Page 42 of Bright Blinding Ruin

“My lady, you cannot stay here alone. How will you—”

“I will survive, as I have so far. I can only pray my sisters fared as well against the onslaught.” Krotas bares her teeth in what must be pain. “Listen to me. You must go to Acadia and then Pylos. You must get the aethers. Collect them and bring them to Laconia. There is a door in the great library beneath the conclave chambers.”

Fred cannot hide his concern for his empress. His brows are furrowed, and he looks like he wants to argue with her, to tell her that he will remain at her side for eternity—but her resolve is still strong, and he must sense any argument would be a wasted effort, so he asks, “Then what? Then we can destroy this demon for good?”

Krotas must’ve finally told the truth—that the woes began with Invictis and not randomly. It is a secret that faded as theyears went on, something no one knew until I brought Fred back to Laconia… and unleashed Invictis again.

“Then,” Krotas pauses as she lifts a hand to her stomach, “everything will change.”

And that’s when I realize it.

Krotas is pregnant.

She must’ve been pregnant this whole time. It’s why she’s wearing the robes and not full armor. This whole time she’s been fighting against Invictis, standing with Gladus and Morimento, while ready to fucking pop.

Mad respect. I can’t even imagine what it must be like, how much harder it made everything.

“Go,” Krotas whispers to Fred. “Go now. I cannot fight it forever. I can feel it trying to worm its way into my head, and once it does… no amount of loyalty or friendship will stop me from doing its bidding. You must go! Do not tell a soul of what we discussed here—only my sisters, do you understand?”

Fred nods, and then, even though it’s clear he doesn’t want to, he leaves.

Maybe because this is Krotas’s memory, but I know that once he leaves, she’ll be alone. Fred was one of the last. She will be alone, but that’s what she wants. She doesn’t trust herself to be with anyone else, not with Invictis whispering into her head, trying to get inside her when she’s asleep.

Invictis is a disease, and she does not know how much longer her body can fight against it.

Soon enough the castle is empty, save for her and the child in her belly. She knows what she has to do. She knows, even though she doesn’t want to admit it to herself. That’s why, a week later, when she gives birth, she uses her magic to make it go faster. Smoother. She cuts the cord herself, cleans the babe herself. She swaddles it, does everything she can with a sullen smile on her face.

Krotas can’t take joy in the new life she brought into this world because she knows how much more death will follow. She holds the baby for a few moments, lets herself smooth out the baby’s tiny tuft of hair, even while the shard of Invictis whispers to her from across the room.

Yes, it’s there. The shard sits on an empty bookshelf in what should’ve become her child’s playroom. She can’t bear to have it out of her sight—that’s what she tells herself, anyway. The truth is much more sinister.

She’s getting weaker, her will fading.

But as she gazes down at her child, she’s given a renewed sense of purpose, and with it comes a hardening of her resolve.

“My beautiful baby,” Krotas whispers, her back leaning against the wall. She gave birth on the floor, letting her body do all the work, with magic its aid. “You will be strong and beautiful. I wish… I wish I could be there to see it. Your father will take good care of you. I love you so much, my Aurelia.” A single tear rolls down her face.

But I’m stuck on the name and the way she said it. Aurelia, pronounced ah-rey-lee-ah.

Holy fuck. No. No, no, no. No, this isn’t—she’s not—this is fucking insane. There’s no goddamned way. There’s no way in hell that baby isme.

Krotas struggles to stand, and as she does, a portal opens in front of her. I can see the inside of a house or an apartment, one in my world. I see nothing but a couch and a coffee table… a couch and a coffee table I remember being in my living room growing up. It must be where my dad lives.

Fuck me.

“I can’t wait for him to come home,” she tells the baby… she tells me as she shuffles toward the portal. Its edges shimmer in and out of existence, like it’s fighting itself to remain. “I must leave you and sever the ties between our worlds. You will have agood life, Aurelia. How I wish I could be there with you, by your side, while you discover who you are.”

That’s the last thing she says to me before she bends to kiss me on my forehead and leaves me for my dad to find. Once she’s crossed the threshold and is back in Laconia, a second tear escapes the corners of her eyes as she looks at me through the portal.

Krotas turns away and pulls at the threads of magic keeping the portal open. I feel what she feels, and inside my chest, my heart breaks. As she severs the connection, makes it so that she denies her future self a visit to earth to bring me back, I know she’s only doing what she thinks is best.

This is her memory. Not only do I feel what she feels, but I know what she knows. Out of her sisters, she is the only one that can control portals, the only one who can summon them at will. She does not worry that her sisters will find a way to her daughter, to me; she never told them about my father or who he was, where he was from. In her mind, no one will ever be able to cross worlds again.

But that’s before. Before she fully severs the connection and glances at the shelf where the soul gem should be. Before she sees it’s gone.

Krotas races to the bookshelf and searches for it, desperately hoping it simply fell and rolled away, but it’s not there. It’s not anywhere she looks. She has a thought, then: somehow, the shard of the demon followed her daughter through the portal. But why would it do that?

And the answer comes to her as she starts to lose herself: because there it is safe. In that world, it has no one to destroy it. It can freely manipulate from inside its soul gem. There it can get revenge on Krotas and make her daughter and her lover insane.

---