his body. Shadows clung to him now, not figurative shadows, but real ones, alive and hungry, whispering from the places where light could not quite reach. Each hour, they pulled harder. Each hour, something inside him dimmed.
“Stop,” he whispered again, but the plea wasn’t for her anymore. It was for himself. For the curse tightening around him. For the goddess who watched with silver eyes he could almost feel pressing into the back of his skull. “Just… stop.”
His chest seized. The kind of pain that didn’t belong to flesh or bone, but to something deeper. Something sacred. He clutched the front of his shirt, nails digging into his skin until blood warmed his fingertips.
A voice stirred in the darkness.
Not Sienna’s voice.
Not his own.
“You’re unraveling, wolf.”
He didn’t turn. He didn’t need to. Lunaris didn’t walk, she simply existed wherever she wished. Her presence shimmered like frost crawling over ancient stone, like the scrape of moonlight across the edges of his mind.
“You did this,” he hissed, breath trembling. “You’re killing me slowly just to watch her break.”
“I am killing nothing,” Lunaris murmured, her tone almost tender, almost pitying, which only infuriated him more. “You were marked long before she was born. You were chosen long before you ever loved.”
“You cursed me,” he said sharply.
“You cursed yourself,” she whispered. “By loving one destined to ascend. She cannot rise while chained to you.”
His jaw clenched. “I won’t let you take me from her.”
“You will,” Lunaris breathed. “Because you know what happens if you stay.”
His breath staggered. He knew. He’d seen it. The visions she’d shoved into his skull for days now, Sienna’s body collapsing, Sienna’s scream turning to silence, Sienna’s light snuffed out because he dared to reach toward her.
He knew.
A metallic taste filled his mouth as another tremor struck him. This one deep, violent, sharp enough that he nearly fell to his knees. He bit the inside of his cheek to keep from crying out and waking her.
A whisper escaped him anyway. “Sienna…”
Her eyelids fluttered. His heart seized, but she didn’t wake. She only shifted slightly, murmuring something soft and pained in her sleep, some dream or memory pulling at her. He took a single step toward her without realizing, pulled by instinct, pulled by love, pulled by everything that still bound him to the mortal world.
The shadows snapped at his heel.
He froze.
If he crossed another inch the curse would tear through him, no, through her. Lunaris had made that much clear in every vision she’d forced him to see.
He exhaled shakily and stepped back, putting more distance between them.
“I hate you,” he whispered to the goddess.
“You hate yourself far more,” Lunaris replied. “And you know the truth I will not allow you to forget. One must fall for the other to rise.”
He closed his eyes, shoulders shaking. “It doesn’t have to be my fall.”
“It does,” Lunaris murmured. “Because she refuses to let you die. And she refuses to die herself. And so the world waits. But the moon does not. Time does not. And you, child of ruin, do not have the luxury of eternity.”
He forced his shaking limbs to still. Forced his breath to level. Forced himself to look at Sienna one last time, letting the sight burn into him like fire carving its mark into stone.
She looked so small like this. So fierce even in her sleep. So unaware that each hour stole more pieces of him.
“She’ll fall apart,” he said quietly. “If I leave tonight, she’ll break.”
“She will break either way,” Lunaris whispered. “But she needs to break in the direction of her own destiny, not yours.”
He swallowed hard. “You’re a cruel goddess.”
“I am a goddess of balance,” Lunaris corrected him gently. “Cruelty is simply one of the tools balance requires.”
He turned fully now, facing the place in the dark where her voice echoed from. “Then let it be me,” he said. “If one must die, let it be me.”
“Are you offering yourself?” Lunaris asked.
“I’m offering her freedom,” he said. “And mine.”
Lunaris didn’t answer. Not right away. The silence stretched, filling the ruined hall with the weight of old magic.
Finally, her voice slid through the air, soft enough to shiver the dust.
“Then rise.”
His breath caught.
Not because he wanted to rise, but because his body no longer felt like it belonged to him. Shadows wrapped around his ankles, then his knees, then his waist. They didn’t choke him, they lifted him. Cradled him like something precious and breaking.
Sienna’s breath hitched again.
Ryder whispered, “Don’t wake up. Please don’t wake up.”
But her eyes fluttered, as if she sensed the shift in the air.
He moved before she could open them.
He crossed the chamber silently, painfully, each step tearing more of him apart, until he stood beside her. He memorized the curve of her cheek, the faint shadow beneath her lashes, the softness in her mouth that war had not managed to steal.
He knelt.
His fingers hovered over her skin but didn’t touch. Couldn’t touch. The curse snapped like hungry jaws between them.
He whispered into the space between them, voice breaking. “You were everything I wasn’t supposed to have.”
Her lips parted slightly, as if she heard him even in sleep.
His voice trembled. “I’m not strong enough to stay. Not strong enough to watch you die because of me.”
A single tear slid down his cheek. It hit the stone without a sound.
More shadows gathered, swirling around him, brushing the edges of her hair without touching her skin.
He leaned closer, close enough to feel her breath warm his face. “I love you enough to leave,” he whispered. “I love you enough to let you hate me for it.”
His body jerked suddenly as another violent pull tore through him. Lunaris was losing her patience.
He stood slowly, unsteadily, his hand clutching his chest as if he could hold himself together a little longer.
“Goodbye, Sienna.”
The shadows surged upward, wrapping around him like a cloak, swallowing his outline until he was little more than a figure made of moonless night.
He took three steps back.
Sienna’s fingers twitched, reaching instinctively toward where he’d been.
His heart cracked.
He turned away.
The shadows parted the air ahead of him like water splitting around a blade. A path opened, dark, silent, merciless.
He stepped into it.
The moment his foot crossed the threshold, the ground shuddered. The air rippled. The magic in the temple roared awake.
Sienna bolted upright.
“Ryder?”
Her voice was raw, wild, terrified.
He froze.
For a heartbeat.
Just one.
Then the darkness swallowed him whole.