The three of them stare at me with open mouths. “Your smile…Meadow…you’re cursed,” my mom croaks.
“I’m cursed? You’re the one that’s joined another cult, a doomsday cult, might I add and I’m the cursed one because I’m not smiling? I’d rather be cursed than fucking stupid, you weak-minded fools! How could you join another cult? You couldn’t get a hobby like a normal person? Knitting? Badminton? I don’t know, paint by number or bird watching? No? It just had to bethis?!”
My mother shakes her head. “We had to fix what you broke. What you stole from us! We deserve to be honored, you selfish girl!”
“Are you shitting my dick right now?”
“Meadow, language!” My idiot father has the balls to look embarrassed. “You were raised better than this.”
Eleanor throws the arrow she pulled out of her chest on the ground. “As much as I hate to ruin this little reunion, did you all forget that I’m a god and that I’m about to fucking destroy your pathetic world?”
“You’re not destroying shit,” I tell her.
“Oh, I see why he married you. You’re a spitfire. I’m going to enjoy choking the life out of you while he watches.”
“Yeah?” I pull out my swords and point them at her. “Let’s dance, cunt.”
“Meadow!” My dad howls, horrified at my language. I hope Charlie shoots him next.
Jaak is at my side and he stirs when I step forward to meet Eleanor. He looks like he’s coming out of a daze, eyes glazed and unfocused.
“Meadow-” he starts but I shush him with a quick kiss.
“I’m going to gut her and set you free. Help Dina. I need you to keep the other mages off me.”
Jaak hesitates but only for a second. “As you wish, my heart. Fight well.”
I kiss him again. “Is there any other way? I learned from the best,” I remind him. It’s his memories coursing through me, his memories that give me the strength and skill to know I’m going to be the one walking out of this fight.
“Hey lovebirds! I’m kind of on a schedule.”
“Well in that case,” I tell her and make my first move, a doubled-handed slice at her neck. Is it a move made out of the purely selfish reason that I want to take a swing at Eleanor’s neck? Absolutely. Did I know she was going to dodge it? Totally. Would I do it again? Hells yeah.
She ducks and kicks at my legs but I jump over her. I bring a sword down as I move and catch her on her shoulder. A thin red line blooms across her perfect skin as I land on my feet.
“You ruined my dress!”
“It was already ruined when you put your sorry ass into it.”
She screams, the sound loud, discordant. I hear the screams of the souls she’s eaten, the ones whose planets and worlds she devoured whole. It’s their voices that scream at me but I’m not afraid of them the way Eleanor thinks I might be because I hear what she doesn’t.
Hope.
Every soul she extinguished, every being she forced into herself, all of that life didn’t vanish. It remained deep down inside of her and it waited for the moment she would fail. Centuries, millennia, eons, the time didn’t matter because theyknew the day would arrive when she would finally calculate wrong.
That day is today. I’m the equation she can’t solve.
“He’s mine,” she tells me. “Healwayswill be mine. He sold his soul fair and square, you can’t get out of a contract like that.”
“So long as my heart beats I will always be at your side, Meadow. Even if hell opened itself up to claim me again, I would fight my way back to you. I will always fight for you, my heart. I will never leave you. I swear this to you as a vow.”
I smile at her. “You might have his soul, but I have his heart. And speaking of hearts, I learned that even a World Eater can die if they lose their heart. God or not. Why don’t we see if I can’t take yours, too?” I’m right, I know I am. It’s the only way to kill her according to Jaak’s memories. She didn’t think I knew that. I can tell from the way she falters.
“You don’t know what you’re talking about, mortal. Every part of him belongs to me. He is my servant. His place is at my feet.”
“Let’s find out then.” I shrug and look her over. “But when I claim your heart, and I will fucking claim it, I’m going to cut it out of your chest while it’s still beating. I wanna see how long you survive without it.”
Eleanor’s eyes narrow. “You’re messing with ancient bonds, mortal. Jaakobah owes me his life. All of it. His devotion belongs to me.Me, do you hear me? For I am a jealous god and I will not allow another to have what is mine.”
