Page 64 of Shadow Fall: Part Two

An arrow went through my heart.

“What is this?” I hissed, pressing my back to the bookshelf, blinking rapidly to dispel the image. It refused to fade, right in front of me in sharp relief and vivid colour.

“The future,” Cronus replied smugly, barely visible through the nightmare vision. “When I kill you now, it’ll take your mates years to move on, but they will move on. And look how happy they are. Not fearing for their lives, not running from anything. They’re stable, and content. Free.”

I shook my head hard, trying to scatter the scene of my mates with another woman—not just one of them but all of them, the way they were all with me. Pain screwed through my ribs into my heart. They were happier than I’d seen them in years. Em’s eyes crinkled with smile lines; Harvey looked at the unknown redhead with the same softness he usually watched me with; Wane’s arms wrapped around her, his chin resting on her head and an expression of peace on his face that I’d never seen; Wyn leaned closer to say something that made her laugh, and his face lit up at the sound of it; and Kai, my obsessive Kai, was handing her a hammered steel blade wrapped in red fabric, the fuller etched with a promise that meant nothing to me and everything to her—into the darkness.

My bottom lip wobbled. I sucked in a ragged breath and pressed my mouth into a line, raising both my daggers in front of me, unable to stop seeing the knife Kai presented to the other woman, like I’d meant nothing to him.

“You’re just fucking with my head,” I rasped, staring past the vision at where Cronus had paused to watch his damage spread through my soul. I couldn’t hide how much it broke my heart. He loved it.

“I am,” he agreed, walking through the vision and scattering the scene in a swirl of blue magic. “But it’s not a lie; it’s only the future. I am time itself. I can see it.”

“Fuck you,” I spat because I had no other words. No snark, no fighting taunts. Only pain and hatred and a small, screaming plea. Please don’t let me die. I can’t bear it. I wasn’t one of those people who wanted their loved ones to move on and be happy after they passed; I was selfish and harsh and unkind, and they were mine. They were the loves of my life, the only men I’d ever love, in life and death, and I—I thought it was mutual.

Cronus laughed under his breath, sensing his advantage. No matter how much magic I threw at him, the emotional damage he countered with was worse. It worked every time, and I hated it. Hated him.

“If you don’t believe the truth in front of you,” he said, bringing his scythe around, magic already electric blue on its edge. “Maybe you’ll believe this. After all, you know it’s already come to pass, and the past can be as effective a knife as the future.”

“Fuck you,” I repeated. It was all I had.

I dodged sideways before he could hook me on his scythe, scraping the curved edge with my volcanic blade. Sparks of golden magic leapt off my dagger, eager for the fight, for blood, but my chest screamed with pain and my heart was crushed. I needed to find my strength again, needed to be that otherworldly being I’d felt like in the hallway, alight with gold.

The gold hadn’t faded from my knives or my body, but I was hollow inside, carved open to fit a wealth of pain.

My skin tingled with warning and the magic’s intuition screamed at me. Listening to its warnings, I leapt into the aisle between two rows of bookshelves, and my breath went shallow at how close Cronus’s scythe had been. It left the sting of a scratch on the back of my neck and sheared off the ends of my hair.

Breathing fast, I spun and threw up my daggers, crossing them to keep the scythe away from me. But Cronus had been baiting me; his grin told me that in the moment before a vision flickered to life between us. My aching heart squeezed further. Wyn.

I flinched, stumbling away when I realised who he was walking towards, who waited for him with a smile on her too-beautiful face. But Cronus twisted his scythe, locking my daggers in place, and unless I wanted to give them up, I couldn’t escape more than that one step. Couldn’t risk closing my eyes. Couldn’t block out the sight of Aphrodite reaching for my mate, her eyes glimmering with a strange sense of victory, like she knew I was watching now even though she was long dead, and this was a glimpse into the past.

Instead of trying to pull my blades free, I shoved them closer to Cronus, piercing his stubbled chin with the tip of one, the scent of his blood tainting the air. I stared into his hate-filled eyes, so I didn’t have to see Wynvail kiss Aphrodite.

“You’ll never win,” Cronus said with alarming softness. “Give in now. Let me take the pain away.”

I jerked back. Syphilis-riddled cock sucker. So that was his ploy? Break me so I’d give in? He underestimated how fucking stubborn I was.

I bared my teeth, sinking into the pit of pure power inside me, and pulled up so much that it blasted us apart. I skidded down the row of bookshelves, the polished wood blackening beneath my boots, and Cronus was thrown into the wall so hard that the mezzanine above screeched and warped.

That golden power followed the flow of rage through my veins, shoring up my weak spots with limitless magic.

The vision of Wyn and Aphrodite had faded, disappearing back into the void of the past where it belonged. He was mine. He loved me. What he’d done with Aphrodite in the past didn’t matter, didn’t change us. No matter how much it hurt me to see it.

Look, look… my gilded magic urged, and I shuddered with the force of it. The magic was eager and assertive, tearing through my body, my blood, my soul. See, see…

My eyes snapped to the scythe that had been knocked from Cronus’s grip when he crashed into the wall. He stumbled to his feet now, teeth gritted, nostrils flaring. I didn’t jolt forward, didn’t so much as shift a dagger. I crooked my little finger, the only movement I dared make. If I tipped him off, I wouldn’t get a second chance. The magic told me that much.

Magic blew from me like storm winds, carrying magic of the purest, aureate light, like polished gold. It made a show of attacking Cronus, and my heart skipped with hope when electric blue power flickered along his fingertips. It was working. He was distracted. He plunged that hand into my storm of gold magic, forcing me back a staggering step, and pain spiked through my pit of power like red warning lights, but a secret, smaller ray of magic found his scythe and burned it from existence.

Bye bye, bitch.

I sagged against a bookcase, panting through the flashes of pain as my soul and magic both suffered. But a smile tugged at my cheeks when Cronus realised the gambit I’d played, and he screamed like a toddler throwing a tantrum.

“You will die screaming,” he vowed, something manic and desperate filling his stare, contorting his face as he stalked towards me, the blue magic growing at his fingertips, its sparks cast further.

“Look at you finally strong enough to use magic.” I slow-clapped, and forced a laugh as I pushed off the bookcase, spines digging ironically into my spine. “About time.”

“I don’t need magic to crush you like a bug,” he seethed. A muscle twitches in his eye.

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