Page 138 of A Kingdom of Wild and Power
‘So you believe Zagreus will help me?’ she asked instead. ‘Even if it means condemning his own mother to Hell?’
‘I do.’
She ignored the unease shining through Thanatos’ eyes, the silent question of what she had become, of how easily she spoke of using Zagreus, of how little she seemed to care that Makariastill suffered below. It should have unsettled her too.
Once, it would have.
But she had lost too much to tremble now.
Mal rose to her feet and crossed into her own chamber. She did not need to glance behind her to know Thanatos followed, quiet and inevitable as a shadow at dusk. She stripped off the dress she wore without hesitation and searched for something more fitting, something that belonged to fire and ruin rather than mourning halls.
She felt Thanatos’ eyes upon her bare skin and did not flinch.
She drew on a simple grey dress, practical and severe, tugged black boots over her feet, and fastened a sword across her back. When she caught her reflection in the dim metal of a shield hanging by the wall, she allowed herself a small, crooked smile.
There she was.
A little closer to the version of herself the world had once feared.
‘Wait for me,’ she told Thanatos.
Then she stepped from the chamber, down the winding stairs and into the main hall, where Ash sat waiting.
Those golden eyes narrowed when he saw her, yet he said nothing, as though he had already known this moment would come. He probably had.
‘I’ve come to say goodbye,’ she said, her shoulders drawn tight as bowstrings. She wondered if he could sense Thanatos within the keep, lingering like a chill behind the walls.
Ash only nodded.
The words she truly wished to speak lodged painfully in her throat. She wanted to cross the distance between them, to fold herself into his arms and weep until there was nothing left inside her but salt and sorrow.
But she did not move.
This was what lay ahead of them. Their future. Their fracture.
Nothing between them would ever be the same again.
She saw it there in the molten depths of his stare.
Then Ash rose.
His jaw was clenched so tightly it seemed carved from stone. He crossed the hall without hesitation and stopped before her. His hands came up, warm and steady, cupping her face as though she were something precious and breakable.
He kissed her.
And Mal broke.
It was a farewell. She felt it in the way he held her, in the way his breath trembled against her lips. A kiss meant to be remembered when everything else had burnt to ash.
When he pulled away, the tears were already falling. He brushed them from her cheeks with his thumbs.
‘I want them all dead,’ she whispered, her teeth grinding together. ‘For what they’ve done to my family. For what they’ve done to us.’ More tears slipped free and he wiped them away, one after the other. ‘I want them to burn, Ash. Make them burn.’
‘I’ll make them all burn for you,’ he said, and there was no hesitation in it.
He released her then, stepping back. They stood facing one another across the widening space, memorising what they had been—the laughter, the fury, the stolen tenderness, the love born of curse and choice alike.
‘Promise me,’ she breathed, sealing every memory into herself. The first time she had seen him before the drakonian castle. Their vows. The way she had fainted. The dances beneath torchlight. The quiet hours tangled in sheets and whispers.
