Broken Fairy Tales

32

Ash

I felt a shifting in the air all around me as the midnight fireworks started to fly into the sky signalling the unofficial end of the party as my guilt built up for what I had done to my mate. To the only person to ever love me. 

I wasn’t ready for what I saw in his mind, what he said. “It wasn’t you. Rin and I knew the price and we paid it. We did it for you.” I flinched like I had been physically struck, as his previously hidden memories washed into my mind. How he had willingly made the deal with gods, how Rin accepted his fate, how it had burned Rhys when they were separated. How he felt watching me beat myself up, knowing he couldn’t tell me until tonight. How hard he had tried to get me to forgive myself. The time I had wasted wallowing. 

“He did it for Love Ash-” Frezia started to say just as I was pulling myself together, trying to figure out what I felt now. But my inner turmoil was thrown to the side as the ground underneath us shifted, and rolled. All over the field people were screaming, that it was an earthquake, or a sink hole or something mundane.

It wasn’t anything of Earth that had caused this. I could feel evil magic and death stirring under my feet I went to reach for Rhys, only a few seconds had passed since he told me his bargain;  my hesitation to react to the danger we faced quickly enough was his end. I reached towards Rhys, my love, my everything, already mummering fresh protection spells to weave around him. When an obsidian spire rose from behind him in the cracking ground to pierce directly through his chest in an instant. My hand was still outstretched as the light in his eyes started to fade right in front of me.

From behind the spire my love, my mate, my husband was impaled on came a voice I recognised. No longer was she the beautiful, seductress of evil, Valentina’s outsides now matched how rotten her insides were. Her skin was in shreds, one arm completely skeletal, a gaping hole in her cheek and another where her nose should have been. What few hairs she had on her head were lank and greasy looking. I could smell the death on her, it was unheard of for something to reach the level of decay she had and not give up and go into death.

She looked at me with nothing but hate as I was frozen to my place, unable to move, “Ah you must be the dreamwalker who tried to take my pretty puppy.” Her voice had a strange whistling lisp from the extra holes in her face now. She was grotesque, in every sense of the word. “Once I finish draining him, I bet you will be enough to restore me to my for-” Valentina's victory speech was cut short as a giant green dragon dove from the sky, engulfing her in an instant. 

She must have had enough time to put a freeze on me, because once she was gone, and Auris Balsat had transformed back into the man body, I ran to Rhys. Ignoring everything else now that I could move and think. I went to touch him, but my hand froze, his heart wasn’t beating, his lungs weren’t moving, his eyes were open but they weren’t looking at me. They weren’t looking at anything because he was gone.

I felt the mate bond start to dissolve as the last vestiges of life left his body. I felt my magic, the chaos magic rising, swirling around me. More powerful than I had ever felt it as I screamed to the sky “YOU CAN’T TAKE HIM FROM ME.”

Everything froze. I saw Rhys, the last bit of life ready to leave his body, Auris frozen in place, proud as a peacock as Laurel and Delia with their matching small baby bumps were rushing towards him as Sky and Brydel chased behind. I ached looking at them frozen together, full of life and everything good. Damon was looking at the crater where Valentina had stood a minute ago, his face looked troubled. I thought I saw the former Demon King of Hell move, but when I focused on him again he was still. Then I turned to look at Rhys. His clothes stained red from his blood, his ruined chest where the spire had taken everything he needed to live.