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The world was putting itself back together while I came apart.
Every memory of him flooded back at once until there was no room inside me for anything else.
Every look.
Every caress.
Every stolen smile.
Every cruel word spoken only because loving each other had frightened us more than hatred ever could.
His drawings. His shadows. The way his mouth curved when he was trying not to smile. Every lifetime my soul had found its way back to him, only for him to break his own heart and kill me.
With a trembling hand, I took Rythos’ journal from the throne and folded over myself with a broken sound, clutching it to my sternum where the empty part of me ached.
Movement blurred beside me and Solas dropped to his knees at my side, tears streaming freely down his face as he reached for me.
“I know, sweetheart,” he said, voice thick with emotion as he looked out at the horizon. “I know.”
His left hand, covered in his own faded mark of Amarta, closed around my shoulder while Helion rubbed slow circles over my back.
“What happened?” Aldric’s voice barely disturbed the silence. He stepped through the marble pillars, wide eyes moving from Cerilla, sobbing on the marble, to me before understanding softened his face.
He crouched beside Cerilla and placed a hand against her back.
The throne pulsed.
Shadows seeped from the black veins threading its surface, spilling over the marble like smoke before slithering across the ground towards Aldric.
“What is this?” he gasped as they climbed his body in curling tendrils, gathering above his head until the darkness condensed into something solid.
A crown.
Black as polished onyx, it gleamed beneath the temple light as the shadows settled it slowly against his golden hair.
“It worked,” Helion murmured, his voice hollow as if he were numb. “The Crown of Gods and Monsters has deemed your soul a worthy ruler, King Aldric, the throne is yours now.”
Helion lifted me from the ground, my head falling against his chest as though I no longer had the strength to hold it up. Tears soaked into his tunic while I watched the colour leach from my brother’s face, leaving him paler with every passing second.
“It is time to face your punishment, vicious one,” Astaroth said coolly. “You and the little witch.”
Cerilla was trapped in the arms of another guard beside Astaroth, her face buried in her hands as sobs shook through her body.
“Lyra fixed the throne and lost a bonded. Is that not punishment enough?”
Their voices floated around me in a daze, but my eyes stayed trained on the Throne.
I had once believed freedom was the only thing worth dying for, that if I could escape every cage built around me, I might finally understand what it meant to live.
But freedom had never been the thing that saved me.
Love had.
Why couldn’t it have been enough to save him?
“No one can escape death; it is the natural order of life. To die is a privilege of the living,” Astaroth murmured. “Those who break that order must pay for it.” He clicked his fingers, two bone guards materialising out of thin air, and he gestured towards me. “Take her.”
“No.” His arms tightened around me, one hand spreading protectively across my back as he drew me closer against his chest. Every muscle in his body went rigid, his hold turning almost desperate, as though the thought of handing me over was something he physically could not make himself do.
