For one endless moment, I'm not Gwenievere anymore—I'm Damien, experiencing everything he feels. The agony of flesh separating from bone. The torture of poison crawling through veins that were once immortal. The burden of secrets kept so long they've become part of his identity.
And the whispers.
Wicked gods, the whispers.
They crowd his mind like parasites—voices that sound like Elena's cruelty, like his family's disappointment, like every enemy he ever made coming home to roost. They mock him with words that cut deeper than any blade:
If you want to protect that pretty hybrid and the friends she cares so much about, you'll continue to be the villain you're meant to be.
You're nothing but a weapon.
A tool.
A monster wearing a man's face.
Did you really think you could save anyone? You can't even save yourself.
The cruelty of it steals my breath.
He's been fighting this alone.
For how long? Months? Years?
Bearing the weight of threats and manipulation while pretending to be the enemy so that those he actually cared about would remain safe from those who would use them against him.
He was never truly our enemy.
The realization crystallizes as I pull back from the contact, my spectral hands still gripping his disintegrating face. The three heads have merged now—or perhaps collapsed—leaving something closer to human form but still wrong. Still melting.Still dying.
Half his face retains the hellhound's features, flesh struggling to maintain a shape it was never meant to hold. His eyes—onemolten vampire red, one still shifting through the hellhound's impossible colors—droop with exhaustion that goes beyond physical.
He's losing the battle…
The poison has reached his neck, black corruption climbing toward his brain while his blood magic fights a losing battle against the plague. Tears of black ichor and crimson blood stream from eyes that have seen too much suffering to produce anything pure.
"S-s-stop..."
The word escapes him in a rasp that barely qualifies as speech. The sewn mouth hasn't opened—can't open—so the sound comes from somewhere deeper, some fundamental part of him that refuses to be silenced even as his body fails.
"Don't... waste... effort..."
I grip his face harder, forcing his gaze to meet mine.
"What happened?" I demand, my voice carrying harmonics I don't recognize—the echo of power that comes from speaking in spectral form. "Tell me what happened to you.Tell mewhy you did all of this."
His laugh is more cough than humor, black blood splattering from lips that can no longer hold their shape.
"The Purebloods..." His voice flickers between human and beast. "Knew where... the chalice was. Struck a deal... with Elena. Gave her a form of immortality that would... expire... if she didn't claim the throne of the Wicked and kill... the heirs."
Suddenly, everything makes sense.
Elena's sickness. Her desperate hunger for power. The centuries she's spent manipulating everyone and everything to reach this moment—it all makes horrific sense now. She's not just mad with ambition.
She's dying.
The immortality the Purebloods granted her was always temporary, conditional on her destroying us before it expired. Every moment of her cruelty, every scheme and betrayal has been the thrashing of a drowning woman trying to claw her way to air that doesn't exist.
"I knew..." Damien continues, each word costing him visible effort. "Knew the moment you arrived in Wicked that you were what... the Purebloods were excited to watch perish. I couldn't... couldn't let it happen. So I became the villain they... expected. Kept you fighting me so you'd... grow stronger. Kept you hating me so you'd... never trust me enough to get close."
