“Pathetic Fae,” I growl, my voice guttural. “Your House should have stayed lost. At least then, you would have lived on. But for your vanity... for your disrespect... I will end your line. The name Taramethos will be forgotten by time, and you, Lady Marlayna, will be remembered by no one.”
I lean in close, my breath hot against her ear, my voice dripping with venom. “His teeth will be the last thing you see before they devour you.”
“Rook,” Orios calls from behind me. “What should I do with them?”
“Kill them. Kill them all,” I command, my voice morphing into a deep, otherworldly resonance. A chorus of a thousand voices that is no longer entirely mine.
Orios hesitates. “Like this? But they cannot fight back.”
“Then it will be easy,” I snap, my eyes dark with fury.
I close my hand around Marlayna’s throat, smoke weaving through my fingers, as Death Singer calls to me. It has been too long since I’ve felt its weight, since I’ve heard the dark hum of its power vibrating through my veins. But this time, the darkness that fills the room is not just the shadows I summon.
My eyes roll over black as I feel the steel solidify in my hand, the familiar coldness of the blade taking shape, the power thrumming through my fingertips.
House Taramethos stands frozen, their helpless eyes pleading, but their fate is already sealed.
Chapter 15
Daed
I’ve spent too long fighting it. Too long holding back the darkness that rages inside me. My body is a shell, worn and battered, every muscle aching with exhaustion, every bone heavy with the weight of restraint. My mind is unraveling, hanging by a thread so thin, I can barely keep my grip. But I’ve done it for her.
For Amara.
Everything is for Amara.
I’ve lived in the shadows of this torment because I promised I would. Because I swore I would hold onto what little control I have left, even if it means suffocating the part of me that craves the release, the freedom. I’ve searched for her in every corner of this broken world, but she is always just out of reach, slipping through my fingers like sand. Maybe... maybe she doesn’t want to be found. Maybe she has moved on, leaving me to wallow in the darkness of my own making.
And it’s maddening.
The ache in my chest grows, the emptiness gnawing at my insides. I can feel the darkness creeping in, filling the cracks in my fractured mind. It calls to me, tempting me with the release I crave. And for just a moment, I wonder, what if I had given in that day when I had the chance to end her life in the forest?
Would it have been better? Would I be free of this endless longing?
The thought haunts me, but before I can linger on it, the anger boils over, sharp and bitter, and I curse her in my mind.
This love… this twisted, suffocating love.
It torments me more than anything else in this world, dragging me deeper into madness with every passing day. If only I had never known her, never felt her warmth, never let myself believe that something beautiful could exist in the midst of the ruin I’ve made of my life.
But I am weak. I always have been. And I let the need for her consume me.
As the darkness wraps its cold fingers around my heart, the world tilts, spinning out of control. I feel it. My sword is heavy, but I’ve lost all sense of where it should go and in that moment, as the darkness pulls me under, I feel a sharp, searing pain shoot through me.
I blink, eyes blurry, and the world comes back into focus.
The sword is not where it should be. It’s not buried in Marlayna’s chest as I intended, not sending her to the void as I had planned. No... the blade is embedded in my own side, the crimson flow staining my hands as the pain flares and my breath catches in my throat.
I’ve done it again. I’ve failed.
I’ve fallen to the darkness within me, and now it’s too late.
“Daedalus!” Zyphoro’s voice is numb to my ears like a scream underwater.
My hand slips from around Marlayna’s throat as I stumble backwards, as Death Singer dissolves into smoke in my grasp, but I fall into my sister’s arms before I can hit the floor.
“You stupid fool,” she hisses at me as my hands press down on my wound, blood gushing between my fingers.
