P R E V I O U S L Y
The last thing I heard was Pandora's frustrated cry as we disappeared.
HEWE, STEFFITH.
TRISTAN
ELODIE.
HERE.
PAY YOU WILL, Ambrosine had promised. I curse you, Tristan Valmont. You will give back what you took from us. Only death will pay for life. Your death. At your sister's own hands.
And on the day your curse fulfils itself, that day your sister will rise and kill you with her own hands.
She stood a few metres away from me, beautiful, young, dead before her time.
Those piercing blue eyes looked at me - eyes that were a mirror of my own, eyes full of hurt and disappointment, eyes full of death and anger. She had not forgiven me - and she never would. Not after what I had done to her - not after she had practically begged me for death.
"How will you escape this, Tristan Valmont?" Zadicus softly hissed. "How will you escape the hands of fate?"
That shard of Bloodstone was wrapped tightly in her fist - the very weapon I had killed her with.
"You shouldn't have done it," she whispered gently, stray strands of her jet black hair blowing around her bloodless face. "I trusted you, Tris."
The words broke apart and cleaved my heart, hurting better than a branding iron. I could have collapsed and fallen to her feet for all the good it would have done. Guilt washed over me. Heavy, warm and treacherous, making me sick in the gut as nausea flooded my senses.
My sister.
My father.
My hands - my hands were stained with so much blood that nothing, no one, could wash the blood out.
It was my turn now.
My turn to die.
Zadicus's next blow hit me squarely on the shoulder, cutting open a huge wound under my fighting leathers. My fingers itched to rip the armor apart and yank the bloody thing off my skin, but I pushed the thought aside as my left hand wrapped around Aetherius and the right one gripped the Thunderbolt. The wound underneath was heavily oozing out blood, throbbing in sharp pulses.
"I trusted you," Elodie murmured, hitching up the skirts of the dark blue dress they had dressed her in at the funeral. "I trusted you, and you betrayed me, Tristan."
How would I ever explain - explain what had even happened the day she had died? How would I ever explain what it had been like for me that day? How would I explain how sick, how guilty I had felt after that mistake I had committed, how badly I was going to regret it till the end of my days?
This is the end of your days, Tristan Valmont. I felt Zadicus leer at me, his smile smug. This is the end for you, Tristan Valmont.
I willfully hauled up my sword and swung the Thunderbolt into my fists. I would not go down without a fight - a fight for Edwina. A fight for a life with her after this all was done. A fight for a peaceful, happier life.
For her.
For me.
"Come and do it yourself, then," I taunted them both, my sister and the Titan. "I dare you."
Zadicus and I fell on each other like beasts.
This was not some immortal battle fought with power and magic. This was not a mocking fight fought from safe distances. This was combat - pure, terrible, one on one combat - a fight to be fought till the end, a fight from which only one victor emerged alive. We slashed at each other with lethal weapons, spinning round and round in the middle of the unholy battlefield. I hardly noticed how the battle seemed to stop around us, how even the soldiers paused to look.
All the while, as Elodie came closer and closer, a sorrowful smile across her lips.
"I trusted you."
The shard of Bloodstone in her wrist was lethal, finely sharpened.
"I loved you."
Her footsteps were soft as snow as Zadicus hurled a dagger at me.
"You betrayed me."
She was behind me now, her eyes wide with tears as they rolled down her cheeks, and all I could have done was to beg her, to plead, to apologize, to even kill her again if I needed to. I had to survive this. I had to survive this at any cost. I had to make it out of this - I had to do it for Edwina. I had made her a promise.
"I'm sorry," Elodie whispered, raising the weapon clutched in her fingers.
Which was when a terrible, sharp pain broke into my spine.
Zadicus had sunk a sword of Bloodstone right through my back and into my heart.
• • • • •
KNAVESMIRE, DRACNESSE.
EDWINA
We had arrived again into this world, howling in the screaming darkness.
My hands - they refused to stop shaking, shaking with horrible fear. The screams in the air were going to make my eardrums burst, I thought I was going to die from the sound of it - I thought it was going to kill me.
The sight of my dying brother wracked my vision and hacked it apart, urging my heart to beat faster, to beat harder - to get him out alive of this - I couldn't let him die. My shaking fingers wrenched the platinum ring off as it clattered to the ground, making a horrible ringing sound in my ears over the distant cries of people dying in the city, and my senses returned as soon as I saw the way he clutched at his bleeding chest.
Help - I needed to get him help before I lost him too.
