Beams of sunlight shone through the trees as he stared at her. She found the simplest, oddest things to be worth her attention. He found he had involuntarily begun to see things he hadn’t before. Sometimes, he heard her voice in his head when he was alone, commenting on a bird song or a tree. It took him a while to realize he found her disarmingly beautiful too, more than anything she ever pointed out to him. He had viewed his life through black and white for years. She was a vivid burst of color.
Sol kicked his side, and the memory faded like smoke, bringing Morgen back to cruel awareness. The god’s eyes were aglow with rage and desperation.
“You are pathetic,” Sol spat, baring his teeth. “You are not worthy of the embers or the power you inherited.”
Morgen smiled, a delirious, empty expression. He could feel the blood coating his teeth and dripping down his chin. There was nothing left to lose.
“Go ahead, Sol,” he choked out. “Take my life. I never wanted it anyways. You’ve proclaimed it many times before yourself:you never needed me because you kept a couple of the embers. Good luck with that.”
Sol roared in fury. His features morphed, and Morgen caught a glimpse of the immortal beast beneath his human face, formless light curled around a heart long blackened by an excess of power. The vision was gone in flash.
“Give them to me!” Sol screamed, his hand squeezing, suffocating until drawing air was nearly impossible.
Morgen knew it was over. He was teetering on the edge of a chasm he could never return from. The embers still attempted to revive him, their efforts agonizing as they tried and failed to heal too many wounds. The magic flooded his broken body in one last riotous attempt to revive it. A drunken stupor hazed over his mind, but he forced himself to stay awake, to look at Sol and offer up one last taunt before he left this world to collapse in on itself.
“Beg.”
Sol’s fingers spasmed, burning where they touched Morgen’s skin. “You worthless fucking?—”
“You should probably listen to him if you’d like to live, Sol.”
For a moment, Morgen thought he was already dead, because that voice…
It was Nya’s.
Through his clouded vision, he saw her standing behind Sol. Her eyes were no longer filled with midnight, instead glowing with strands of silver and the most beautiful shade of blazing amber-gold.
Chapter
Twenty-Six
The child runs for the small house, a simple cottage nestled amongst the trees. Her laughter echoes strangely, and I am aware I am dreaming, though I do not wake. When she reaches the threshold, she is scooped up and held tight. A familiar voice pierces the dreamscape, making it feel too real. But when I turn, all I see is darkness.
—Account of a dream, Lady Anabeth, Consort to Her Majesty Cion Livii, Queen of Aren, D’anna
Nya had been fullyaware she was dying.
The ancient creature that called itself World Eater hadn’t been so kind as to numb to pain as it locked her away in her own mind, screaming and thrashing, watching helplessly as it hurt the people she loved.
When it looked at Morgen, though, she sensed the strangest emotion.
Jealousy.
The void was utterly alone. It had been listening to itself breathe in utter darkness for millennia. It wanted companionship and could not fathom Morgen’s willingness todie for Nya. Ithatedthem. Hated her parents, too, for it had watched her father wait decades for Sora’s return. When the void was forced to relinquish her, it wept.
It wanted to love but did not understand the concept. It no longer knew how to do anything but take and destroy.
Once it had created. Nyx had been its favorite, crafted from its understanding of itself. Thanatos was torn from a piece of its cloak’s fabric. Juno was threaded from the silver essence of the dying stars, and all the others came from dreams the creature had when it managed to sleep. Most of them forgot it quickly. Only Thanatos remembered, though he could not recall its true name, merely referring to it as ‘the void.’
Nya was the first living being who had blinked back at it without fear since this world had come to be. Once she understood that, all she had to promise was the gift of a bit of fire to stay warm and a vow she would remember its true name.
It was nothing more than a terrified, ancient child.
Sol had unknowingly given her exactly what she needed to calm it when he unleashed the full brunt of his magic. In return, it had given her a hollow space of time, a pause to say goodbye to Morgen before they were both swept away, an assurance it wouldn’t let Fate return them here. This was to be her last and only life.
She thought she had closed her eyes for the last time until she found herself staring at a slate-hued sky and heard Morgen’s voice from afar.
Nya, love.
