Page 95 of A Reign of Malice
Maybe both.
Either way, I let my forehead drop to hers, blood and sweat mingling, the fire of war still crackling outside the castle walls.
And I hold on because we’re not just survivors.
We’re the beginning of something new.
Though, our job here isn’t done.
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
SLOANE
Standing back and letting Julian face Aeson alone was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. Every instinct screamed at me to intervene, to protect him, to fight beside him. But this wasn’t just a battle. It was a reckoning. A full-circle moment only my mate could claim.
Aeson had imprisoned him, broken him, and stolen two centuries from him. Ending his brother wasn’t just justice. It was survival and reclamation.
All I could do was give Julian the space to take it back. Getting to stab that bastard myself was satisfying enough for me.
Even now that it’s all over, I still feel the echo of Julian’s final strike in my head. I still hear the crack of bone, the wet choke of that final breath, and the silence that followed. Heavy with everything we’ve lost and everything we now hope to build.
I get Julian up and away from Aeson’s tainted corpse, helping him down the corridor one agonizing step at a time. He’s bloody and barely upright, and I’m ready to take him tothe first empty chamber I can find to let him rest for a few hours before we face whatever comes next.
But Julian has other plans.
“Do you have anything in this castle that’s important to you?” he asks, voice hoarse but laced with purpose as we make it to the landing.
“Nothing that’s not replaceable,” I answer, realizing I’d yet to bring anything of true value here from Alcaris.
He stops at the end of the corridor, blood dripping from his fingertips, and turns toward me. “Good.”
My brows lift. “Julian, what are you going to do?”
“I’m going to burn this place to the fucking ground,” he growls, jaw tight. “With Aeson still inside. He doesn’t get a funeral, no proper burial ceremony. Not even as Alpha King.”
I should feel something, give some sort of pause, but I don’t.
He’s right. Aeson doesn’t deserve firelight and reverence. He deserves to rot in the belly of his broken kingdom.
“As he shouldn’t.” Though, I do hold some reservations because Julian needs to know. “But we’ll have nowhere else to go. My kingdom…it’s not sustainable. That’s the only reason I was here.”
He halts, his hands rising to cup my face gently as if I were made of moonlight.
“Sloane,” he says, voice thick with emotion. “We don’t need this castle. We don’t need a throne made of stone and lies. We’ll build a new one. In the forest, in the dirt, in the stars—I don’t care where, as long as I have you.”
His eyes flick around the hallway, the blackened walls humming with the remnants of twisted magic and everything Aeson corrupted.
“This place is evil,” he mutters. “And I won’t let it have you or us. You deserve better.”
I press my forehead to his, tears stinging the edges of my vision. “Wedeserve better.”
He kisses me passionately, a promise in the shape of lips, then he whispers, “So let’s burn it all down.”
A strange thrill coils low in my stomach, anticipation stirring beneath the bone-deep exhaustion. I loop my arm around his waist and help him toward the front doors. The ruin behind us might have once been called a home, but it never felt like one. Not to either of us.
Clara and Noen meet us in the entryway, both bloodied but still standing. Though, their faces say enough. This war wasn’t without its cost.
“What can we do?” Noen asks, his tone clipped, already bracing for orders.