"Help!" I screamed, my voice distant and foreign to my own ears. "We need healers here, right now!"
"No - wait, the Logogram!" Aidon shouted at me, thrusting the tiny golden screw in my shaking hands. "Complete it!"
The weakness in his voice wormed into my brain, filling me with dread. The sight of the huge, blooming stain of blood on his chest threatened to make me sick - I was going to throw up if I heard one more cry. He was already white from the blood loss, and I was so far gone, so drained from exhaustion that I could barely register a thing.
"Edwina!" Aidon weakly ordered me, his hands now stained with even more crimson as he clutched his chest, gods, gods - there was so much blood, gods, it was going to kill him - and he screamed at me as he placed the third screw in one of my palms, the incomplete Logogram in another, shouting for me to join them together.
I did what he told me to.
My shaking fingers barely managed to pick up the tiny screw, straining to hold still as I tried to fit it into the last hole. My eyes were hurting, my head was hurting as I managed to shove the screw in and begun to spin the threads and fit it into place.
And the moment it slid in perfectly, the world exploded.
Destruction erupted from the Logogram and the flames spreading from it burned everything.
The black, malicious presence of the Titan soldiers melted like butter, sending the ground into a thunderous rumble as it began to shake. The Logogram burst into millions of tiny little pieces, flying off into the air like grains of fine sand. Blinding light seared my eyes in its wake as pain shot up my spine.
Cries filled the air, the cries of those black clad soldiers... and their immortal masters.
Buildings shattered around me as if made of mere glass, crumbling into ruins that fell apart and at our feet. We watched with bated breath - watched the battle from the hilltop, our varied, colored armies fighting the black. We watched as the black fell, ebbing away in the twilight, leaving only our men behind.
The cries of those foes slowly began to wash away gently, as if slowly dying away.
And when they were gone, the only sounds that remained were the louder, heavier screams of the Titans roaring.
And in a matter of minutes, those cries too... they died out.
Leaving only dead, blinking silence as the world stared back at me, washed through with blood and pain.
Aidon's eyes were nearly closed, his chest weakly rising and falling as his hands tried to grip mine, to look at me with dying eyes that pleaded for mercy, for an end to the pain. He clutched my fingers tightly as I frantically scrambled around to tear off his leather jerkin, my moments jarred and blurred through with tears - those screams, those sounds which left my lips tore the air apart.
"HELP ME! SOMEONE SAVE MY BROTHER!"
"Edwina," he breathed, his voice breaking, stuttering, as if seized by an invincible cold. "Edwina - my son -"
"You don't get to die on me!" I screamed, and now there were hands around me, the villagers who had found us both, their words seemingly distant to me ears. "You don't get to - HELP HIM!"
"No..." he gasped, his lips pulled back as words tumbled from his lips with enormous effort, "promise me - promise me you'll look after my son!"
"NO!"
HELP, HELP, HELP - it went round and round in circles in my head, destroying any last piece of sanity that filled my soul, cracking past the invisible barrier to my soulmate on the other end of the continent.
'Help him, Tristan,' I begged, 'help him - please help him - I can't lose my brother.'
The words he said back to me barely registered, barely absorbed into my thoughts over the loud wails as Irina fell over my brother's body, shuddering with great sobs as the healers arrived, carrying a gurney. They picked him up, his blanched white face tearing at me with every second that passed.
My beloved's voice rang in my head.
'I love you,' he whispered. 'I love you so much, Edwina. Promise me you will never forget that, okay?'
'I promise,' I murmured, tears rolling down my cheeks at the promise of a peaceful future. 'I love you too.'
Far away, a babe began to cry.
These sounds - they inched into every pore of my open, vulnerable body, seizing whatever it pleased as an offering, filling me up with every terrible thing one could think of - hate for myself, disgust, and loathing. I was horrible - I was a monster - I did not deserve to live after all that I had done.
The screams did not fade away even though the people uttering them did, as the silent procession carried my brother away to the healers' tent, and there were Emeline's cold hands wrapping around me as she looked at the wounds carelessly littered across my body. Theodore's calm eyes, quietly examining for fractures as he pushed a cup of tonic into my hands. Their whispers floated across to me, there, there, they whispered. He'll be okay, they whispered.
And in the end, there was no one left in that empty, barren wasted graveyard except for me, rocking quietly in silence as tears refused to stop falling down my cheeks.
• • • • •
HEWE, STEFFITH.
TRISTAN
Smoke.
