Page 79 of The Maleficent Faerie
I wish I could keep him forever. But I can’t let him betray himself like this. I can’t let people keep dying in this war, while he and I fuck each other in the tower chambers of Ru Gallamet.
This needs to end, and there’s only one way to force his hand.
I slip from the room and climb the tower steps as silently and swiftly as I can, counting in my head. I hit sixty-five as I reach the tiny room at the top, where there’s a small table, a chest, and a tall cabinet—probably containing ritual supplies.
I count seventy as I push open the door to the roof, eighty-five as I climb the metal stairway that twists halfway around the Spindle. Ninety as I step onto the grate, the ledge where Iyyo stood. Ninety-five as I reach up, my fingertip hovering over the sharp point of the Spindle.
“Aura!” Malec’s cry rings out from the doorway of the tower. He’s naked, his eyes wild and his expression frantic.
“You didn’t count to a hundred,” I sob out.
“I know you.” His voice is strident with anguish. “I knew what you’d do. But it took me a few seconds too long to guess it. Aura, please wait—”
I press the flesh of my finger against the Spindle’s tip until it punctures my skin. Pain surges from that tiny prick—and I recall what Malec said, how he usually gives his blood donors a potion so the process won’t hurt.
“Fuck, Aura!” Despair cracks his tone. “There are preparations to be done—”
“Then you’d best do them quickly. And chain me in place, so the Void can’t drag me away.”
“Fuck!” It’s nearly a sob, cracked from his chest. He disappears into the tower, returning a moment later with the small chest. He flings it open, pulling out the supplies he used earlier. I don’t watch him prepare; I stand with my chest against the Spindle, my forehead touching its polished surface.
My finger hurts, my whole arm hurts—but something else is happening inside me, too—a droning sound, reverberating through my very bones, a dragging weight along my limbs. My eyelids droop, suddenly heavy.
A chain coils around me, then another, then more, lashing me tightly to the Spindle.
Malec’s cool fingers brush my cheek. “Little viper. You struck before I was ready. I would have spared you, after all.”
“And condemned so many others,” I whisper. “Selfish.”
“Iamselfish.” His lips tremble as he kisses the corner of my jaw, then my temple. “But you are not. You never have been. That is a truth about you that hasn’t changed, no matter what others did to you—you beautiful soul.”
The wind soars around us, a gale that catches my hair and his, blending them into black and gold, the colors of Daenalla. Beyond the curve of the Spindle, I can see the coiling serpent of the Void. It’s coming to swallow me. But I’m sinking, sagging—I won’t be conscious when it arrives.
“Bind me tighter,” I gasp, struggling to keep my eyes open. “Don’t let me fall. Don’t let it eat me.”
“I won’t.” A sob in his voice, while the chains tighten, pinning my body in place, binding my wrist and hand as well, so my finger won’t slip from the Spindle. “I promise I’ll do this, darling, and you’ll wake to a safer world.”
“You’d better save everyone,” I murmur, my lashes drifting shut. “And you’d better be alive when I wake up, or I swear… I’ll fucking… kill you…”
Malec’s lips crush against my cheek, and then the gust of his wings joins the rushing wind. I force my eyes open a crack and turn my heavy head. He’s alighting by the Wheel, his lips moving in a chant. He gathers handfuls of herbs and glittering black dust from his supply chest, flinging them over the spokes of the machine.
I can’t watch anymore—my head is a stone, clunking against the Spindle. Through the fringe of my lashes I see the Void coming for me—the titanic Abyss, an entity beyond the strength of humans, Fae, or gods.
And my lover figured out how to tame it.
A faint smile twitches on my lips. “Come on then, you maleficent fiend,” I whisper. “Come and taste me.”
Then my eyes close, and I’m lost to the roaring wind.
30
I am a god.
Darkness blooms from me in infinite surges, crashing in wave after wave upon the world. My veins are starlight, my blood is darkness, and my eyes are twin suns, everlasting.
Such power has never flowed through any mortal being, human or Fae.
All I want is to exist in the rush of this endless ecstasy forever.
