I see them now.
Threads of light extending from each mark, stretching across the frozen battlefield to connect with fallen forms. They're beautiful in their complexity—each string a different color, a different texture, a different flavor of devotion made visible. Cassius's thread is dark as midnight but shot through with stars. Atticus's burns crimson and gold, pulsing with every suspended heartbeat. Nikolai's shimmers with Fae iridescence. Mortimer'scarries the warmth of banked dragon fire. Zeke's glitters with frost that somehow doesn't feel cold.
My men lie scattered across the hill, struck down by the sonic wave, their bodies motionless as statues carved from flesh. Cassius's shadows have gone still around him, no longer writhing but crystallized in defensive positions. Atticus's crimson eyes are frozen mid-flash, blood magic caught between heartbeats. Mortimer's partial dragon form—scales and claws and ancient power—lies coiled around itself protectively. Zeke's frost barrier hovers incomplete above his prone body, ice crystals suspended in their formation.
They're not dead.
The strings connecting us pulse with life—faint but present, hearts still beating in the spaces between seconds. Our bonds are keeping them tethered to existence, preventing whatever force the chalice has unleashed from claiming them entirely.
But Nikki—Nikolai?—
My eyes find the dual form lying closest to the platform, their bodies caught between shapes as it so often is. Male features blurring into female, neither fully present, both equally vulnerable. The string connecting us is there, trembling with the effort of maintaining connection, but it's thin. Too thin. Weakened by the hostile realm's constant assault on their Fae nature.
And connecting to Nikki specifically, barely visible through the frozen chaos, another string of light hums with a different resonance.
Gabriel's string.
I trace it with my gaze, following the thread of golden luminescence as it stretches from where Nikki lies facing up toward the platform where my brother stands with the chalice. It's faint—different from my bonds, which pulse with blood magic and physical connection. This is something purer.Something that exists because two souls recognized each other across dimensions of suffering.
He truly does care for her.
The thought carries weight I don't have time to examine, because that's when I hear it.
An eerie scream of agony that cuts through the frozen silence like a blade through silk.
My spectral form turns toward the sound, and everything in me recoils at what I see.
The hellhound.
Damien.
The monstrous three-headed beast that Elena crafted from the proud pureblood prince writhes at the edge of the platform, caught in the chalice's wake. But unlike the others—frozen in stillness—Damienfights.
His massive form convulses, muscles rippling beneath skin that's beginning to slough away like wax from a burning candle. The corruption is visible, spreading across his transformed body like ink soaking through parchment—black veins pulsing with poison that seems to glow with its own sickly luminescence.
Blood and drool pour from the two mouths capable of opening, pooling beneath him in puddles that steam where they touch the obsidian platform. The liquid is wrong—too dark, shot through with threads of something that looks almost alive, writhing in the pools like parasites trying to escape their host.
While the third mouth—still sewn shut with thread made from his own hair—strains against its binding with desperation that makes my throat tight. I can see the stitches stretching, blood welling around each point where needle met flesh, but the binding holds.
Elena's work was thorough.
The collar of thorns around his neck has dug deeper during his thrashing, each thorn now buried completely beneath fleshthat's trying to heal around them and failing. Rivers of crimson run down his chest, mingling with the black corruption in patterns that look almost deliberate—as if the battle between vampire healing and Elena's curse has become art painted in suffering.
He's dying.
Not the quick death of battle or the peaceful death of surrender.
This is dissolution—the slow, agonizing unmaking of everything he is as the chalice's power separates pure from impure, willing from forced. The dark talisman Elena used to transform him burns against his forehead, parchment glowing with symbols that hurt to look at directly. It's fighting to maintain its hold while his body tries to reject what was never meant to be part of him. The battle plays out across his flesh in real time—corruption advancing, vampire healing pushing back, ground gained and lost in cycles that leave devastation in their wake.
I move without thinking.
The floating sensation of spectral existence carries me forward, my incorporeal form surging across the frozen battlefield toward the creature that was once a man.
A man who tormented me.
A vampire prince who kept secrets.
A paranormal being who, I'm only now beginning to understand, may have been as much a prisoner as any of us.
