Chapter 10: Flames and Fangs
The silence after Rigelus’s body hit the cobblestones was the loudest thing Aria had ever heard. It wasn't just the absence of his voice; it was the ringing void where his power had been, the sudden, deafening vacancy of a god removed from the world.
The sword in her hand hummed, a low, contented thrum against her palm. The grey flame danced, lazy and wicked.
Bryce was the first to move, a sharp flinch as if waking from a nightmare. “Holy fucking shit,” she breathed, the words barely audible. Hunt’s wings gave a single, reflexive snap, sending a gust across the courtyard that stirred the fine hairs on Rigelus’s severed head. Ruhn just stared, his face pale, shadows recoiling back into him as if burnt by the scene.
Ithan hadn’t moved. He was still staring at Aria, his expression carved from stone and sorrow. He’d known. He’d always known. The truth was a weight between them now, a third presence in the space alongside the corpse and the sword.
Aria looked down at the head. The pale eyes were open, fixed on some middle distance, the surprise already chilling into empty glass. A line of black, shimmering ichor leaked from the neck-stump onto the stones. The body hadn’t dissolved into light or dust. It was just… meat. Profane, ancient, royal meat.
Something cold and relentless settled in her gut. He wasn’t getting back up. Not ever. But she needed to be sure.
She took two steps forward, the grey-flamed sword held loosely at her side. She positioned the tip over Rigelus’s staring face. Then, with a clinical, brutal precision, she drove it down.
The blade punched through the forehead with a wet crack, through skull and brain matter, and kept going, sinking six inches into the packed earth beneath. The grey flame flared, greedily drinking the last of the Asteri’s essence trapped in the flesh. The ichor around the wound sizzled and evaporated into foul-smelling smoke.
Only then did she let go of the hilt. It stood upright, a grim marker on a grave.
She turned her back on it.
Her focus narrowed, tunneling down to the broken form crumpled a dozen feet away. Everything else—the stunned pack, her brother’s shattered gaze, the smoking head—faded into a blur of irrelevant noise.
Dae lay where he’d been tossed. He was curled on his side, one leg bent at a wrong angle. His remaining arm was twisted beneath him. The stump of his right shoulder was a ruin of blackened tissue and crystalline blood. His breathing was a shallow, wet rasp.
He was alive.
Fae healing was legendary, but this… this was a threshold. She’d seen wolves die from less. But he was Avallen royalty, his bloodline old and steeped in deep magic. If anyone could crawl back from this, it was him. The arm would regrow. It would take time, and agony, and power he didn’t currently have, but it would happen. If he lived.
She dropped to her knees beside him, the rough stone biting through her leggings. Her hands hovered over him, afraid to touch, to cause more damage. The bond, that fragile psychic tether, was a live wire of pure, undiluted agony. She didn’t feel his pain secondhand anymore; she was drowning in it. It was a symphony of fractures, burns, and a soul-deep exhaustion that threatened to simply blink out.
His eyelashes fluttered. One hazel eye cracked open, swimming with confusion and pain. It found her face, and something in it cleared, just a little.
“Hey sweet girl,” he slurred, the words thick around the blood in his mouth.
A choked sound escaped her, halfway between a laugh and a sob. “You’ve seen better days, Donnall.”
The corner of his cracked lips twitched. “Yeah, well.” He sucked in a ragged breath, fighting to form the words. “Every day’s a good day if you’re there.”
His remaining hand, caked in dirt and blood, twitched on the ground. She reached for it, lacing her fingers with his. His grip was terrifyingly weak. He used the connection to pull her hand to his leg, his fingers finding her thigh. He held on, not for comfort, but as an anchor to consciousness. His gaze drifted past her, over her shoulder, to where the Firegard stood plunged into the earth and her father’s skull. The hungry grey flame reflected in his dilated pupil.
He focused back on her, confusion wrestling with a dawning, horrifying understanding. “That should’ve killed you,” he rasped, fresh blood bubbling at the corner of his lips.
Aria smirk. It felt alien on her face, a savage, broken thing. She reached out with her free hand, not to him, but to drag the tip of the Firegard’s blade through the puddle of Rigelus’s spilled ichor. The liquid sizzled and smoked on contact with the grey flame, winking out of existence.
“Turns out I’m full of surprises, Your Highness.” She leaned down, her light brown hair a curtain around them both, and pressed her lips to his sweat-and-blood-stained forehead. Her kiss left a smudge of clean skin amidst the grime.
