"You," I gasp, my breath fogging the crystal. "I belong to you."
He speeds up, his thrusts becoming deep, driving strikes that hit the exact, aching center of my core. The friction is a violent, beautiful agony. I scream his name, the sound completely untethered, echoing in the dark. He leans over me, his heavy chest pressing me into the stone, his mouth open against my neck as he chases his own release.
"Mireya!" he groans, a deep, earth-shattering sound of pure devotion and rage.
The climax hits both of us with world-shaking force. The pleasure rips through my veins, a consuming starburst that violently contracts my internal muscles around his thick length. Khaelor drives his hips forward one final, devastating time, pouring his release deep inside me as his powerful body shudders violently against my back.
I collapse against the crystal, my chest heaving, pulling dragging, ragged breaths of the freezing air. He stays buried inside me, his arms wrapping entirely around my waist, his heavy forehead resting between my shoulder blades as we ride the agonizing, beautiful descent of the orgasm.
A sharp, metallic screech tears through the silence.
I lift my head from the stone. Across the dark vault, the massive iron doors are warping inward but holding on. The thick metal is glowing a violent, cherry red, the heat of the Vanguard's siege magic almost overwhelming the resonant capacity of the crystals. It's at the limit.
The countdown is over. The end of the world is at the door.
26
KHAELOR
The violent, shuddering echo of my own release is entirely swallowed by the agonizing screech of melting iron.
I withdraw from Mireya, the sudden severing of our physical connection leaving a hollow, freezing void in the center of my chest. I step back, my boots grinding against the salt-rimed marble of the Echo Crystal Vault. The heavy, ringing silence of the tomb is shattered. Across the freezing dark, the massive metal doors are glowing cherry-red, warping inward under the immense, sustained pressure of the Vanguard’s siege magic. We have seconds before the breach.
I look at the woman pressed against the deep-earth resonating pedestal. Her breath is ragged, her chest heaving as she pulls desperate lungfuls of the freezing subterranean air. Her skin is flushed, shivering in the sudden absence of my blistering heat. The front of her leather tunic is completely shredded, ruined by the desperate, starving violence of my own corrupted hands in the dark.
I stoop, snatching my heavy velvet cloak from where I discarded it on the floor days ago when I was here. I step into her space, throwing the thick, dark fabric over her shoulders. I pullthe heavy edges tight across her bare chest, shielding her from the cold and the encroaching eyes of the executioners who are seconds away from breaking down our door. I drag my trousers up, securing the heavy iron buckles with trembling fingers.
She is looking at me with questions in her eyes. Questions I cannot answer. I turn away as a vicious, tearing cough rips from my throat.
I taste raw copper and necrotic ash. The null-iron suppression sigils the Vanguard planted in the outer corridor are bleeding their frequency through the buckling doors. The anti-magic field acts as a suffocating vice on my body and magic. Because the curse cannot project outward, it has turned entirely inward. The black-gold ichor in my veins is boiling, actively consuming my internal organs to sustain its feral starvation. Every heartbeat is a jagged, white-hot agony.
I stare at the glowing, failing iron. Archmagister Theryn is on the other side. I know exactly what the politician intends. He wants to push Mireya to trigger the missing anchor. He wants to use a Purna witch to detonate the estate and kill me so he can sweep away the ashes and claim the sovereign territory for himself.
“Khaelor…” she whispers my name so softly, tickling my long, frozen heart.
I look back at the woman wrapped in my cloak. Her eyes are full of unshed tears and love. A love I have never felt and experienced, so beautiful and heartrending it makes me want to kneel in supplication for I have received it from her.
The tragic, devastating paradox of our existence crystallizes in my failing mind. The moments we spent together, the happiness and light she brought into my life flashes as I gaze at her. Even before the curse, I have never felt such emotions. Never experienced such moments.
House Venn was cold and lethal. My own mother was so cruel she killed children she deemed useless, but the slaughter of my innocent sisters and the eradication of my bloodline still forged my century of grief.
In Mireya, I found what makes life worth truly living.
I cannot kill the witch who murdered my family; the feral possessiveness in my blood violently rejects the thought of her harm. I love her with a terrifying, absolute devotion that makes a mockery of the hundred years of grief I have carried. But I cannot keep her, either. My very being is a walking apocalypse, and my body is failing under the weight of the siege.
Either way, I am going to die.
But her survival is flawlessly simple.
If the designated target of a blood curse dies, the magic terminates. The cataclysm ends. The rotting architecture of Venn Manor will violently collapse the second my pulse stops, burying the Vanguard and the Archmagister under ten thousand tons of petrified timber and stone. Theryn will not get his victory.
She just needs to be out of the blast radius. It is time to let go of House Venn. It is time to let the graveyard finally sink into the earth.
"Listen to me, Mireya, ” I step close, gripping the sides of her face. My thumbs map the sharp curve of her cheekbones one final time, committing the exact warmth of her skin to my fading memory. "When the doors fall, I will break their line. You will not fight. You will run toward the deepest level of the catacombs, directly to the Heart-Stone chamber."
The Heart-Stone is where the offensive wards can be activated but also a primordial bedrock anchor of the estate. It is the only subterranean structure dense enough to withstand a total foundational collapse.
"Khaelor—" she begins, the fierce, stubborn defiance flaring in her dark eyes. Her hands come up to grip my wrists, her fingers trembling. She reads the absolute, fatalistic finality in my posture. She knows I am not planning to follow her.
