Just like he had kept me. Just like he meant to keep me again.
The Shriekers at the front of the column turned to mock me, emitting sounds that might have been laughter if they’d possessed real throats. As if animated corpses, held together by an evil god’s will, could make me feel shame. Yet every second in this cage sent chills through my veins, as I imagined what would come next.
Think of Killian and Tyson,I told myself, clinging to the thought of my mates.Think of Sy.
The memory of the incorrigible heirs and their constant bickering brought a faint smile to my lips. I’d come to adore the very people I once despised. They were all so brave. Bea, tirelessly working her forge, never giving up. Rock and his antics about the ghost guardian sipping his energy on nightly visits, which I put in his head. Cami, content in her role as her cousin’s steadfast shadow. Cassius now hid his best wine surrounded by scorpions after I’d raided his stash to romance Killian.
Their faces gave me courage before reality crashed back in, and my courage crumbled.
I was truly alone. No Sy sharing my body, bearing the worst of the pain, or cracking lewd jokes when things got too dark. Now it was just me and those bad memories.
The bleak sky. The desolate land. The bone palace waiting ahead.
The feeding chamber, and my father’s endless, insatiable hunger.
I shoved the memories down, hard.
I wasn’t alone.I carried everyone I loved inside me—their strength, their bravery, their loyalty. They would come for me. I just needed them to wait a little longer, to give me time to set my plan in motion.
I caught a flicker of movement in the cage’s corner. The air shifted, folding in on itself unnaturally.
And suddenly, I had company.
Lilith materialized like a bad dream made beautiful. Even in this rusty cage rattling through the apocalypse, she looked untouched. White robes flowed like moonlight, woven from materials that came from no earthly loom. Her radiant golden hair cascaded past her shoulders, moving in a phantom wind. Those green eyes held the depth of a primordial galaxy, ancient, knowing, and utterly inhuman despite their beauty. Phantom wings arched behind her, pale like cathedral glass and somehow fitting in the cramped space bent to accommodate her.
While she looked like she’d stepped out of a Renaissance painting with too many secrets, I appeared as if I’d been dragged through hell backwards.
I bared my teeth. “What do you want?”
Shh.Her voice echoed in my mind instead of the air.I want what you want. To end the void god.
Haven’t you done enough?I snarled back mentally.You’ve been helping him!
Everything I’ve done has led to this moment.
To lead me back to the slaughterhouse,I snorted.
Yes,she said simply.But your sacrifice won’t be in vain. I have a short window while Ruin is distracted. Let’s not waste it arguing. You need to hear a story.
Before I could tell her where to shove her story, she opened her mind to mine.
The images hit like a punch in the gut.
Lilith in Heaven, shining as bright as her twin, Lucifer. The Fall—not cast out like him, but choosing to follow him to Earth. Knowing she’d never see starlight from the inside again. All for a single purpose that had consumed eons of her existence.
To fulfill Heaven’s mission: to destroy Ruin, at any cost.
Ruin wasn’t just Earth’s problem; he was a threat to existence itself. A cosmic void that had gutted worlds before ours and would consume countless more if not stopped. Heaven had fought and lost across galaxies, until Lilith found a thread of prophecy. The one weakness in a being that had no form to wound.
I saw her endless search. Her finding the Maiden, one of the three Fates hiding from their mutual enemy. The prophecy, spoken in a whisper:He will be undone by his own blood.
The price: carving out her own essence to create that blood.
To create me.
She’d torn out her core essence, fused it with fragments of Ruin’s own being, and forged a weapon in the form of an infant. I was not born from a womb, but shaped from the primordial magic of Heaven and Void—a forced union of the holy and the unholy.
“You’re my daughter,” she said.