A shudder went through him, part pain, part a feeble, broken laugh. ‘Of course,’ he grunted, the thought bleeding into the bond, thick with irony and a staggering, helpless affection. ‘Of course my girlfriend’s half eternal goddess.’
Footsteps approached—cautious, heavy. Ithan. Aria didn’t look up. She kept her forehead against Dae’s, her hand in his, her other hand now resting gently on his chest, feeling the faint, thready beat of his heart.
“Aria,” Ithan’s voice was low, a tremor running through the single word. It held a thousand questions, a lifetime of protected secrets, and a fear deeper than any enemy had ever inspired.
“Not now,” she said, her voice quiet but absolute. She was looking at Dae’s face, watching the slow, painful focus return to his eye. The bond was shifting, the overwhelming tsunami of his pain beginning to recede by microns, replaced by a fierce, stubborn will to claw his way back. The Fae healing, slowed by the Asteri-made injuries and his depleted power, was finally engaging. She could feel it, like frost thawing along the connection.
Around them, the Pack Compound was waking up from its shock. Whispers turned to shouts. Orders were barked. The massive forms of Gate and the other lieutenants closed in, forming a protective, wary ring around the scene, their eyes on the sword, the corpse, their Prime’s sister kneeling in the center of it all.
But in the space between Aria and Dae, there was only the ragged sound of his breathing slowing, the weak grip of his hand on her thigh, and the silent, world-altering truth hanging in the air, as real and sharp as the blade standing vigil over the dead.
But in the space between Aria and Dae, there was only the ragged sound of his breathing slowing, the weak grip of his hand on her thigh, and the silent, world-altering truth hanging in the air, as real and sharp as the blade standing vigil over the dead.
His focus was slipping again, the one eye she could see beginning to cloud over. A fresh trickle of black-edged blood seeped from the charred ruin of his shoulder. Fae healing was powerful, but this was a wound made to resist it, to fester and consume. It was winning. She could feel his life force ebbing through the bond, a slow, cold leak.
Her hands, still hovering over him, began to shake. Not from fear. From a sudden, violent instinct. A deep, cellular knowledge she’d spent her entire life suppressing. The Asteri had many powers, but one universal constant was their capacity for regeneration. To heal themselves, and others, from nearly any wound. She was only half. She’d gotten little from her father—thank the gods, because if she’d gotten his cruelty, his hunger, she’d have destroyed herself long ago. But this… this she had.
She didn’t think. She acted.
Aria placed her palms flat against the center of Dae’s chest, ignoring the sticky blood and grit. She closed her eyes. She didn’t know how to do it. There was no manual. She just reached inward, to that cold, silent well of power she’d always sensed but never tapped, and she pulled.
A light, faint and silver-white, not like Bryce’s starlight but like moonlight on frost, bloomed under her palms. It seeped into Dae’s broken body. She felt his ribs knitting, the internal bleeding slowing, the savage toxin in the shoulder wound meeting a wall of pure, obliterating light. The grey, necrotic edges of the stump began to pinken.
Dae gasped, his back arching off the stones. His eye flew open, wide with shock.
“What… are you doing?” he choked out.
“Shut up,” she whispered, her voice strained. The pull was immense, draining. It felt like pouring her own blood directly into his veins. Sweat beaded on her temple. She kept pushing.
The light grew brighter, purer. It pushed back the creeping shadow of the Asteri wound. The brutalized flesh at his shoulder began to seal, to smooth, stopping just short of regeneration. It was clean, now. Sterile. Ready, maybe, for his own Fae magic to finally take over. The difference was immediate. The bond flared, not with agony, but with a profound, staggering relief.
Ithan’s shadow fell over them. He’d watched the entire thing, the silver light, the change in Dae’s breathing. His face was unreadable. “Aria,” he said again, his voice rough.
She pulled her hands back. The light vanished. The effort left her trembling, cold sweat chilling her skin. Dae’s breathing was deeper, more even. He was unconscious, but it was a true sleep now, not a spiral toward death. She sat back on her heels, wiping her bloody hands on her thighs. She finally looked up at her brother.
The courtyard was holding its breath around them. Pack warriors stood frozen, unsure if they should be guarding against external threats or the one that had just been born in their midst.
“How long have you known?” Ithan asked. The question wasn’t loud. It was a blade slipped between ribs.
