“And those who refused to follow you?”
He grinned. “You know the answer, don’t you?”
“Gods don’t belong on the mortal plane.”
There was a reason gods couldn’t walk amongst mortals. There needed to be balance—order.
“Little hypocrite. If you survive this, what do you think you’ll be? When this power is no longer halved, this body no longer burdened with the weight of two souls, what do you think you will become?” He raised a hand up above his head. “To a true god like the Faerie Queen, you’ll be no more than a bug, of course, but on Lustria? Where she can’t reach you herself?”
“No one will ever know what I am.” I took another step towards him, closing the gap between us almost imperceptibly. “I don’t have plans to use this power.”
His laughter seemed to echo through the darkness. “Until you need it. Until someone you love needs it, and you taste for the first time how delectable it is to have such power coursing through your veins. And then it’s just one more time. And another. And another.” Zaelos’s laughter turned wicked. “That’s the problem with true power. Once is never enough. A little bit is only good enough—until it isn’t.”
“I’m not you,” I bit back. “Amorphael would have loved you as you were.”
He finally stopped cackling to frown, and his voice turned frigid. “Do not speak her name or deign to claim you understand what transpired between us.”
“I saw the memory. When she gifted you with thefaylin lusoth. I may not know exactly how things work amongst the Fae, but I can recognize the look of someone in love.” Another step closer. “You never needed to be more than you were to be loved by her.”
While I couldn’t imagine loving the beast who’d tormented me for hundreds of years, it didn’t matter what I thought. I knew what I’d seen. Amorphael had loved him once—if she didn’t still. I’d never known a Zaelos who wasn’t twisted and cruel, so I couldn’t pretend to understand her affection, but I could take advantage of it.
A distraction made from pressing and twisting the invisible knife in his side until his bitter anger boiled over the top, unrestrained. I poked and prodded at his weakness while I closed the gap between us. He’d strike me down in a battle of magic alone, but if I could get close enough…
“You know nothing, stupid girl,” he spat. Shadows slowly crawled up his arms, drenching his marble-pale skin in darkness. “You are a vessel, a box to hold my magic, nothing more. If not for me, you would have perished long, long ago.I have gifted you many extra years of life in this godforsaken realm, and it is time you repay me.”
Just one more step, and I would be close enough. I took that final step at the same time his eyes fell to my hands, taking in the dagger clutched between my fingers—my early ‘graduation’ gift. Truly the first gift I’d ever received, and from the male who would change my life forever. I could think of no better weapon to slay Zaelos.
He smirked and shot a sharpened point of shadow at me. My time was up.
I gripped the dagger with the force of everything I held dear to me—my love, my friends, my hopes, and my dreams for the future—and plunged it straight into Zaelos’s heart.
An emotion I never thought I’d see from him lit his face—shock. And then fury, so potent I thought he’d murder me right then. But he was too weak from the fatal wound I’d dealt him. “You—you can’t live without me. We’ve spent lifetimes together. I’ll always be there, haunting you. You can’t so easily purge the darkness in your soul. I was never the source.”
I ripped the dagger from his chest and held it at my side. “No. My soul is mine now. I am not the little girl who took your hand in a moment of weakness. I am so much stronger than my first life, and I will never lose the part of me which is good.”
Blood spurted from his mouth as he smiled, teeth coated in gore. “How many times?”
I’d asked him the same thing in the moments following our last death. But this time, it would not be both of us fading to nothing. “The eighth and final time.”
Something strange and melancholy settled in his eyes. “Nairu, I’m glad it was you.”
Before I could say another word, he collapsed—first to his knees, then onto his back, lifeless.
Beside him, I fell, my mouth open in shock, hands clutching my chest. I never thought I’d react to a kill in such a way. I didn’t expect to feel joy and relief the first time I had to use that dagger to end a life. I reached up to wipe my cheeks. When had my tears fallen?
I’m glad it was you. Zaelos’s last words left me stricken. Eight lifetimes together…. I’d severed a piece of myself, one so twisted up inside of me I couldn’t ignore the absence it left. He was the worst part of me, but he was a part of me nonetheless. I could never forgive him, but I could allow myself to mourn that missing piece, regardless of how wrong it felt.
It was over.
I was free.
Pain came shortly after the realization. The visceral ache of a seam being ripped inside of my soul only for new parts and pieces to be sewn back together again. I could only lie there in the darkness, gritting my teeth while the sensation overcame me.
I knew when the final stitch was tied off only because of the sudden emptiness. I’d spent more of my lives sharing my mortal coil with Zaelos than I’d spent in it alone. It was suddenly too horribly desolate to exist as one mind in one body. My thoughts, once clouded by the influence of another, were now clear. My movements, my actions, my own.
It would take getting used to—this unburdened existence—but I was free.
I whispered a last goodbye to Zaelos, my severed soul, and the heavy weight I’d grown used to lifted off my shoulders. This was letting go. Of all of it. I was letting go.
