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With each swallow, my fight grew weaker.
With each passing second, my eyelids felt heavier.
I held out as long as I could until I finally gave in—and it hit me like a tidal wave, dragging me under. I handed myself over to the murky depths with one last thought on my mind—when I hit the bottom, would Von be there waiting for me?
Von. . .
Von
Morons.
As I had lain on the cement slab over the past so many weeks, forced to listen to the conversations taking place around me,thatwas what I had determined. I had surrounded myself with morons. They blathered on and on and on, their incessant ramblings grating against my frayed patience.
Granted, they were trying to figure out a way to wake me up from the chokehold of my eternal slumber—something only I could do, because I was the one who had put myself in this self-preserving state. Without doing so, my existence would have ceased, and unfortunately for Sage, she wasn’t about to be rid of me that easily. And so, I supposed I could find it somewherewithin me not to throw the whole lot of morons in the Da’Nu when I awakened.
Although the thought was tempting.
My body had been poked and prodded and cut into countless times as the healers conducted their tests with their enchanted tools—it took a special blade to cut into my steel-derived flesh. Regardless of what they did, I could not feel a damn thing. I was just . . . there, my body asleep, but my mind very much awake. I was stuck between comatose and what came beyond the end of my immortality.
All because of the deal I made with the royal ass licker.
I was the one who had created tattooed bargains and now, ironically, I was stuck like this because of it. In the early days of the realms, when things were far less . . . civil, mankind lacked the ability to uphold their end of the bargain when they tried to make deals with one another. And so, I created the bargain, but instead of using chiseled stone—paper did not exist during that time—it was forged in the skin.
There were three ways for a tattooed bargain to end—if the deal was completed, if both parties agreed to end it, or if one of the parties died of natural causes.
But as I was a sly fucker, I leftmyselfa loophole and told only my siblings—should I ever find myself in a situation such as this.
The problem? It required an item I no longer had in my possession, an item that was lost to the decades—the Blade of Moram.
In truth, I preferred the blade stayed lost.
The blade had been forged by a trio of sisters, powerful females that did not belong to either Old Gods or New. Their creation went beyond the concept of time. They were known as the Three Spinners—Fate, Destiny, and Free Will. Each one cut a thread from their being and set it in the mold. They’d poured lava overtop, creating the blade and handle. When it hardened,it turned to obsidian, locking a fragment of each goddesses insurmountable power within.
On the day of my coronation, they gave it to me.
And on the day that I was stripped of the Living and Immortal Realms, they took it back.
I didn’t realize they had taken it until I walked into my study and found the glass case that I displayed it in empty. One could imagine the cataclysmic anger I felt when I saw it had been regifted to the new king—my severely lacking, much-less-handsome replacement.
But that emotion soon left me when I saw what he held in his arms . . .
The Goddess of Life.
Divinely made as a full-grown woman, woven from the joining of the Selenian Sea and Luna. Ecstasy written in the female form, every bit of her built to conquer—lands, men, women, whatever she wanted.
Creator above, she was a lovely creature. Enchanting, really.
The embodiment of her given title—the Lady of Light.
I had lived for thousands of years in darkness, days coming and going, with a natural, unnoticeable rhythm to them. Just like breathing, they all tended to blur together. But that day would forever be imprinted on my mind, my flesh, like a red-hot brand seared into my skin—
The day I first sawher.
The day she burrowed into me so deeply, whether I wished to admit it back then or not, I knew I would never get her out.
She stood behind him and peered at me over his shoulder with those wide, blue eyes of hers, effervescent and ice-cold, regarding me like the monster her instincts told her I was—the villain in her story, come to destroy her life.
She was not wrong.