Aria met his green eyes, so like her own, and saw the hurt there. The betrayal. He’d carried this secret for her, protected her from it, and she’d known all along. She shrugged, a tired, defeated motion. “Conner told me. About five years ago. He’d overheard Mom talking when we were kids.”
Ithan flinched as if struck. He stared at the ground between them, at the dark spatter of Rigelus’s blood near his boots. “I didn’t think you knew,” he murmured. “He made me swear never to talk about it. To anyone. Especially not to you.”
“He was trying to protect me,” Aria said, but it sounded hollow even to her. Conner was gone. His protection had left a hole she’d been falling through ever since. “From that.” She jerked her chin toward the sword, the head, the reality of what she was.
“Yeah, well,” Ithan said, finally looking at her. His gaze was full of a brother’s grief and a Prime’s calculation. “He can’t protect you from this. Not anymore.” He gestured at the scene, at Dae on the ground between them. “What happens now? You just murdered an Asteri. In front of my entire pack.”
Aria followed his gesture. The Firegard still stood, its grey flame a silent, hungry landmark in the center of their world. The body was just a body. The head was just a head. The act was done. She felt nothing looking at it. No triumph, no horror. Just a vast, empty certainty.
“Now,” she said, her voice quiet but clear in the hushed yard, “we clean up your courtyard.” She looked from the corpse to Dae’s sleeping face, then back to Ithan. “And then we figure out what we do before the other six show up looking for their brother.”
“And then we figure out what we do before the other six show up looking for their brother,” Aria finished, the words hanging in the bloody air.
Ithan opened his mouth, probably to say they should move the body, secure the sword, get Dae to a proper healer. He never got the chance.
The air above the fountain in the center of the courtyard didn’t tear open this time. It shimmered, like heat rising off summer asphalt. A shape resolved within the distortion, descending gracefully until its feet touched the damp cobblestones. It was a female figure, slender and ethereal, dressed in simple grey robes. Her hair was silver, her eyes were wide with a terror she couldn’t fully conceal, and she held no weapon. Only a small, polished wooden box.
Every wolf in the yard tensed, a unified growl ripping through the space. Hunt’s lightning sparked. Bryce’s hand glowed. Ruhn’s shadows coiled.
The female flinched, her eyes darting from the still-smoking corpse to the sword standing sentinel in its skull to Aria, who was now slowly rising to her feet. The messenger’s gaze stuck on Aria. She dropped to one knee, bowing her head so low her silver hair pooled on the ground.
“Speaker for the Celestial Court,” she said, her voice a melodic tremor. “Do not… do not harm me. I am unarmed. I bear only words.”
Aria just stared. The emptiness inside her where shock or triumph should have been remained hollow. She felt nothing but a cold, acute fatigue. “Speak them then,” she said, her own voice flat.
The messenger didn’t look up. She lifted the wooden box in both hands, offering it toward Aria. “A formal conveyance. From the remaining Asteri to the… to the one who wields the Firegard.”
Hunt took a threatening step forward, his wings mantling. “A box? After that?” He gestured angrily at Dae’s broken form. “You think we’re accepting gifts?”
“It is not a gift!” the messenger said hurriedly, still bowed. “It is a message. Of truce. Of… understanding.” She finally chanced a glance up, her eyes pleading. “Please. Just… just take it.”
Aria walked forward. Her legs felt like wood. She stopped a few feet from the kneeling figure and took the box. It was light, smooth, and utterly mundane. No magic hummed from it. She flipped the simple brass latch and opened the lid.
Inside, on a bed of black velvet, lay a single piece of thick, cream-colored parchment. The handwriting upon it was elegant, precise, and devoid of any shimmering power. It was just ink.
Aria read it aloud, her voice devoid of inflection.
“To the one who holds the Firegard: Keep it. Wield it. The conflict is concluded. The line of Rigelus is extinguished by its own blood, which is the oldest and most legitimate form of succession. The Celestial Court acknowledges this. We have no quarrel with you. Do what you will. Please do not consider us your enemies.”
The silence that followed was different from before. It wasn’t the shock of violence. It was the profound, disorienting quiet of the universe shifting on its axis.
Bryce snorted, a harsh, disbelieving sound. “Are you fucking kidding me?”
“It’s a trick,” Hunt said immediately, his golden eyes scanning the sky. “They’re stalling. Regrouping.”
