AllFreeNovel
Share Us
PART I
PART 1 - VOID
CHAPTER 1
WYNVAIL
Three days ago
As far as final words went, "I'm so obsessed with you," were pretty memorable. I'd given them serious thought, my death creeping up on me slowly, visible and painfully clear. It was far from a sudden death; mine happened slowly and obviously enough to torture me the whole way. I knew I would die, but I was a stupid fool and did it anyway. All because my mate would have been devastated if she lost Wane.
I'd do it all over again because I truly was obsessed with Halwen Vakhara, but it would have been nice to avoid the whole being unmade and ripped apart until not even dust remained part. Fuck Cronus. My whole life, I knew I'd only existed because he'd created me, because he was hellbent on freeing himself from his prison, making all his enemies pay, and reinstalling himself as king of fucking everything.
I shouldn't have existed, but he needed a pawn, and I was given to Cassander Locke in exchange for Wane. Pieces of shit, both of them.1
So now I was dead, floating through an endless nothing because apparently made creatures didn't deserve an afterlife. No eternal peace, no realm of pure and ceaseless suffering either. I wasn't sure whether to be relieved or disappointed. Mostly, I was confused that I could still think. I'd been unmade, every atom of my body ripped apart and snuffed out.
So why the fuck was I still thinking?
Why did thoughts of Halwen holding me as I died make my chest ache viciously and my hand itch with the need to punch a hole through a wall? Why did I even have a hand? What the fuck?
"Come on," a calm feminine voice murmured. "You're almost there."
Fuck off, I tried to say, the thought of someone other than Halwen speaking to me making me tremble with rage. I might have been dead, but I still belonged entirely to that fearsome, sharp-tongued, violent woman. I was hers. Not whoever the fuck was speaking to me in this black, empty afterlife.
Maybe I'd been dealt eternal suffering after all. Maybe I'd have to endure an endless parade of women who weren't my mate, rubbing salt in the wound of never seeing Halwen again. It sounded like hell.
"He's clinging to death," a deep male voice sighed, and I tried to scowl, tried to grasp my power and split these motherfuckers in two for even daring to come near me.
I didn't want to admit that I was scared. Fuck fear. Just fuck fear, and Cronus, and any woman who dared to speak to me who wasn't my beloved.
"What's his name?" the woman asked, her voice subdued and low. There was power in that voice, and it called to me against my will. It pulled me out of the darkness before I could even process it happening. Shit.
"Wynvail," another woman said, equally unfamiliar. Softer, raspier.
"Wynvail," the powerful woman murmured, her voice wrapping around me like a coiled whip, like a net. Trapping me in her grasp. It made no sense. I was dead. Unmade.
"You need to come back. Your soul is struggling; it wants to stay in the darkness. But if you want to come out of the dark, all you have to do is follow my voice."
My head spun. I shouldn't have even had a head. And I swore the darkness lightened from true void to filmy grey. Fuck, what was she doing? What did these people want with me?
"You're being too vague and poetic, my love," the deep male voice murmured, so much affection in his voice that it made my chest ache fiercer.
I died in Halwen's arms, and as much as that made me feel warm and wanted for once in my miserable existence, I wanted to go back there.
Don't you dare leave. Don't you fucking dare.
Cronus ripped me away from her. Was she okay? Was she heartbroken? The selfish part of me—the majority—wanted her to grieve me. Miss me.
I wanted to matter to the woman who consumed my every waking and dying thought. She was burned into my heart, embedded in every cell of my body, written into the very fabric of my soul. Not that I should have had a soul.
"Listen closely," the man said, his voice closer, louder. It echoed in a way that made me tremble inside the dark space my soul cowered within. "You're dead."
No shit.
"Your soul is clinging to death because that's the natural way of things, but you have a choice here. You can stay dead if you choose; just let go and float into the darkness. But if you want another shot, if you want to see your loved ones again, if you want revenge, claw your way back to the world of the living. Follow my voice, follow my wife's voice. We'll guide you back."
What. The. Fuck?
