Page 45 of Bright Blinding Ruin

I hear the crackle of magic to my left, and though I can’t see what he’s doing, I assume he’s summoned some blinding ball or spear of magic to end this thing.

What did everyone expect? I’m not a trained fighter. I don’t know how to use magic. It’s a miracle I got this far. It doesn’t matter that I’m the daughter of an empress; I saw what happened to Morimento’s son. Sometimes the fight is useless. Sometimes there’s nothing you can do when the odds are stacked against you. Winning is impossible.

What is it Invictis always said? He is the inevitable. I always thought he was wrong, that he was too haughty, but look at us now. I guess he really is the inevitable destruction of everything… even me.

Invictis grunts when he slams whatever it is down, and I close my eyes in anticipation of how it’ll hurt. Or, hell, maybe it won’t because I’m already halfway through death’s door.

But it doesn’t hurt. Not even a little, so I open my eyes and roll my head to the left, where a sizzling blade of light sticks into the dirt a few inches away from my face. My gaze is sluggish in traveling up the blade—something very similar to what he stabbed me with back in Acadia—and rising to his golden, faceless head.

All I see is a halo, and I smile up at my angel of ruin. “You missed.”

As the blade of light fades into nothing, Invictis flexes his metallic hands. Whether that’s because he’s barely holding backor because he’s imagining ripping me into half a dozen pieces, who can say?

The last thing I see before my eyelids become stone is Invictis’s tall frame kneeling beside me.

Chapter Seventeen

If this is what death feels like, it’s warm. A lot warmer than I thought. Then again, I never really put much thought into what death would feel like. Not big into the whole religion thing. If that’s your jam, cool, but for me? I had other things to focus on, like trying to do everything right and put myself on a better path.

It’s funny in a depressing way. I mean, look at where I ended up. All of that trying… all of that business, the constant work-school-sleep schedule on repeat for the last few years; it got me nothing. Only a shortcut to an early grave.

If this is what the afterlife is, then I don’t know what the big deal is. Yes, it’s nice and warm, but it’s also very bright. Like, white everywhere.

Something hard brushes up against my face, and I try to reach up to see what it is, but I can’t move. Are my eyes even open? Honestly, the possibility that I’m not dead doesn’t occur to me until right then, when I fight to open my eyes.

Never before has there been a more difficult struggle than me opening my eyes, but when I do—when I see where I am and what’s happening, I figure I must be dead. No way in hell is this happening.

That hard thing that brushed against my face? Invictis’s metal chest. The warmth I feel in every part of my body? Invictis’s. The blinding white that engulfed me when my eyes were closed? Yep, you guessed it: Invictis’s.

All I can see, all I can feel; it’s all Invictis. My face leans against his chest, my body weighing what must be nothing in his arms. We travel so fast light blurs around us, and all I can see is his golden frame and the six wings spread behind him. We’re in the sky, I think.

This can’t be right.

I try to say something, try to move, but my mouth is dry and my muscles refuse to work. If I’m dead, then this has to be some kind of weird dream. And if I’m not dead, then… then I don’t know what this is.

If I’m not dead, it means he didn’t kill me, but why? Why not? Isn’t that what he wants? No more empresses. No one to stand in his way of total annihilation. Why wouldn’t he just kill me and get it over with? I don’t understand and I’m too weak to ask.

Mmm. Maybe he’s taking me to Laconia so everyone can watch as he kills me. I wouldn’t put something like that past him with everything he’s done. Weapon made to destroy entire kingdoms or not, he’s done some real shitty things.

Like driving my mom mad and killing her.

I don’t know how long it takes me to speak, but it must be a while. When I do speak, I don’t sound like myself. My voice is dry and cracked, hoarse like nothing in my body wants to work properly.

And what do I say? Just one word: “Rune.”

Invictis hears me. I know he does, because he bends his head down to me, like he’s looking at me even though he doesn’t have a face. He does not say a single word in response, but we must be close to our destination. The world around us is no longer a blur, and I’m pretty sure I feel him land on the ground. His six wings remain floating behind him, not the kind of wings birds have, that can be tucked tightly against their bodies. These wings are always there, always stretched out, a display of what he is.

I don’t know where we are or why we’re here. I can’t take my eyes off him.

The next thing I know, I’m being set on the ground, his golden figure hunched over, on his knees, to place me there. His movements are slow and deliberate, the opposite of rough. A weapon of destruction should not know how to be gentle.

Even after I’m on the ground, Invictis still leans over me, blocking out anything else I might see. He is all I can see, and even though he no longer touches me, his warmth is all I can feel. He is blinding and beautiful; I can see why it’s so easy for him to get inside everyone’s heads.

I try to move, but all I can move is the hand that’s covered in blood from trying to staunch the wound in my gut. I lift that hand toward his face as I say again, “Rune.”

He does not let me. He grabs my hand with his, his large metallic hand able to stop mine easily. “Rune,” his deep, monstrous voice whispers, “does not exist.”

“He does.”

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