The messenger finally rose, her movements shaky. “It is not a trick. You slaughtered one of the seven eternal monarchs of this world with a weapon we cannot touch, borne by a heritage we did not fully comprehend. The calculus has changed.” Her eyes found Aria’s again, and genuine, unfiltered awe mixed with the fear. “You are an anomaly. An absolute. To fight you is… illogical. The Court wishes only to continue existing. You may do as you please, so long as it is not our end.”
Aria looked from the note to the messenger, then to the sword still impaling her father’s head. She closed the box with a soft click. “So that’s it. You’re just… walking away. From him.” She nodded toward Dae.
The messenger followed her gaze, her expression turning carefully neutral. “The Prince of Avallen is an internal Fae matter. The Court no longer has an interest in his holdings or his person. His disputes are his own.”
“Convenient,” Ruhn muttered, his voice thick with disdain.
Aria stood there, the box in her hand feeling impossibly heavy. The threat that had defined her life, her brother’s life, the entire world’s tension, had just evaporated. It had been replaced not by peace, but by a terrifying, vacant freedom. She had become the monster under the bed of the monsters under the bed.
She turned her back on the messenger. “Tell them I read their note.”
“Is… is there a reply?” the messenger asked, hope fluttering in her voice.
Aria looked at Ithan, whose face was a mask of stunned calculation. She looked at Bryce and Hunt, who wore identical expressions of wary disbelief. She looked down at Dae, whose breathing was now deep and even in true, healing sleep. She looked at the pack, her pack, watching her with a mixture of fear, confusion, and a dawning, ferocious pride.
“No,” Aria said, finally. “There’s no reply. Get out of our territory.”
The messenger bowed again, a quick, jerky motion of sheer relief. The air around her shimmered once more, and she was gone, leaving behind only the scent of ozone and the crushing weight of a cancelled apocalypse.
Ithan let out a long, slow breath. He ran a hand over his face. “Holy hell.”
“They’re scared of you,” Bryce said, staring at Aria with new, intense curiosity. “The Asteri are literally scared of you.”
Aria didn’t feel scary. She felt drained, hollowed out. The adrenaline was gone, leaving a profound weariness in its place. The silver light she’d pulled forth to heal Dae had taken something from her, something core. She walked back to Dae’s side, sinking down beside him. His color was better. The horrific wound was clean, stabilized.
“They’re not scared of me,” she said quietly, her fingers brushing a strand of bloody hair from his forehead. “They’re scared of the sword. And of what they made me do to get it.” She looked at the note in its box, then tossed it aside onto the stones. It skittered near Rigelus’s outstretched hand. “They’re bureaucrats. They just voted my father off the island because I had the only weapon that could do it.”
Hunt nudged the head with his boot. The sword wobbled. “So what’s the plan? Because I’m not gonna lie, ‘do what you will’ from the six remaining all-powerful beings feels like a trap wrapped in a really polite bow.”
“The plan,” Ithan said, his Prime voice cutting through the speculation. He pointed at Gate. “Burn that body. Reduce it to ash and scatter it in four different rivers.” He pointed at Knuckle and Tracker. “Get Prince Donnall to the infirmary. Watch him. If he so much as twitches wrong, you call me.” Finally, he looked at the Firegard. He didn’t point. He just looked at Aria. “That stays with you. You’re the only one who can touch it without… whatever happens to everyone else.”
Aria looked at the grey-flamed blade. The idea of pulling it from her father’s skull made her stomach turn. But leaving it there was worse. It was a monument to something she needed to move past. She stood up, her knees protesting. She walked over to the grim scene, the pack watching her every move.
She wrapped her hand around the leather-bound hilt. It was warm. It hummed, a familiar, waiting vibration. She yanked it free.
The blade came out with a sickening wet sound. The grey flame danced, unperturbed. She stared at the severed head for a second longer, at the blank, dead eyes that had once looked down on her from a throne of stars. Then she turned her back on him for the final time.
“Okay,” she said, sheathing the sword in a scabbard that wasn’t there. The flame vanished as if snuffed, leaving the blade dull and grey once more. It was just a sword. In her hand. “Let’s get Dae inside. Then I need to sleep for about a year.”
A small, weak sound made her turn. Dae’s one good eye was open again, watching her. He’d heard. His lips, cracked and bloody, moved.
“Nap sounds good,” he slurred, his voice a dry leaf rustle. “I’ll join you. In a decade or two.”
Aria almost smiled. Almost. She walked back to him as the pack sprang into motion around them, cleaning the evidence of a revolution from their stones. She knelt, taking his hand again. His grip was stronger this time. He held on like she was the only real thing in the world.
Maybe she was.