Chapter 73: Not the First (Her POV)
The sound of my heels echoed like gunfire. Each sharp step cracked against Maximus's glitter-drenched floors, ricocheting up the gilded corridor. My skirt still flounced, my gold-painted skin still blazed, but all of it felt wrong. A costume I hadn't agreed to wear. I didn't rush. I didn't cry. I just walked. Chin high. Spine locked straight. Past gods and demi-things too stunned to speak. Past laughter that rang too forced, too loud. Past Ravina, lounging with a serpent's smile and a glass raised like she'd already won. I didn't give her the satisfaction of a glance.
The moment the portal opened, I stepped through. Out of the temple. Out of the noise. Straight into the Observatory. Stars spilled around me. Galaxies turning slow and ancient. A million suns blinking awake like lanterns in the dark, watching me walk across the glass platform. Click. Click. Click. My heels rang too loud. Too sharp. Too much. I stopped. Breathed. Snapped my fingers. Just like that, the glamour burned away. The heels vanished. The tiny, traitorous skirt. The white straps and painted fire. Gone. In their place: a worn t-shirt, soft pants, sneakers. My hair twisted into a messy bun. A mug of coffee in my hand, still steaming. No glitter. No seduction. No shrine. Just me.
I walked to the edge. Slow. Quiet. No audience this time. No fanfare. Only breath and starlight. The glass stretched out in every direction, suspended in velvet-black infinity. Below me: darkness. Above me: galaxies. Around me: stillness. Warm stillness. I sipped my coffee. Let it sit on my tongue. My shoulders dropped. My jaw unclenched. I let myself be. Not for them. Not for him. Not to prove anything. Just to exist. In the quiet of the stars, I whispered, not for the universe or the gods or even myself: "I need a minute."
The stars heard me and they waited. He hadn't lied. But he hadn't told the truth, either. Not betrayal, just omission. The ache of it sat small and hollow behind my ribs, like a bruise pressed too deep. Embarrassed? No. Ashamed? Never. Just… tired.
Tired of toasts. Of sideways glances. Of half-truths dressed in gold. I drank again, slow. Above me, galaxies spun lazy and vast. Too bright. Too big. Too restless. Even here, this place was never truly still. Malvor's realm always hummed, a low, buzzing thrum of chaos. Beautiful chaos. Enchanting. But never quiet. Even wrapped in soft cotton with coffee warming my palms, I could feel it. The endless motion under my skin. His world wasn't wrong. It wasn't bad. It just wasn't rest. So I sat. Cross-legged on the glass, like I was a child again, like I could wait for the storm inside me to settle. I breathed until my mind drifted like silt in water, sinking. Waiting.
When I finally stood, the stars shifted with me. A heartbeat of red and white bloomed overhead, pulsing farewell. The portal opened before I reached the edge. Cold light spilled through. I stepped into Aerion's realm without looking back. Just before the door closed, I opened the bond to Malvor. Not wide, just a thread. Just enough. My Chaos, I whispered through it, brushing his mind with mine like silk. I am fine. I am here.
I didn't send the ache. Didn't press the hollow bruise into him. Didn't burden him with Ravina's voice echoing in my head. I gave him the only thing I had left to offer, peace. Soft. Steady. And love. I love you. I need space, not distance. I am safe. I poured warmth through the bond, slow and deliberate, wrapping it around him like a blanket. My version of safety. My constant. Then I closed the bond again, gently. Not a shut door. Just a pause. A breath. The portal sealed behind me. The world shifted.
Aerion's realm was gone. Not empty. Not ruined in the way that leaves bones of stone behind. Devoured. As if a black hole had opened its jaws and swallowed everything whole. The sky was bruised gray. The ground under my boots cracked like glass. The air still stank of vacuum-burned magic. Pieces floated in the wreckage. A half-melted sword. A stone arch twisted in on itself. A banner hanging from nothing. No birds. No sound. No life. Just absence. Grief had teeth and it had a name.
I walked. Not with fury. Not with purpose. Just because my body needed motion. Dust clung to my sneakers. Bridges ended in air. Columns spiraled upward into clouds that swallowed them whole. I stepped over what might have been a shield once, now split like a broken vow. It didn't taste like death. It tasted like aftermath. Malvor's destruction of Aerion's realm was complete. Total devastation. I felt it, a pulse. Wrong. Small. Familiar. I turned before I thought. It was nearly invisible, tucked between two leaning pillars that had no right to be standing. A fold in space. A scar. I shouldn't have seen it. Shouldn't have felt it. But I had been here before. I stepped through. Into the room.
The Room. The one he'd taken me to. That night. Still standing. Untouched by ruin. Even the black hole that had swallowed Aerion's realm had hesitated here. The air was heavy. Stale. The walls, the walls remembered. The pain lived here. Not just mine. So many others. Too many. It seeped from the stone like smoke. I brushed my fingers along an emblem carved into the wall. An old sigil of valor, warped and cracked.
