Page 46 of A Kingdom of Wild and Power
Mal expected to feel protective. She expected fear, rage,something,at the way the creature watched the life growing inside her. But she felt nothing at all. Ash already loved their child with a fierceness that bordered on reverence, and part of her cherished him for it.
Another part despised him.
She hated that he would choose the child over her.
The creature laughed, a sound sharp and knowing.
‘This is your fault,’ Mal hissed, turning towards it. ‘You are rotting my mind, poisoning me with these vile thoughts. I should not feel this way about my own child.’
‘Should you not?’ the creature asked in Mal’s own voice, tilting its head. ‘That child will be your end one day.’
‘I will not become my mother,’ Mal snapped.
The creature laughed again, louder this time.
‘But you already have, Mal Blackburn,’ it whispered. ‘You already have.’
Mal ignored the presence beside her, the thing that was both stranger and self, the God-Killer that had splintered from her soul and taken on a will of its own. She did not question how it existed. She only knew that one day it would not sit beside her anymore. One day, it would fold back into her completely.
And then she would be lost to the world.
Mal Blackburn would cease to exist.
A part of her accepted that truth with unsettling calm. A part of her was willing to let go, if it meant the world would be safe, if it meant Ash and their daughter could live in a realm untouched by gods, unthreatened by divine cruelty.
The creature chuckled softly.
Because Mal also knew this thing would not disappear gently. It would wear her down, hollow her out, rot her soul from the inside until apathy replaced mercy. The curse that bound her to Ash would ensure she loved him regardless. Endlessly and irrevocably. But love did not forbid hatred. Love did not cleanse it away.
She could love him and despise him in the same breath.
Hate him for the truths he had kept from her. Hate him forchoosing their daughter over her. Hate him for a curse that demanded devotion without consent. And hate him most of all…
For not saving her.
Mal cursed herself for entertaining such thoughts. Since when had Mal Blackburn ever needed saving? She was a wyverian princess, a fourthborn with purple eyes and fire in her veins. She had been forged by battle, tempered by blood and steel, and had spent her life fighting her own wars with blade in hand.
‘Damn you,’ she hissed at the thing beside her. ‘Stop clawing at my mind.’
The creature cackled, delighted by her fury.
‘Get out of my head!’
‘I cannot,’ it replied smoothly. ‘We are bound, you and I. Two faces of the same truth. Always.’
So Mal closed her eyes and vanished.
She fled far from mortal lands, abandoning the place where the creature lingered, laughing at her desperation. She slipped into her shadow realm, a place no other could enter. There, she landed lightly upon the ground of an empty kingdom that mirrored her wyverian lands, but only in shape. Everything here was cursed to smoke and shade, to drifting darkness. Even her own body had changed, unraveling into mist, no longer flesh but shadow given form.
‘Took you long enough,’ a voice drawled behind her.
Mal turned, relief softening her chest at the sight of Vera standing near the castle’s entrance. She glanced up at the structure looming above them, just as grand as its mortal counterpart, yet fashioned of nightmares. It rose like liquid darkness, smoke and dust flowing upward into an endless, lightless sky.
Wyverns roared somewhere far away, their cries echoing through the void.
‘Come,’ Vera said, her form shimmering, no longer bound by flesh or bone but shaped of shadow and drifting smoke. ‘My sister Allegra is inside. She’s been waiting.’
It was strange to see Vera again. The last time Mal had looked upon her, she had driven a sword through Vera’s stomach—though it had not truly been Vera then. Her body had been stolen, worn like a skin by Eris, used as a vessel upon mortal soil. By killing Vera, Mal had banished the goddess from the world of flesh. Where Eris had gone after that, no one could say.
