❛WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU MAKE THE TEN MOST POWERFUL GODS ALIVE PLAY A GAME OF MUSICAL CHAIRS WITH ONE SEAT?❜
They fight - to the death.
They fight over three crowns and a throne with steel spiked maces. They despair a little more everyday keeping thei...
The last thing I knew was that darkness, and after that darkness, I knew no more.
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[TRIGGER WARNING: THIS CHAPTER IS LONG, AND VERY PAINFUL TO READ. I EDITED IT AFTER MONTHS AND HERE I AM, BAWLING AT 3 IN THE MORNING. BRACE YOURSELVES!]
[100 YEARS LATER, THE NIGHT OF THE NEXT CENTURY BALL HOSTED BY HOUSE LEVANE AT ELLESMERE.]
HARTINGTON CASTLE, ALNWICK, STORMHOLT.
TRISTAN
I TRIED.
I TRIED SO, so hard.
Heartbreak was a terrible, terrible teacher.
How else would I have ever known that death was possible without even dying?
Every second. Every day. Every week. Every month. Every year. Year after year, decade after decade, and still my eyes never stopped looking for that face in every person I ever saw.
It was unbearable. Excruciating.
And yet I never stopped looking.
Looking into the corner of every sea, into the depths of every sky, over the horizon of every field in the light of the deathless moon. The rings in one hand, my pain in the other - I rose every single day to go and find her.
One hundred years.
One hundred years seeking that glorious, glorious fire. One hundred years spent venturing alone into the ruins of that broken wasteland, once a home to monsters. One hundred years spent wandering the streets of the mortal world, my heart beating faster and faster with every step I took. With every woman I saw. With every blue green eye sparkling, or every strand of red hair flying about in the breeze, or every set of marble lips curling up in a wistful smile.
One hundred years, and no matter where I looked for her, for that sparkle that lit up her gaze, for that honeyed voice, for that sharp mind... it seemed that the universe just found me to be a huge, pathetic, helpless cosmic joke.
Eric had been devastated. Amphitrite - it took her more than four decades to slowly come out of her grieving. And Aidon... he stopped being. Stopped existing. I watched him crumble away into a quiet ghost in front of my eyes. Llewellyn and Helios - gods, they begged me. Begged me to stop. To put her to rest. To stop me wasting my days grieving, and wasting my nights wandering.
