AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I vow to be Ezer Kenegdo. Noralice.
I will never kneel before the Dragon.
I vow to be your strong rescuer and warrior princess of light. Noralice.
I kneel for myself, for somethingoutsidemyself.
I vow to be the power that will carry your burdens. Noralice.
I kneel before the heavenly throne surrounded by all the angels and saints while imagining the crown of gold and stardust that awaits me.
I vow to be your shield, I vow to save you from danger, and I vow…to deliver you from death! Noralice.
To my dying breath, I will hold fast to my Ezer, to the warrioress of light inside me. With one final great push—my life force falling in that canyon—and with the cold floor of the Inner Circle where so much blood has been spilled beneath me, I stare up at my husband as if my soul can burn brands, unbroken halos right into the core of his spirit and proclaim:worthy, worthy, worthy! We are strong enough!
For, Neo is writ into my very blood and bone and heart and mind—and the essence of my soul.
I lower my chin, bowing before the heavenly throne and before the memory of mynewhusband.
I have faith.
First, the sudden force of his power breaks the foundations under me. Second, his shades and flames thicken all around me. Third, he seizes my shoulders just like the day he was going to raise the whip to my back. This time, I do not escape. I do not retreat even though non-venomous serpents inject their fangs into my heart, penetrating me, and preparing the way for the Scourge.
Finally, his words on the night we made the Triumvirate oath echo in my head:
You are the only one in the world who can forge a new heart for me again and again, Elysia.
“Elysia…” he murmurs so lovely, dark, and deep.
I know that voice!
Inside our unified minds, the Dragon catches my body before it can crash against the rocks.
And I collapse into my husband’s arms. Neo raises me up, carries me till I soar into the stars! But I sense my soul slipping away to the barest corners of the fabric of reality as I prepare to pay the ultimate price.
Chapter30
“Take. My. Blood. You. Supercilious. Ass!”
Go back, Elysia. Go back.
Thanatos?
My soul hangs on by a single thread. Straying somewhere between the substance of reality and the Soul Plane. Lost between worlds. Like the serpents of a non-venomous web of trauma around my heart, the Scourge invades the arteries around my heart. A network of hellfire blood vessels ready to lay waste to that vital muscle and brand me for the Father. A great force that I cannot hope to overcome myself.
And then…two familiar melodies enter my ears until the musical notes form separatetethers. Separate but unified for one purpose, one shared dream within a dream that is so lovely, dark, and deep. One isScheherazade—Neo’s tether! It pulls; it seduces, it tempts me back as if he is reclaiming me just as I’d reclaimed him. The other isSwan Lake—Thanatos’ tether. But he does not pull. Instead, he merely binds that thread so I don’t float away,—a tether of frost and shades—so the Scourge may not vanquish me.
I am the space where the light meets the sound.
In that moment, I become a solar eclipse. As if the sun, the moon, and the earth have aligned.
Neo is the earth, Natos is the moon, and I am that star, the greatest star in the universe!
The three of us form our own powerful triumvirate of cosmic bodies of intense gravitational forces—aligned as one for a singular purpose. Wounds are healed. Bonds are forged. and as soon as those tethers meet within my Haloed heart, as soon as Natos’ frost brushes across Neo’s flames, I understand…Iseethem!
Before I can ponder the revelation about their identity further, I take a quantum leap of faith and grasp onto the tether of flames and dive through the webs until I feel a spark and a piercing pain, until I hear my heartbeat pumping blood to resound in my ears, until I smell vetiver and spice and deep water, until I taste old blood and rich venom-laced wine on my tongue—until I open my eyes wide. I suck in a shrill deep gasp, springing up as if my heart has been given a restart. And his is utterly frozen!
“Elysia!”
