“Amma, you can’t be here.” Damien’s voice dropped with severity, fingers finding the armrests and curling into the wood.
“Yes, I can. They let me.” She raised her chin to gesture to one of the infernal things skittering along the domed ceiling high above them.
Damien took a breath, head jerking, eye twitching. “E’nloc is inside me,” he said, stalwart but tinged with shame. “It isn’t safe here—I’m not safe. You have to go.”
She only stood there shaking her head.
“Leave!” he shouted, voice echoing into the entirety of the throne room and cutting right through her, but she remained. Damien’s strength, his act of being indestructible, had always been a shield. He had a softness that could be exploited, and someone had done just that. It was up to her to protect it, to protect him. “I promised I would stay with you no matter what,” she said simply. “So I am.”
“Amma, this is not—” He cut himself off as she took another step toward him. Pushing himself back into the throne, his eyes would not find hers, hazy smoke seeping out from under his palms. “It knows you’re here, and It isn’t…It isn’t happy.”
Black wisps of arcana floated out from around Damien,crawling across the ground and slithering up her legs, feeling every inch of her body. She stood under it, unmoving, taking steady breaths, watching him.
“It wants you dead,” he said through grit teeth, and she felt the magic tighten around her limbs. “I can’t…I won’t let it, but I can’t hold it back forever.”
“You don’t need to.” Amma stepped forward, breaking from the arcana’s haze. It couldn’t hold her if she didn’t want it to. She slipped her hand under his chin, tipping his head up to her. He looked awful, so sullen and drained and sad. Yet she still saw him, inside, trapped. “But you do need to force It out.”
He shook his head, moving slightly in her grasp. “Impossible. And even if I could, I can’t let It be free to destroy the realm. The luxerna in It is eating away at me, making me weak.” His hand shot up, grabbing her so tightly about the wrist she thought he had to be lying. There was nothing weak about the hold he had on her as he tugged her forward. “Every second closer to death I am, the easier it is for me to succumb to It, and It won’t. Fucking. Shut. Up.”
Amma’s wrist felt like the bones might snap, and she whimpered. His hold on her lessened, but just barely. It was dangerous, getting closer, but she had to. She lifted her knee, sliding it alongside his thigh onto the throne.
“Amma, please, you have to go,” he begged even as he held her so tightly she could never escape. His breaths were shallow as she brought her other knee up, boxing him in with her body though she knew he could simply throw her to the ground or pitch her right off the top of the daises like he had said he’d wanted to do from the top of Anomalous’s tower. Like he had said when he confessed that he loved her.
She touched his face, but he trapped that hand too, wrenching it away from the scar she meant to caress. Straddling him, she sunk closer still, and he fought whatever it was holdingher, pulling her in one moment and holding her away the next. But he didn’t pull away when she pressed her lips to his, gently, very gently. She would only give Damien a soft kiss, a reminder of his own tenderness, of who he really was.
The magic encompassing him was even in his mouth, prodding at her lips as she pulled back. Some of it was his, that gentle but firm arcana she’d come to adore, and some of it was foreign, hateful, tasting of ash and death. She would drive it out, free him of it, return him to her, even if it was the last thing she did.
“I’m not leaving you, Damien,” she said, pressing her body against his, arcana enveloping them both. “I love you.”
“You love who I was, but I am no longer that person.” He blew out a ragged breath, sunken eyes traveling down her, and then widening, grip going tight once again. “Amma, I am sorry, but you cannot be allowed to love this anymore.”
CHAPTER 33
WHEN FUTILITY COMES FULL CIRCLE
Sanguinisui,” said Damien, the word hateful on his tongue, “forget you ever loved me.”
Amma’s eyes went glassy, her body hitching. “No, I—”
“Sanguinisui, remember, instead, the monster that abducted you, the blood mage who was cruel and vicious and deserving of your retribution for the Abyss you suffered at my hand.”
She convulsed on his lap, arms trembling in the hold he had on both of her wrists. The magic of the talisman was stronger now with E’nloc behind it, though he knew it was only because he used it for further destruction.
“Sanguinisui, believe I enthralled you, coerced you, abused you, but you will regain solace once you finally kill me.”
Amma exhaled sharply, gaze searching in bewilderment. She stiffened, and then the sparkling blue of her eyes fell on him. The adoration, the sympathy, the love, all drained away, replaced with fear, with anger, with hatred.
“No!” she screamed, thrashing. Stronger than she’d ever been, she tried to wrench away from his grasp, but he couldn’t let her go, not yet.
“Get your handsoffof me!” Her attempt to scramble backward was thwarted by his strength and the position she’d put herself in on his lap. Tears sprang to her eyes, from fear, from anger, it didn’t matter, the rest of her was simply feral, but he kept her there, letting her fight, hating it but unable to release her. “I’ll kill you,” she screamed, voice echoing into the vast and empty throne room, and he realized that yes, that was the point,and finally let go of her arms.
Amma was quick—dark gods, she’d always been—and she grabbed the dagger holstered on her thigh in a flash. Her dagger, the one not meant for fighting but tending to the earth, the one Damien had blessed by the priestess with the spell he’d found in the Lux Codex what felt like ages ago. He’d sat beside Amma once, scribbling it down as she translated, and she hadn’t even known what it could do.
As she raised it overhead, the dagger glinted with divine magic, a spell that would allow for a weapon to cast an unmendable wound, one even a blood mage could not heal from. Finally, her dagger would get its chance to plunge into him instead of save his life.
But as she sliced it down toward his chest, It took control. He’d been ignoring the voice, pushing E’nloc out, but there was only so much his weakening body could do. Damien caught her arm, holding her at bay. She sat straddling him, her face contorted with terror and rage, and she used all of her might to push through his hold and kill him. Both hands pressing down, just like when he’d enchanted her in The Wilds as a test. His arm shook beneath her attempt, noxscura wrapping around it as he fought his own body. He wanted to keep her just a moment longer—always one moment longer—and wrapped his other arm around her waist.
She growled at that, at the touch she would have nestled into only a moment earlier from the man she would have loved if destiny had deigned to be a little kinder to them both. He felt, a last time, the softness of her under his hands, even as every one of her muscles pulled taut, and he saw the sweetness in her heart even through his eyes, blurring with tears.
