The Heirs of Death

9. Light in Darkness

"Celestia?'' he questioned voice low and filled with not only fear but terror. He felt it in his guts, through that bond tying my Sun to his. "Celestia,'' he repeated, hands trembling so violently his muscles might have been rendered to shreds from the intensity.

"There is a way to win the upcoming war,'' I whispered, breathless. There were tears in my eyes as I beheld his face, pale and gaunt and bleached from any bit of life.

He knew.

"But it will cost—"

"No.'' His voice shook, his entire body rocked with fear. His eyes, bright and loving seconds ago were saturated with ache and pain and devastation and so much grief I wondered if even the heavens were pained from how he looked. "No!"

It was worse than what I had imagined in my head over and over. Worse than anything I could have prepared myself for. It was devastating.

His hands were on my face, trembling and shivering as he held it. As he stared at me with eyes that mirrored a soul breaking so hard, shattering so badly, that it killed me slowly on the inside, tearing me bit by bit.

"This isn't real,'' he stammered, trying so hard to deny. Begging so hard for it to be false, a mistake, a misunderstanding. But he knew it wasn't.

"It is," I mumbled as I felt his hands tightening on my face as though doing so would protect me from that death. He screamed and I felt power surge through the room, the sky, the world in its whole.

It echoed again and again and again, filled with so much grief the pain itself could kill. He was crying, mighty tears trailing down his face, soaking his shirt.

I pushed his hands and placed his arms around me as I pulled myself, knees on his lap, face hovering above his, and face in my hands, whipping gently his tears.

I was all he had left. I was his family. His past and present, but not his future. I wouldn't be there for him, wouldn't hold his hand when he would stand in front of his subject who would cheer his name. Who would cheer for my king, for the man I had wished to know my entire life.

And even as it had been so little—mere days and weeks—since we reunited, I loved him terribly. It was irrational, but there was something in me, a part of my soul that clicked in place when he first opened those eyes and pulled me in his arms as I cried on his newly awakened body. Maybe it was the love he had in his soul, irrational as mine was, and maybe it was the undoing of the Five, to allow us to feel this way. To compensate for the lost years.

And I wished this love didn't exist just to ease the pain. Wished that I was nothing more than a silhouette in his life even if it meant killing each day together a bit more just to relieve his heart.

He had lost a wife and wasn't even given time to grief her. Now, he was about to lose a daughter, too.

I lowered my hand as I removed his crown with a bit of magic, pressing my lips to the top of his head as he buried it in my neck, inches above my still beating heart.

The violence of his shaking didn't ease.

''I love you," I breathed, mouth still pressed to his hair, taking in his scent. "Forever. I will love you forever, even when I am nothing more than dust and cinders. Even when you can't see me, I’ll always love you.''

All of them, I would hold them in my heart, whisper their names as I die, and would carry them with me even after the end.

He didn't reply. The sky outside turned chaotic, winds howling, the sound of trees trashing echoing so hard it didn't feel like we were so high in the sky.