There was so much smoke.
The Citadel had shattered like a castle of sand behind me.
I had not seen it. I heard it.
I heard the screams of our foes dying out in the sunset, I heard the cries of pain. I heard the slow, dull, echo of metal clanking against metal, the flames flickering around the camps. The smell of corpses lingered in the air, which fell silent for a moment as the ripples of shock brought the entire field to a standstill.
She had done it - Edwina had done it.
My sweet, beautiful, loving woman - she had done it.
My soulmate. My life. My sanity.
Zadicus had collapsed a few meters away from me, his great body felled to the ground like a giant, slumbering beast. His breath came in short, sharp gasps, just like mine. Blood had pooled around him - pitch black blood that was darker than ink.
The moment he had struck me - Elodie's undead form had turned around on her heel and disappeared. And I knew why.
She had intended to kill me.
And Zadicus... he had done that task for her.
And that meant - it meant that I was going to die.
The sword had pushed right into my back... and the other end emerged from my chest.
I was dying.
The pain throbbed deep in my guts, as if someone were tightly squeezing my organs as hard as they could. Was this how Edwina had felt when those people had nearly tortured her to death? Was this the insufferable pain she had been in as she slowly bled out on that floor?
Tears streaked down my cheeks... tears of grief, and tears of sadness, and tears of all the things that we had lost. Tears of anger for what she had been through. Tears of foolishness that I had let myself be wounded like this. Tears of sorrow, at the state my death would leave her in.
I could literally feel my heart torn into pieces, slowly filling with poison from the sword. No healer could patch up an injury like this. There was no hope - none at all. Not for me.
I lay quietly in that silent graveyard, counting my breaths even as I looked up at the sky. The clouds were a glowing auburn in the dying twilight... just the precise shade as her lovely hair.
Her beautiful hair. I'd never get to run my fingers through it again.
Never get to hear her laugh again. Never get to see her beautiful smile again.
Life was slowly draining out of me, even as I managed to pull the wretched sword out from my back.
I pressed my finger to the wound, and sucked in a sharp breath as pain spiraled over my body. There were colorful spots along the sides of my vision, and I had to bite my lip to keep myself from screaming. I was hardly able to move... there was so much pain throbbing in my chest that I couldn't even breathe.
'Help him, Tristan,' her voice rang into my thoughts, 'help him - please help him - I can't lose my brother.'
'He's going to live,' I tried to keep my voice from faltering. 'He's going to live, and you are going to be strong for him. Promise me.'
She did not reply, did not speak. I did not know where she was. I did not know if she was injured. If she was in pain. If she was hurt. I wanted to put my hands around her, to hold her close to me one last time. I had to tell her - tell her that I loved her. One last time. I wanted to hear her voice one last time.
But I could not.
Her brother needed her - I did not know why, or how, but he was dying. And he needed her.
There was still hope. For him.
None for me.
Nothing could help me now. There was nothing in the world that could keep me from that dark grave. But her brother, he needed her.
I wanted to be selfish.
Wanted to have her here. Wanted to see her one last time. Wanted her to hold my head in her lap as I slowly drifted away.
But Aidon needed her more... he could make it out alive.
So I kept the pain to myself and let the silent tears slowly roll down my cheeks as the darkness loomed closer and closer.
'I love you,' I spoke into her mind. 'I love you so much, Edwina. Promise me you will never forget that, okay?'
There were screams in the distance, screams that pierced my brain and made me want to pull out my hair. Someone had spotted me... or the trail of blood that had followed in my wake before I fell. There were more shouts, more cries as footsteps rang dully on the ground as they got to me. Someone was shaking me, but there was only one sound that I wanted to hear.
'I promise,' she finally murmured back to me. 'I love you too.'
There was so much hope in her voice... so much hope. Hope for us. Hope for a better life. Hope for peace. I kept my sobs to myself instead of letting them slip into my words. There was a feeling of lightness in my head as it spun and reeled. What I supposed was my life began to flash in front of my eyes, spinning quickly as if in painful flashbacks.
Elodie and me, sitting on top of a tree before she playfully threw me into the pond beneath us. The war... the terrible war. All those men who had begged for mercy. Men I had killed. My sister - and how my hands shook when they plunged the dagger into her. How I lived out the rest of my years in centuries of despair. The day I saw her for the first time - all wicked red lips and enchanting green eyes. How she had married me. Our first kiss: I could remember it as if it were yesterday. I could remember it all... the whitewashed walls of the Citadel, the way she spoke my name. The way she tipped back her head and laughed when I told her I loved her. The way I had smiled in amusement when she told me that she loved me too.
