Page 126 of A House of Gold
I'm screaming. I must be screaming because I can hear it, distant and raw. The creature's essence, if you can call nothing an essence, pours into me like liquid nitrogen. Freezing. Erasing. Unmaking everything it touches.
This is what it feels like to not exist.
Through the binding, I feel Croesus's fury spike into something beyond rage. Beyond territory or possession or greed.
Pure, primal terror.
The creature holding me explodes.
Not metaphorically. It literally explodes, detonates from the inside out as Croesus's power hits it like a hammer. The void essence scatters, and suddenly I can breathe again.
I'm on my knees. When did I fall? My hands are shaking so hard I drop the ritual knife. It clatters on the marble, and I stare at it like I've never seen a knife before.
The cold is still inside me. The void. The nothing.
I'm dying.
I can feel it, my life force, my soul, whatever makes me me, it's being consumed by the emptiness the shadow walker left behind. Like frost spreading through my veins, killing everything it touches.
Strong hands grab my shoulders. Croesus, kneeling in front of me. His gold eyes are wild, terrified in a way I've never seen.
"Stay with me." His voice is raw. "Raven, stay with me. Don't leave me."
"Can't." My voice doesn't sound right. Too distant. "It's inside me."
"I know. I can feel it through the binding." His hands move to my face, forcing me to look at him. "Listen to me. You tried to absorb it like it was sin. But it's not sin. It's the opposite. It's absence. Negation."
"Make it stop."
"I can't pull it out. If I try, it'll kill you faster." His jaw clenches. "But I can give you something to fight it with. My power. My essence. Greed to counter the void."
Through the haze of cold and pain, I understand what he's offering. Not just power, part of himself. His sin, unfiltered and raw, directly into my soul.
It could save me.
Or it could destroy me just as surely as the void.
"Do it." I gasp.
He doesn't hesitate.
His hands press flat against my chest, right over my heart, and golden light pours into me.
Not like the binding, this is deeper, more intimate, more intense. This is Croesus himself, the core of what he is, flooding into my body to fill the spaces the void is trying to erase.
Greed. Pure, distilled, overwhelming greed.
I want. I want everything. I want to live. I want to take and keep and possess and hoard. I want to fill every empty space with more, always more, never enough, never satisfied,
It's too much. Both sensations at once, the void trying to unmake me and the greed trying to make me into something that can never be unmade.
I'm being torn apart between nothing and everything.
But slowly, agonizingly, the greed starts to win.
Because greed, at its core, is survival. The desperate need to have, to hold, to keep existing. And right now, that's exactly what I need.
The void burns away under the weight of Croesus's power. I feel it retreating, dissolving, until finally, finally, there's nothing left but warmth and gold and the overwhelming sensation of being alive.
