“Kneel!” he booms.
But he cannot control me. Not anymore.
Because I have given myself to her completely.
To the light that burns brighter than death.
To the only soul I will ever kneel before again.
She is my queen, and I will love her until the stars burn out.
I open my mouth, close my eyes, and inhale.
At first, it’s only smoke, thin tendrils curling down my throat. But then it grows heavier, darker, thicker, until it’s pouring into me in torrents. I drag Gygarth into myself one wisp at a time, swallowing his essence, his power. I feel him inside me.
The god. The void. The death that was never meant to be contained.
I have never seen fear in his single eye. Only hate. Only malice. But today… he is afraid.
“Enough, Daedalus!” he booms, his voice as frayed as his form. “Stop this now and we can rule together! I will give you everything you have ever desired and wonders you have not even dared to dream!”
I look at him, a strange calm settling over me. “You have nothing I want.”
He roars as his very essence floods my veins, burns through my skull, claws at my insides. His poison spreads, his rot devouring what’s left of me. I glance at my hands and watch my veins turn black, branching beneath my skin like roots in dead soil. The corruption creeps higher, painting me in shadow.
Tears spill from my eyes, hot and stinging and when I touch them, they come away thick and dark as demon blood.
My wings falter. The shadow in them flickers, thinning, fraying at the edges. My body is breaking under the weight of the god I’m consuming, but I don’t stop. I cannot stop.
I draw the last of him in. Every drop of unholy power until that single eye closes and Gygarth is gone.
Vanished.
Devoured.
The voice in my head finally silenced.
Meat for the beast.
My mouth closes with a snap that echoes through the ruin.
I feel so cold.
My wings collapse, my body plummets. I fall through the stillness, through the ash and the smoke, through the fading echoes of a god’s death.
When I hit the temple floor, the sound cracks the air.
Pain surges, then nothing and just before darkness claims me, I swear I hear her. Estra.
Her laughter, soft and bright.
Then darkness.
Chapter 48
Amara
“Daed!”