Memories... they cut sharper than knives.
I loved her so much. So much.
"No!" a cry broke into my drifting thoughts. Miriel's purple eyes came in hazy view, tears rolling down her cheeks as she grasped my blood slickened hand. "No..."
"It's okay," I whispered, my voice unnervingly calm, even to me. "Everything will be okay."
"Gods - Tristan... no," a man dropped to his knees behind me, face twisted in pain as his eyes traveled over the gaping wound in my chest. Eric.
The pain in my chest faded away into an icy, throbbing numbness. I could barely see past the edges of my vision. The only thing I heard was my feeble, weakening heartbeat over the dim lull of voices as people swarmed around me. They wanted to help me, I realized.
They wanted to save me.
I tried to laugh. To laugh one more time at the miserable irony of the universe. Surely they could tell that it was far too late. Death had claimed me, dooming me from the moment the weapon had pierced my heart.
"Tell - tell her," my voice cracked slightly, gasping for breath. "Tell Edwina. Please..." I coughed up more blood, the metallic taste filling my mouth. I caught sight of Helios's crestfallen face as people gathered around me. "Please tell her that I think of her every time I open my eyes. Please tell her - that I see her every time I close my eyes. Please... tell her that she gave me more joy in a year of marriage than I ever got in those four centuries of my damned existence. I love her, and I will love her... after I go."
"You're not dying," a new voice frantically broke into my head. "You're not dying on me. No!"
Now there were more hands, hands quietly ordering for a knife to slice the leathers open, feeling the muscle beneath... some quick orders given around, silent and careful - Vivian's grey eyes darkened slightly as he came into hazy view, his lips pressed with despair yet doing his best to save the miserable thing that was my life.
He knew.
"Tell her to... to please - please don't mourn too long," blood bubbled at my lips, filling up my throat, choking my voice. It was getting harder and harder to breathe. "Please... look after her when I'm gone," I stammered, gripping the young hand harder, "help her, for the love of all that is holy. Help her, I beg you."
I could only smile one last time, smile at the world that had been so cruel to us. I'd look over her from heaven, make sure that she was safe. That she was loved. That I was so, so sorry this had happened.
"Tell Edwina I love her and that I'm sorry," I croaked, my head resting on the hard ground as I stared off into the sunset.
Then I closed my eyes and saw her in my mind, before the last breath finally slipped out of my body.
• • • • •
Tristan Valmont's death: this marks the end of an era.
It feels just so finite. So brutal. And so irreversible.
You never really realise how much you love a person until they are truly gone. I know it hurts. It's hurt me a lot too. I wrote this chapter nearly half a year back and I sit here today in front of my laptop to edit it. I'm not even aware of the tears that are on my cheeks. This was a chapter I was really holding out and even now, I'm very reluctant to get it out of my Drive and onto the screen. And the reason: I do not know how you all will react.
You might curse me. Or cry. Or weep all night. Or scream.
And I won't blame you. I had this one coming since a very, very long time. This chapter really made a hole in my heart and writing it has changed me in a way I've never been in a very long time. Even as I write this, there are tears dripping down my cheeks. I'm crying so hard, I literally can't feel, can't think over this chapter. This chapter... it has been the most disturbing one to write ever. I don't think I will ever get over this - I'm just struggling to put my feelings into words, okay? I mean, Tristan - he's always been such a rock steady presence, he's always seemed so invincible, it never even seemed like anything could ever happen to him. And seeing one of my strongest characters in such a sorry state... I just - I can't. I can't deal with this.
He knew it was coming. That Death was waiting for him. So he went and greeted it like an old friend - and he gave up any hope of seeing her one last time because Aidon needed her. If she had known that Tristan was dying... their parting could have been bit easier. But once Edwina finds out that Tristan lied to her, that he was dying the entire time he talked to her - trust me, you really do not want to be around to see that.
You might have realized that Edwina and Tristan behaved in exactly the same way when their siblings were dying in front of their eyes. It's just one of the sadder, painful similarities between them.
I think that the saddest thing about the battle was how it changed Edwina and Tristan over the course of a few hours. The both started out as bloodthirsty and confident, hungry for victory - and they both ended up almost giving in and just accepting defeat. I say almost because they did manage to hold out till the end - they held out and managed to win the battle... but at what cost did they win?