Page 112 of Season Warriors & Wolves

“I am a mother!” she cried out. “Snowlin, this cannot be stopped. It is not meant to.”

“It can!”

Another crash, the ground beneath my feet shaking and a chilling cold wind brushed my cheek, making me halt on the spot. Why was I feeling wind?

Her words cut off when she looked behind me at the stones floating in the air beginning to drop down to the ground. “Go!” she bellowed. “It is too late for me to do anything. It is. But not for you. You will stop her. You can stop her.”

My throat clogged, damned tears threatening to spill. “At what cost?”

Her face fell and she staggered a step back. “You know of the cost?”

“Like hell I do!” I screamed, lifting one foot after the other almost as if they weighed like rocks.

She shook off a confused look. “Your seal is opening.”

I looked down at my hands curling with countless black veins and then at her. “You know about my seal?”

“I helped Lysander create them.” Tears skittered down her eyes. “Now go. Dissiri is feeding from you—not only from your magic, but from your presence, too. It will do so until its core is brought to life, it won’t care whether it takes yours entirely.”

“If I can end this here, I don’t ca—”

“Don’t fucking finish that sentence,” Kilian’s voice bellowed in the empty distance. Another portal door had cracked open close to us, and he stood behind it, breathing hard and angry—gods, so angry. Golgotha stood on his knees with Kilian’s hand wrapped around his throat. “Come,” my husband said gently and reached a hand in the distance he could not cross.

Few more steps, just a few more and I could reach Urinthia, rip her heart out and Aurora would never see the light of my days.

A wave of dizziness washed me again and then a sharp pain on my back knocked me breathless. The seal. The bloody seal was opening.

“Come!” Kilian ordered, loud enough that I finally felt a flash of his power even realms apart. Death was cold, so cold. Not like him, I thought just until I turned to see the look on his face. Black mist poured out of his eyes, the tips of his fingers had turned black and his nails had sharpened to black claws. “Come here,” he repeated, and his magic slithered inside the portal, hovering and burning the air and grounds of Dissiri, coating them a colour of onyx. His magic encircled me, not letting the fallen realm feed from me, enough for me to gather some energy and stand.

Step after regretful step, I walked to him, grasping his extended hand.

He let go of Golgotha and pulled me in his arms, tightly holding me when my strength gave away and threatened to topple me to the ground. His hands were colder than ice when they rested on my skin, but the moment he sighed with relief, everything warmed.

I turned to the portal again, staring ahead onto the ruins of Dissiri as it began shrinking and closing shut. Somewhere in the long distance I did not make, was Urinthia, assembling my father the ultimate weapon of destruction. The opportunity to end this all stood before me, and I’d lost it. Again.

The God of Demons rubbed a hand over his throat, more annoyed at my hesitance than at Kilian who’d almost squeezed his eternity out of him. He glanced at my husband and then me, and said, “You let a man make decisions for you?”

My heart was still too loud and my limbs were too weak for me to gouge his eyes out. “You wanted to feed my magic to your realm. I don't need judgement from you.”

“There is plenty to spare. You would have not died, do not be pathetic,” he said simply, and a phantom shadow wrapped around his throat again.

Kilian bent down at him, raising a dark brow. “So, if I reach to tear half of your soul out of your body right now, you would not die either?”

“I’m powerless, boy, she is power itself. Tell me you do not feel it. How can anyone not possibly feel it. Last I felt something like her power was when Cyra bid me goodbye. Your wife could fuel another sun—create another realm. Do you realise the power that she holds? Are you so selfish to want it only for yourself?”

“I am. She’s fucking mine. I gave no permission for you to touch what is mine. Do you know what that means?” Kilian backed away and let go of him. “One day I’m going to claim retribution for what you caused today. Wait for me.”

Golgotha’s jaw tightened. “I will wait for you, godling.”

Kilian suddenly halted and turned to narrow his eyes one last time at Golgotha.

The fallen God walked back to his dais, a chain of words falling from his lips—strange words, the same language I’d heard in Dissiri. “You will not be able to control her.”

Kilian’s tight grip on my hand and everything darkened in the empty cave, lanterns dying off when darkness whispered against the walls to crawl around the Demon God. “Do not listen.”

Golgotha sniffed as he laid back on his seat, his dark eyes falling to the black tattoos still crawling over my skin. “Not in your condition.”

“You believe I trust you?”