I stood at the center of the room, arms loosely crossed, coffee cooling in my hand. The pain here didn't scream. It just pulsed, like a slow heartbeat pressed into stone. Familiar. I knew it wasn't just mine. I could feel the others. The ones who had come before me. Their grief clung to the walls like breath that never faded. Some had begged here. Some had broken here. I had bled here. But I had also survived. This was the beginning of the end of Annie but where I was made. I was glad Aerion was gone. Not out of vengeance. Out of justice. This place should never have existed. Yet, it endured, a wound that refused to close.
The air shifted. A thin pulse of pressure rolled across my skin. Not a flashback, just my body remembering before my mind did. My heart kicked hard. My lungs seized. My breath caught high and sharp in my chest. The room breathed, and I breathed with it, but not evenly. The scent rose next. Cold metal. Burned oil. Ozone thick enough to sting. My stomach dropped.
Ravina had been first. Not physical, not the way Aerion was. Her cruelty came as suffocation and poetry. She hadn't touched me. She hadn't needed to. Her fingers had hovered a breath away from my face while she whispered doubts into my ear. My lungs had refused to fill. Her control made the air thin, disappearing every time I gasped for it. She'd smiled, lazy and pleased, watching me choose between panic or obedience. "You're so quiet when you're afraid. I wonder what else I can take."
Only when she was satisfied. When I was shaking and dazed and barely able to think. Did she leave. She left a fracture. A hairline split in my magic and enough of her power clinging to my skin to ignite the rune she thought would stay dark. That was the piece she never understood. I clenched my jaw. My hand shook around the cooling coffee.
Root, Tairochi whispered in my memory. I pressed my palm to the wall. Cold. Solid. Present. Breathe. I tried.
The air felt wrong again, too thin, too sharp, just like the moment Aerion stepped into the room after Ravina left it. His presence had filled the space like a storm rolling in. My breath hitched again. Aerion's attack haunted me. Always sensations so overwhelming. The rasp of rope pulling tighter. The heat of his hands holding me down. The weight of him crushing me. His breath, too close, too hot, curling against my cheek. The sickening shift of the cot beneath me. The cold press of metal near my face. The low growl in his throat when I wouldn't break the way he wanted.
The moment his hand slid to my throat, not to hold. Not even to threaten. To decide.
My stomach twisted. My chest squeezed too tight to pull a full breath. "No," I whispered. "Not here. Not now." My fingers dug into the stone. Match the rhythm beneath you.
The floor vibrated faintly, the heartbeat of the earth itself. Steady. Patient. Waiting for me. I inhaled slowly. My lungs shook. But the air stayed.
He had been debating killing me when he pulled back from the assault. I remembered that. The tilt of his head. The way his eyes narrowed calculating. Navir had seen the surge first. Ravina's leftover magic flaring through the rune she didn't realize she'd nourished.He crossed the room fast and went to untie me. His voice had been full of fear and explanation. His fingers brushed my ankle. His rune ignited under my skin. The heat had shot up around my neck like fire taking a wick. My breath had torn from me in a ragged gasp. Magic clawing its way out.
Aerion saw it. Saw Navir's glow. Saw his own rune burned into me. A god does not forgive theft. His hand had closed around my throat fully then. The pressure had been absolute. Tightening. Tightening. Tightening...
My breath stuttered now in the present, my throat aching around the phantom. "No," I whispered again, eyes squeezed shut. "You don't get to live here."
I pressed harder into the stone. Root. Breathe. Present. Not past. My pulse slowed. A fraction. Enough. The last memory came back, not as panic, but clarity: I didn't free myself. My power buckled reality. The runes ignited too bright, too wild. Space folded. Time recoiled. Aerion and Navir were ripped out of existence, Not because I fought them, but because my magic refused to die. They disappeared and I lived. I don't remember standing. I don't remember the ropes falling away. The room was shaking, reality buckling where they vanished. Something white slipped from the cot, brushing my hand. A note. His handwriting on the front. I picked it up without thinking, fingers numb. The sheet was the only thing that wasn't soaked, so I wrapped it around myself and walked. Straight into the tear my power had opened back to Arbor. Back home.
I pulled away from the wall, breath shuddering, but mine again. My throat still ached. My chest still trembled. But the panic had loosened its grip, slinking back into the corners where it belonged. "I walked out of this room. He didn't."
Where are you? The thought slipped loose before I could stop it. Not a prayer. Not even a question. Just exhaustion tugging at the edges of me. That was when it hit me. The scream. Not mine. Not now. His. Aerion. The same voice that had haunted my dreams. The same one that roared in my skull when he pressed me into the dirty metal cot. Pure rage. Agonizing. Divine. I dropped the mug. It shattered on the floor, coffee spreading like blood. The scream didn't stop. It tore through me, through the stone, through the air itself. Until the wall in front of me cracked. Warped. Split wide open.