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They were so small. Mirobhail only reached my chest in height, and Vanna was hardly above my hip. Their cheeks were so round, their dead eyes so innocent.

And their throats were sliced open.

At the top of my lungs, I screamed. I screamed for Nix. I screamed for my mum. I screamed my children’s names, as though that could possibly return them to me.

I prayed to the stars. They never answered, but I prayed, and I prayed, and Ifuckingprayed that this was all a dream. The last few days, the last year. I had to wake up. It couldn’t be real. It couldn’t be true.

I hadn’t fought for millenniums to have a family only to have it torn from me before my oldest was a teenager. I hadn’t created a world and failed to save my own children.

I couldn’t have. This wasn’t real.

A punch.

Straight through my torso.

Then a sensation of suction, as though someone was ripping me backward.

The blade I’d dropped to lift my children was no longer on the ground at my side.

His face was at my ear. In my peripheral, I saw his eyes.

The ring of white that illuminated the edge of his irises.

Elvan ore didn’t kill those who’d taken the elixir.

The moment I had that blade in hand, I should’ve lapsed. I should’ve collected my babies’ bodies, and I should’ve gone somewhere else. Where, I didn’t know. I couldn’t open the egress to the Land of Light on my own. My home wasn’t safe considering Friel and Aein’s souls swirled in the gem at the handle of that blade.

Where would I have even gone?

“You are no queen. You are no god. The one true god has won. You will never rule again. Goddess of mothers and look at you. Dying beside your dead children. Pitiful.”

Releasing Vanna’s body, in one swift motion, I grasped ahold of his throat, and I squeezed. Fire licked between the flesh, and he squealed, just as my children had. I don’t know what strength possessed me, but when he tried to free my fingers, I refused to let go.

Finding my blade in the blood on the ground, I pounded it into his face again.

And again.

And again.

I didn’t know how many times.

As he fell backward, I used every bit of energy I possessed, climbed over top of him, and stabbed, and stabbed, and stabbed.

I used his blade as well, stabbing until I was coated in so much blood, I couldn’t see anything.

I didn’t know if I succeeded. I didn’t know if he was dead when I collapsed to the ground beside him.

But fucking stars, I hoped he was.

CHAPTERTWENTY-THREE

NIX

Screams.

Screams from every direction.

Smoke.