Page 52 of Bright Blinding Ruin

I take a step forward, and he mimics the action. Step after step we both take until there’s only two feet of space between us. An arm’s reach, barely. I have to crane my head back to look up at him, and he has to bend his neck down to look at me.

“This,” Invictis whispers, “is not a dream. This is… different. What is this?”

“Sounds to me you’re confused. That’s funny. I never knew a weapon of mass destruction could be so confused.”

“You mock me,” he growls out.

“I state the obvious,” I correct him. “I learned so much.” I take a tiny step toward him, and this time he doesn’t match the step. “So much that even you don’t know.” I can practically feel his hands twitching at his sides; he’s itching to grab me, barely holding himself back. “It was always going to be you and me, wasn’t it?”

A muscle in his jaw tenses. He does not say a word.

“All my life I never really felt right. I was on my own. I thought I felt that way because I lost the only person who ever gave a shit about me, but looking back, I was wrong. Even when my dad was alive, I was missing something. I—” I pause after the words come rushing out of me in a jumbled mess. “—I wasn’t whole.”

I shake my head softly as I whisper, “I thought it was my mommy issues, but it turns out it’s not that. Well, not just that. It was always you.” It feels strange to me, admitting this to Invictis when, by all accounts, I should want to tear him apart.

But past empresses tried that already. My approach has to be a little different.

A hard breath flushes out of his lungs before he whispers, “Me?”

“This whole time you knew Krotas was my mom. You knew, and you killed her, just like you killed everyone else.”

“It is my purpose. I am the end. It was always so.”

“You’re right. Even before those… agents from another kingdom came and unleashed you, your purpose was always death.” I carefully lift a hand to his face, and the moment my fingertips touch his jaw, a rush of energy, magic and power surge through me.

His eyes close, and his rigid posture bends just a little. Enough for me to notice.

“But you’re not a machine,” I tell him. “Your purpose can change.”

This time, when he exhales, it’s a haggard breath I feel in my core. “I am bound to destroy every living creature in Laconia. I am the end and the beginning. The inevitable downfall of all mortal kind.”

The first high empress bound him when she separated him, casted a spell on him so he would be forced to do bidding that was not his own. She hoped it wouldn’t be more mass death. It was the only thing she could think of at the time—just as tying her possessed son to the throne in Acadia was all Morimento could do. If Invictis could be bound…

He could be unbound—or bound to another purpose.

“You cannot stop me,” Invictis whispers as he opens his eyes. Their blueness has been replaced by a shimmery gold, a sign of his true nature, his true self. The color in those eyes seems to move and glow, both a warning and a welcoming.

My hand falls away from his face, resting on his chest as I grin up at him. “You wanna bet?”

“Bet?”

“Yeah, you know, make a bet. You think you’ll win, so you put something down that you’ll give me if I win.”

“And if I win?” Invictis’s chest growls as he catches himself: “When I win?”

“I guess I’ll be dead. Isn’t that victory enough for you, or do you want something more? Something else?” When he doesn’t say anything, I go on, “There’s a whole world out there, and, spoiler alert, it’s not just death. There’s so much more to being alive than dying.”

He doesn’t say anything to that, but he still stares down at me like there’s more he wants to say.

“Well? What are you going to give me if I win?” I pause and let my grin grow. “Sorry, when I win? Let’s not forget you had multiple opportunities to finish this before. You wanted me at my best, so that’s what you’re going to get. I hope you’re ready for it, Invictis.”

“You,” he whispers. “You are… I will not be so easily swayed. These mind games of yours prove nothing. You are nothing.”

I inch closer to him as my fingers tap on his chest. “Now, we both know that’s not true, but you can keep telling yourself that, if it helps you sleep at night.”

“I don’t sleep.” I swear I feel the tips of his fingers brushing on my waist, but it could be in my imagination. I’m not going to glance down and check.

“Oh, that’s sad. You’re missing out. There’s nothing better than a good night’s sleep—well, there might be one or two things, but it’s definitely up there.”

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