Page 83 of The Unseelie War
Valroy released Alex and leaped backward, but Abigail was ready for him. Vines thick as pythons burst from the earth, wrapping around his legs and dragging him down. The flowers followed, their petals opening to reveal hungry mouths that sought to devour him entirely.
For a moment, Ava thought they might actually succeed. Valroydisappeared beneath a writhing mass of vegetation, his struggles growing weaker as the plants drained his strength.
Then the darkness exploded outward.
The flowers withered and died in seconds, their red petals turning to ash that drifted away on the wind. The vines crumbled to dust. Abigail herself was thrown backward, her connection to the growing things severed so violently that she cried out in anguish.
Valroy rose from the destruction like a phoenix from ashes, his form wreathed in shadows that seemed to drink in the light around him. He was battered, bleeding, barely standing—but he was still the most terrifying thing Ava had ever seen.
“Enough.”His voice carried the weight of finality.
Alex tried to crawl away, but the darkness reached her first. Not killing, not destroying—simplyholding,wrapping around her like chains of living void. Serrik struggled to rise, but more shadows pinned him to the ground, pressing down with inexorable force.
Abigail knelt where she had fallen, her strength spent, her red hair spread around her like spilled blood. She looked up at her husband without fear, only grief.
Valroy approached her slowly, each step deliberate and careful. When he stood at her feet, he lifted his hands, darkness gathering around them. “I shall keep your memory with me until I return into the void that made me, my one and only Queen.”
This was it.
If he killed Abigail…
The rest of them were done.
Darkness curled around his fingers.
Ava held her breath.
Valroy shut his eyes.
And with a deep, ragged sigh, he collapsed to his knees.
“What lies I tell myself…” He hung his head. The shadows that held Alex and Serrik restrained faded into mist and were gone.
His dark blue hair fell along his features. “I cannot,” he whispered. “I cannot kill you, Abigail…I could not then, and I certainly cannot now. I was created to destroy everything, to reduce existence to the void where it belongs, but I can’t…” Tears streamed down his face, cutting tracks through the dirt and blood. “What have you made of me?”
Abigail reached up and touched his cheek, her thumb brushing away his tears. “I am sorry.”
“What am I?” The question came out as a broken sob. “What is the point of my existence if I cannot fulfill the purpose for which I was made? I cannot bring myself to unmake the one thing that matters most to me. I am a failure. Ajoke.”
“You are more than what you were made to be,” Abigail said softly.
Valroy pulled away from her touch, his expression twisting with anguish. “Destroy me,” he begged. “Please, Abigail. If you ever loved me, end this. I cannot live with this contradiction.Asthis contradiction. I cannot exist knowing I am too weak to be what I was born to be.”
“No.” The word was gentle but final. Spring itself, wiping away the last traces of the winter frost.
“I shall do it.” Serrik was in his human form, bloodied and injured but standing.
“No,” Abigail repeated, and this time there was steel returned to her voice. “His life belongs to me. It always has, even before we met.” She looked back at her husband, her expression tender. “Just as mine belongs to him, for as long as it may last. For one of us is truly infinite. And the other is not.”
Understanding dawned in Valroy's eyes. He chuckled softly, sadly. “You knew this would come to pass. You clever little witch of mine…”
“I had an inkling.” A coy smirk twisted the edge of Abigail’s lips. She turned to Ava, her green eyes burning with purpose. “Complete the spell, Weaver. Send us to the Web.”
“Wait.Us?”Ava blinked. “What do you mean,us?”
“Precisely as I said.” Abigail reached down and took Valroy’s handin hers. “He will remain by my side in the Web as my prisoner and companion until I cease to be myself. At which point, the restraints he finds upon himself now that prevent him from completing his goal will no longer be in place.”
Valroy let out a sound that was half laugh, half snort. “Peace? You think there will be peace in that prison? You think I can find anything but torment, watching you fade away piece by piece?”
