I swung my fist into his jaw with all my strength, my axe cutting into the back of his thigh as we struggled to get the upper hand and he crumpled, screaming as he fell back, but his shadows thrashed and pulsed inside me as he forced them to take hold.
I arched my back with a bellow of pain as they battled to take control of me, the strength of them unyielding.
The fire from the Phoenix Kiss that Roxy had gifted me raced to meet them, burning them back with the fury of our love for one another, but in the moment where they held me at their mercy, my father swung his hand back and plunged his sun steel blade straight into my chest.
Everything seemed to still within me as I stared at him, the pulse I should have felt thrumming through my veins falling impossibly still as shock and an adamant kind of refusal stole through me.
For several achingly long moments, all I could do was stare at him in horror as I felt the blood spilling from that blow to my heart, staining my skin and stealing my fate once more.
This wasn’t how it was supposed to end.
I’d always known that it would come down to me and him, but it should have culminated with this scene playing out in reverse.
“No son of mine will ever bow to a fucking Vega,” Father snarled, his upper lip curling back as he looked my death in the eyes and claimed it for his own. “I offered you the world and you refused it, so now I'm taking back the privilege I offered you upon your conception. Return to the stars, Darius. Perhaps they’ll be kinder to you in death than they were in life.”
He shoved me away from him and I fell, my limbs not responding to my commands and doing nothing at all to stop me as I crashed back into the dirt and found myself staring up at the stars who had scorned me so fucking much in my too short life.
Lionel spat at me before he left and the only thing I could feel was the deep pool of blood spreading out all around me from the blade which remained lodged within my heart.
My lips parted on words I couldn’t speak, and the crushing feeling of disappointment filled me as I realised I’d let her down again.
I’d offered Roxanya Vega the stars and delivered her nothing but dirt. I’d always known I wasn’t good enough for her, and now my death had come to me in a rush as short and pointless as my life had been, and I hadn’t even been able to gift her the head of the man who had hurt her so much.
I held on to the love I felt for her as I began to slip out of this world, stealing it away with me as I let myself sink into the sensation of being held tight within her arms and knowing it was the only place in this life or the next where I would ever want to reside.
I had never deserved her. But she’d been mine all the same. If only for the briefest span of time. So no matter how foul my luck had always been, I knew I had been blessed in that one, most vital way. I had tasted the heat of her kiss and drowned in the weight of her love, been consumed by it and owned by it and made whole by it too.
I wasn’t a good man. And I certainly wasn’t a perfect one. But I had been hers.
The stars began to blink out in the cruel sky above me one by one, like they were turning their attention from me now, seeing my failure and losing all interest in me.
But then a single point of light appeared which burned so much brighter than them that it cast them into the realms of irrelevance, and I saw her soaring across the sky burning hotter than the sun itself. She was so endlessly beautiful, so powerful, so strong.
My heart.
My love.
My queen.
And that was the way I wanted to leave this life, because when it came down to it, I knew that she was it for me. The only thing I’d ever truly needed and for the briefest span of time she had belonged to me. And that was enough.
There is only her.
D arcy chased me out into the long grass far beyond the clash of the battle and I sheathed my sword when I was far enough away to protect the fleeing rebels, turning to face her, my heart clutched in the grip of the stars who watched from above, my fate about to be decided as I let her come to me.
I’d had to get her away from Geraldine, and I prayed she would be alright, but at least she stood a chance now that Darcy had followed me here.
I took a breath, planting my feet and knowing I may well be granted my own death in this action. But better that than see the woman I love fall into the darkness of that Shadow Beast for good.
As she set me in her sights, her black eyes barely glinting with the rings of our bond, she snarled and ran faster towards me. I was running out of time. And I knew my next action was a gamble that held my life within the roll of the dice I was about to throw.