His eyes—both of them, monster and vampire alike—lock onto mine with intensity that burns.
"You can hate me. I deserve it. But I'd... do it again. I'd experience this pain for eternity if you get a fuckingchance..."
The confession hangs between us, more intimate than any touch, more devastating than any betrayal.
He loves me.
Not the performative possession he displayed to maintain his cover. Not the territorial claiming the Purebloods expected from their weapon. Real, devastating, hopeless love—the kind that sacrifices everything and asks for nothing in return.
Silence stretches between us, broken only by the wet sounds of his body continuing to fail. The poison has reached his shoulders now, and I can see the moment his vampire healing surrenders—the crimson fire in his eyes flickering, dimming, accepting defeat.
"Did you genuinely love me?"
The question escapes before I can stop it—soft, vulnerable, nothing like the fierce survivor I've had to become. Part of me needs to know. Needs to understand if anything between us was ever real, or if it was all just elaborate theater designed to keep me alive.
His head lifts with effort that makes his entire form shudder.
The poison has claimed so much of him now. His lips have turned black, cracking and splitting as the corruption claims even that last boundary between his soul and the void. His eyes—those beautiful, terrible eyes—swim with tears that are more blood than water.
But when he speaks, his voice carries clarity that transcends his failing body.
"My Wicked Cataclysm..."
The nickname I didn't know I had makes my chest ache.
"I will burn with you, be unmade by you, and rise only if you rise." Each word comes slower than the last, his consciousness flickering like a candle in a hurricane. "My power, my blood, my afterlife—every version of me belongs to the moment you exist."
The declaration isn't a confession.
It's a solid vow spoken with blood...
The kind of oath that binds across lifetimes, that echoes through dimensions, that matters more than death itself because it defines the shape of a soul.
I touch his face again—firmly this time, no hesitation or uncertainty. Emotions swarm through me, making me feel sick and whole and broken and healed all at once. I can feel what he is: death incarnate, poison given form, a man dissolving into nothing while he uses his last breaths to tell me I matter.
But I don't feel regret from him.
I feel longing. Sadness. Loneliness that stretches back further than his transformation, further than his deals with the Purebloods, all the way to whatever childhood trauma taught him that love was something to hide rather than share.
And hope.
A tiny thread of it, gossamer-thin and trembling, but present nonetheless. The heaviness makes me realize how this momentwill change a trajectory, making me yearn to ensure his sacrifice won’t be meaningless.
The tears that form in my spectral eyes surprise me.
I didn't know ghosts could cry. But they fall anyway, trailing down cheeks that exist somewhere between light and flesh, dripping onto his ruined face with soft sounds that seem impossibly loud in the frozen silence.
"Don't make me regret this," I whisper.
My left hand leaves his cheek.
His eyes—struggling to focus, consciousness fragmenting with each passing second—track the movement with desperate attention. I present my wrist, gritting my teeth as I force my spectral form to solidify further. Ithurts—existence fighting against my command, reality protesting the violation of its rules—but I push through the pain until I can see veins pulsing beneath skin that's more real than memory.
"We start over," I tell him, watching his gaze fix on the offering with hunger that goes beyond simple bloodlust. "I'll be your Wicked Cataclysm."
His eyes lift to mine, hope and disbelief warring in their depths.
"But if you dare betray me again," I continue, voice hardening with promise that carries the weight of my crown, my bonds, my identity as heir to everything the Wicked world contains, "I'll kill you myself."
