“Don’t you dare die, Korithax,” she weeps. “I can’t… I can’t lose you. Not now, not when I finally have you as my own.”
Her flame responds to her pain, becoming sentient. It curls around her like a living creature—protective, violent, mourning.It lashes out against the room, lacing everything in divine white flame as her anger, her grief, pours out of her.
I was doing this to her. I could see my impending death breaking her to the point of no return. My little flower was burning away, and I was afraid for what was going to be left behind.
“Get rid of him!” Elaron snaps, “so nobody can save him.”
“I will end you,” Daisy snarls through her sobs. Her voice is layered, sounding so different from the girl I love. Dasmyrin and Daisy seemed to fuse as one, grief-maddened and divine. “You took everything from me once. You won’t do it again.”
I watch her through bleary eyes, my queen, my love, as the flames dance up her arms and crawl across her body like living armour. She was no longer Daisy, yet she was not Dasmyrin either. She was both, and more. Something entirely unstoppable.
She glows like a dying star on the edge of collapse, but more powerful than anything I’d ever witnessed. I was truly blessed that my last sight before death was seeing my queen transform into the fierce fucking goddess I always knew she could be. What a blessing it is to die in the arms of the one woman that became my peace. She is everything to me. My heart, my soul, my home. I’d spent my life being a cold bastard, a child forged for destruction. And I always foresaw my death on the battlefield, surrounded by my soldiers, nobody truly caring I was dead. Never did I imagine a fate where I died in the arms of an angel who would mourn me so fiercely she set the world alight. My angel. My beautiful, destructive angel.
“I can fix this,” she whispers, pressing her forehead to mine. “Just hold on. Just a little longer?—”
“I’m fading, sunshine,” I murmur. “Let me go.”
“No. No, please, don’t.”
“I love you,” I murmur, tasting blood.
And I do love her. So fucking much it hurts.
Her sob tears through the room, louder than the thunder booming outside. She presses her mouth to mine in a desperate kiss. One final, blood-slicked kiss. I exhale into her, giving her my last breath.
Then darkness takes me.
Chapter 58
Epilogue One
ARAN
The throne room reeked of blood and the bitter tang of divine magic.
The air was thick with silence, as if the realm itself had forgotten how to breathe. Daisy knelt over Korithax’s body. Her gown, once regal and black with living flame, now hung from her in ruin, drenched in Talia’s blood, in Korithax’s. Her pale hands trembled as she cradled him, her fingers smeared in crimson, her face carved with a look that held something much worse than grief. Her flame still clung to her like a second skin, breathing and pulsing as if they were alive themselves.
Korithax went still in her arms, and for a breath, the world did too. Then Daisy screamed. It was not a cry; it was not the sound of a woman mourning her love. It was a detonation. Her scream ripped through the throne room like a tidal wave of power—raw and guttural. The sound hit the air with such force that every stained-glass window shattered, raining shards down like multicoloured tears. The mirrors that dotted the walls across the cavernous space cracked from edge to edge, and each column in the room groaned. Every candle in the room extinguished at once, plunging the chamber into darknessbroken only by the searing white glow erupting from Daisy’s body.
Her hair lifted from her shoulders, fanned by a phantom wind that seemed to spin around her like a storm born from her grief. Her eyes blazed white and her flame—no longer soft or celestial—coiled from her skin in lashing tendrils.
The Divine Six flinched as the blast of her power sent a gust of magic crashing through the air like a living shockwave. The very foundations of Zeriavoss trembled. Kaelith fell to his knees. Vor’Khar staggered back. Even Maelkar’s shadows hissed and curled tighter around him in warning.
Seraphiel snarled. “This power—what is this?”
“This isn’t normal magic,” Calrix muttered, his hand tightening around his sword hilt.
“No,” Elyistria said, stepping forward with a trembling voice. “This is hers.”
She wasn’t referring to Dasmyrin or Daisy. She was referring to the newly formed goddess in front of us. She was something old and something new. Entirely remade, and entirely dangerous.
Daisy’s body arched forward as the magic released again in a pulsing ring, the force so violent that every person in the room staggered. Velentha watched without moving, her expression unreadable.
“The Queen born of the ashes has risen,” Velentha whispered, her voice barely audible over the storm of power surging through the room. “And her grief will drown the stars.”
As the power pulsing throughout the room began to settle, Daisy slowly lifted her gaze. She was not weeping anymore, her face carved from fire and fury. And the Divine Six finally understood. They had not killed anything within this girl. No. They had awakened the goddess within.
I stood frozen a few feet away, my sword still gripped within my hand, though I could barely feel it. All I could hear was the echo of her scream. The way she’d held him, the way she’d kissed him as if her love alone could force life back into his body. Nothing could. Not even her magic, not even her.
