Page 74 of The Fallen Fae King

I want to be close enough that Daire can see me clearly one final time.

“Being able to spend this night with you, before I had to tell you the truth, was my last wish. To experience a rut, touch, and love. Acceptance. Just once. If you’d known what was coming, then we couldn’t have had this joy,” I murmur, “as the sun would not shine, if it knew that it would be eclipsed by the moon. Would the majestic Luna moth fly so boldly in the night sky without fear if it knew that it had only a month to live?”

Freya throws her arms around my neck. “But we’ve just found you. We face everything together.”

I pull Freya’s arms from around my neck and shuffle back.

Freya is crying silent tears.

I push myself onto my knees. “Let me die so that you may become the queen that you deserve to become. My body, blood, and heart are yours. My soul and spirit may be lost to the Void, but we both know that they belong to you and that is the vow that matters. It is what I will be holding onto. Remember that. Let me guard you from the shadows of the Void; it’s all I beg for. To die for you. The realms may be devoured for all I care. On my blood, I sacrifice myself tonight for my King and Queen. I am yours, eternally. Please, before I do this, tell me that I am.”

I look up at them from underneath my eyelashes, barely daring to breathe.

If these are the last words that they speak to me, they will kill me more surely than the Void Devils will, if they call me monster again or reject this offer.

Freya’s face crumples.

She opens her mouth in protest.

But Daire warns, “Love…”

She glances back at him. “I can’t…I can’t watch…”

“I know.” A fine tremor is running through Daire’s wings. “I bloody know. Just let me think.”

“You’re my Alpha,” Freya finally whispers like each word costs her a year of her life. “You’re mine eternally.”

I let out a breath. My shoulders relax.

It’s all that I needed to hear.

I bow my head, reaching for Freya’s hand.

I smooth over her knuckles with my thumb, before kissing the back of her hand.

“We can’t spend our afterlives together. But that is as it should be.” When I hold her hand tighter, I feel the ghost of a smaller, warm hand, a laugh like stars, and the tickle of fish against my feet. My voice is steadier than I’m expecting it to be. “When you arrive, if Laz is there, tell him that his brother may have grown up to be the bat-winged little monster who was born to bathe in blood that our nurse said I was, but I didn’t die entirely wicked.”

Freya pulls a complicated expression like she’s trying hard not to fall apart.

She simply nods.

“For now, however, you’ll live, safe from the Void Devils, as it should be.” A stillness falls over me like before a battle. I glance between my beautiful nestmates. “You have each other. You even have Relius. You can forget about me, as my own family did. Pretend that I never existed. You have gifted me with the only happiness I have truly known in my life. Now, I gift my blood and life to the world.”

With preternatural speed, my claws extend. I raise them to my wrist that doesn’t have my Ankh bond mark on it because I would never share this pain with my Omega. I sink my claws deeply enough to draw blood with them.

My blood winds from my body in scarlet tendrils into the night sky, as my shadows guide their way toward the Void.

I lock eyes with the people who are everything to me.

I smile.

Then my back arches in agony, as I am lifted into the air through the open frame in the whirlwind of the storm along the path of my blood.

Immediately, I can sense Daire’s magic tugging on me and attempting to hold onto me. This time, however, he’s not strong enough to fight against the primal magic.

To my horror, I feel desperate arms grabbing around my waist.

By the Shadow Devils, no…