A sudden sense of foreboding struck me deep in my soul at the emptiness I found in in the sky and fear chased through me so potently that my hands shook with it.
“Darius?” I cried, adrenaline blazing through me hotter than my Phoenix fire as I hunted the battlefield for any sign of him, flying fast and searching with a desperation that made my skin prickle as I sensed the stars turning their eyes on me to watch. They knew. They fucking knew what fate awaited me once I found him, and they were creeping closer to feast on my destruction once it came for me.
My heart stalled in my chest as I spotted him, a breath sticking in my throat as ice tumbled through my veins and immobilised me. There he was, the man who had taken possession of my heart and ownership of my being, lying endlessly still on a hilltop far below me.
I dropped from the sky like a stone, the fire of my Order form extinguishing across my body as I free fell towards him with my heart in my throat and pain gripping me like a vice.
I hit the ground hard and dropped to my knees, a sob catching in my chest as I took in the sight of the sun steel blade which was lodged in his heart, and I shook my head in refusal of what I could see with my own two eyes.
“No,” I breathed, the denial a curse on my tongue that tasted like agony as I reached for his cheek, the rough bite of his stubble grazing my palm and the cold touch of his skin sinking into my limbs and drowning me with a certainty which I refused to allow.
Pain shuddered through me so viscerally that I felt it like a tremor tumbling through my core, sending shockwaves out into the sky and throughout the entire world in its wake as it ruined me.
Tears pricked the backs of my eyes as I shook my head, refusing to accept this, leaning down to press a kiss to his unresponsive lips, the coldness in him sinking into my skin too and whispering goodbye on the wings of fate.
I pressed my lips to his harder, tasting blood on them and pain and an endless expanse of nothing, because I couldn’t taste him. The reckless, brutal, beautiful man of mine who had taken all the worst in me and found a way to see it as his deepest desire. The creature who lit me up all the way to my core, who saw every piece of me and made it burn brighter for him while offering all of himself in return. My dark nightmare, my beautiful daydream, my stolen fate.
“Please,” I begged, knowing the stars could hear me and falling back on their mercy as I kissed him again, willing him to return the pressure of his lips against mine, for his eyes of open and for him to be looking back at me when I broke this kiss. “Please, not him.”
The weight of the stars’ eyes on my back felt like it was trying to crush me into the dirt as they continued to watch my ruin with rapt attention and cold discard. They made no offer to me though. No words sounded in response to my plea, and the man I loved so desperately didn’t stir beneath me.
My fingers brushed against his arm and a sob caught in my throat as I felt the cool metal of the Phoenix Kiss I’d gifted him there, returned to its bangle form following his passage from this world, another nail in the coffin of this unjust destiny.
The sound of the Nymphs screaming in excitement punctuated my grief as they came for me, seeing me vulnerable on the ground at last and racing each other to claim the prize of my power as my heart shattered into more pieces than could possibly be reunited.
They fell like grains of sand from my chest and scattered on the cold wind, hurtling out to find him beyond the Veil and beg him to return to me.
Rage rose within me with every passing second that I held his unmoving hand in mine, that I drowned in the agony of his death and refused to consider a future where I was forced to stand and leave him lying dead beneath me. The furious energy rose and rose until it was burning the tears from my cheeks and scouring the pain from my heart, leaving me consumed with anger unlike anything I had ever experienced before.
“This isn’t our fate,” I growled against his lips, my hand moving to grasp the sun steel blade which was lodged in his chest, the cold bite of the metal searing my palm with the sharp bite of reality as it mocked my requests of the stars and reminded me of what it had stolen.
I ripped the blade free with a growl of rage, breaking my kiss with the empty vessel which should have housed the man I loved as I turned my furious gaze upon the stars who continued to watch my destruction play out like it was nothing to them. Nothing at all in their eternal existence.
But they were wrong about that.
I wasn’t nothing. I was fury and agony and untold power combined into a soul which they had tried to cleave apart too many fucking times already.