Page 148 of The Star's Sword

I felt frozen with fear. Fear I hadn’t felt in coming here. Fear I hadn’t known I could feel.

Fear of waking up in a world without Samael.

Where everyone was free, but he was nowhere to be found.

Would I ever look in his gold eyes again? Feel his incubus against me?

My hands fisted. Life had been so unfair already.

I’d told Samael I would do this, but now that I was here, and there was no guarantee, I knew he was right to never tell me.

Because despite knowing what was at stake in the world, despite tears running down my cheeks still from the horror and cruelty I’d experienced from the ninth-realmer’s memory, I didn’t want to do this.

I didn’t feel like I could.

And then Sam came back to me, filling my heart up with memories of our time together.

Him finding and protecting and loving me. Telling me I was the Morningstar.

My night sword had been born from my chest out of love for him.

Love had brought me here. A promise made to him, to end his father at all costs.

I loved him so much it was hard to breathe, so much I couldn’t think straight, love welled in me so hard.

And there was one thing Samael had taught me, through all his time of loving me.

Which was that loving someone means understanding what they love and honoring what they want, even if it hurts you.

He’d never held back once, showing me a true, deep love for his world and his people that I couldn’t betray now.

This was what he wanted, and my selfishness, and love for him, wouldn’t get in the way.

Tears streaming down my face, I steeled myself against the pain and fear of losing the man who was my life, and focused something hot that was building deep inside me, like it had just been waiting for me to make up my mind.

“I love you, Samael,” I said, not knowing if he would hear it, as energy continued to build, growing around me.

As my light grew, I saw through the light illusions of the ninth realm celestials. As my energy continued to grow, they backed up, revealed as sad little shadows of void and darkness.

Past all of their fancy magic, they were just pools of darkness and void masquerading as light.

Made of that which was in Dellen, which made him a rogue. Everywhere they went, they took goodness and replaced it with evil. Corrupting everything and then hiding in the sky.

It couldn’t happen anymore, I knew, even as my spirit clung to Samael, imagining us together in my mind. Imagining he was holding me, and that everything was okay.

The energy inside me continued to build, feeling endless, and I raised my sword to the sky, channeling all the force into it I could.

“For you, Samael,” I gasped, as light moved to the tip of my sword and then split in all directions, channeling my energy out to all sides as I still held back, waiting. “I’m keeping my promise.”

Then, when Samael still didn’t answer, I released everything I was holding. All the power I had.

As everything went so bright with light it was like the sun everywhere, I felt even myself fading to nothing.

The whole world exploded, and I saw the dark shadows blasting away in the light overtaking them, burning them away from the edges.

Then everything went black.

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