Ash twitched forward but hesitated, waiting, watching. Adriana groaned as she sat up among the debris, dust clinging to her dark hair, her wide eyes reflecting the impossible sight before her.
An enormous gap yawned where once the wall had stood. And through it stepped a figure draped in menace, hands wreathed in curling green smoke.
Vera smiled. A predator’s smile, sharp and knowing.
‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ she purred, her voice honeyed and cruel. ‘Was I interrupting something?’
Adriana surged to her feet, her wyverian blade flashing as she drew it. But Vera’s eyes narrowed, a flick of her wrist sending the sword spinning from Adriana’s grip as though it were nothing more than a child’s toy.
‘Honestly,’ the witch scoffed, closing the distance withdeliberate, predatory grace. ‘Did you truly think you could harm me withthat?’ A chuckle curled from her lips, low and dark. ‘I’ve been looking for you.’
Adriana shook her head, stumbling back a step, raw fear glimmering in her dark eyes. ‘Why…?’
Vera halted, leaving a deliberate stretch of air between them, her lips curling into something too sharp to be called a smile.
‘Why what?’
‘Why are you doing this?’
Vera tilted her head like a raven assessing a dying creature. ‘Have you been keeping company with mortals so long their weakness has rotted your heart? Has their sentimentality soaked into your bones?’ A brittle laugh snapped from her lips. ‘Or is it that you’ve forgotten what you did to me, what you did to my sister?’
‘We didn’t—’
‘You didn’t what? Mean it?’ Vera’s teeth flashed, feral and bright, a snarl barely restrained. ‘You abandoned us. All of us. For what? For them? For mortals?’ She glanced aside, a fleeting shadow of sorrow passing like a stormcloud through her purple eyes. ‘You left us behind to dwell here, to become one of them.’
Adriana’s tears spilt freely now, trailing over her cheeks as her voice trembled. ‘No, Eris… it isn’t like that. We couldn’t bear it anymore. We were… too cruel, too broken.’
Vera’s gaze snapped back to her, sorrow evaporating into pure venom. ‘Cruel?’ she echoed. ‘Cruel is walking out on your children without a word. Cruel is hiding from them. Cruel is abandoning them!’
Adriana’s shoulders sagged as she looked down, her sobs quiet and hoarse. ‘Keir and I… we love you all.’
‘You can’t even speak his true name!’ Vera roared, fury spitting from everysyllable. ‘That is not his name!’
‘We thought—’
‘I don’t give a damn what you thought,mother.’The title was spat like poison. Yet, slowly, Vera’s rage dulled, simmering instead into something far colder. ‘You made your choice. For a century, we clawed at the curse that whore Hecate laid on us, binding us to our realms, barring us from your precious mortal soil. While you and father played house here, safe, hidden.’ She glanced down at her nails, a cruel smirk ghosting her lips. ‘I hope your little life of lies was worth it… hiding from your own children. I must say you are rather good at deceit. My real mother abandoned me but then you came along, married my father and pretended to love me, to care for me, to be the mother I never had. But you abandoned me too. You’re all the same.’
‘I’m sorry Eris. We didn’t want to leave you. None of you. But there is another way,’ Adriana said, her spine straightening as she summoned every fragment of courage within her. ‘We do not have to live as we once did.’
‘And why not?’ Vera’s lips curved into a cruel smile. ‘What is so wrong with being gods?’
‘We are evil!’ Adriana’s voice cracked, raw and unguarded.
Vera’s purple eyes shimmered with irritation, a glint of something darker beneath. ‘Then let us begin again, mother. Allow me to cleanse this world, and we may build anew upon its ashes.’
‘The mortals have done nothing wrong,’ Adriana whispered, despair softening her words. ‘They must be left in peace, Eris.’
‘We created them,’ Vera snapped, her voice a whip crack of fury. ‘They belong to us.’
Adriana’s shoulders slumped, defeat edging her features. ‘Back home, I cared for nothing but power.My power.My creations, my victories, my hunger to outshine every god whodared stand beside me. But here… here I learnt what it is to love without measure, to be kind without seeking reward, to cherish another simply for the sake of their existence.’
Vera scoffed, venom dripping from the sound. ‘And all of that is worth more to you than your own children?’ She spat on the frozen ground, her face twisting with disgust. ‘So be it. I shall kill you here and now. I’ll send you crawling back home.’
‘Don’t do this, Eris,’ Adriana pleaded, her voice breaking like thin ice.
But Vera was already moving, lifting her hands as coils of green magic spiralled around her fingers like venomous serpents. ‘We could have been a family,’ she whispered, voice trembling with a pain she would never admit, ‘but you… you could never truly love us.’
The blast came before Adriana could answer, a wave of emerald fire slamming into her and throwing her like a broken doll across the ground.
