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GAIDA

“No!” I roar as she is ripped from my consciousness and the pressure of the worlds imploding hits me, making my brain want to explode into a thousand pieces.

Draken grips my hand. “Rise, my Queen.”

“What?”

“Rise. You are needed.”

I stare into his green eyes, and time stands still for a moment. I cup his face and rise up to my tiptoes to brush my lips gently over his. “Thank you for everything.”

“Thank me when you’ve saved the worlds. Go.”

“How?”

“You’ll know.”

He releases my hand and steps back, fading to nothing as my throat goes thick with emotion, but then I snap out of it.

“Shit!” I shout as my eyes fly open, and I sit bolt upright on the altar. “Shit a fucking brick!”

Around me, the chamber is collapsing in slow motion. Chunks of rock are suspended in mid-air with reality fracturing along impossible angles. My body feels different. Lighter yet heavier, as if I’m suddenly aware of each atom comprising my existence.

Felix has passed out on the ground, Dante is hovering behind me, Luke and Constantine are basically holding this world together with their bare hands.

“Fuck,” I mutter and leap off the altar. What do I do?

You’ll know.

“Yeah, well, I don’t fucking know. Draken! Help me!”

Silence. I look around frantically as multiple versions of this chamber collapse into themselves.

I throw my hands up with a screech of rage that this is happening because of that stupid bitch.

I surprise myself and everyone else in the chamber when time freezes. Everything except us is still.

“Gaida,” Luke starts, but I cut him off.

“No time. Gotta fix this.”

“How?” Constantine asks, throwing his hand up.

“Good point. Not sure yet. Draken said I’d just know.”

“Draken,” Luke growls.

“Don’t,” I say, holding my hand up in his direction. “Don’t start. Just let me think. Someone see to Felix.”

The power surging through me feels simultaneously alien and familiar, like coming home to a place I’ve never been. As I stare at the frozen chaos around us, understanding dawns.

“The chalice,” I say, turning to Felix’s unconscious form and grabbing the chalice. “It’s not complete.”

Dante kneels beside Felix, checking him for life. “He’s alive, but barely.”

The Blood Queen’s consciousness writhes in the chalice, visible as swirling crimson patterns beneath its surface.

“Each vampire carries a fragment of her divided power, maintaining the separation through our existence.”

Luke frowns at me. “The chalice contains most of her consciousness, but not all.”

“No. Some remains with me. And without complete containment...”

“The worlds will continue to collapse,” Luke finishes.

I look at Dante. “I told you it was the only way.”

Pain suddenly sears through me, white-hot and all-consuming. The Blood Queen’s fury batters against my mind, desperate to escape her new prison.

“I need to complete the binding,” I say steadily, fighting to maintain my grip on the chalice.

“No!” Luke bellows. “You are not sacrificing yourself.”

I turn around and face him. “I have to. It’s the only way.”

“I refuse to accept that,” he says calmly.

“Luke, we don’t have time to debate this. We are all about to die anyway. This way, it’ll just be me.”

“Gaida,” Dante says, shaking his head, tears in his eyes. “Don’t do this.”

“I have to.” I reach out and cup the back of his neck. “You know I have to.”

“I don’t want you to.”

“That’s not the same thing,” I say with a sad smile. “What I said in my mind, remember that, okay? Remember me.”

“Gaida no,” Luke storms over, his rage nearly knocking me off my feet.

“I have to do this,” I say, meeting Luke’s fierce gaze. “The Blood Queen’s consciousness can’t remain divided. Not now, not when the worlds are already collapsing.”

I grip the chalice tighter, feeling its power resonating with the fragment still inside me. It’s magnetic and insistent.

“There must be another way,” Luke insists, his voice breaking with emotion I rarely hear from him.

I place my hand on Dante’s chest, feeling his heart hammering beneath my palm. “I’m not afraid,” I tell him softly. “This is what I was born for.”

“To die?” he asks bitterly.

“To choose,” I correct him. “The Blood Queen never had a choice. She was divided against her will. I’m choosing this.”

The chalice grows warmer in my grip, responding to my decision. The crimson patterns swirl faster, reaching toward me like grasping fingers.

“Felix understood,” I say, glancing at his unconscious form. “That’s why he completed the ritual even knowing what it would cost. Knowing all of you, loving you, has given me the courage to do this. You have given me a reason to want to do this.”

I turn from them, but Luke grips my upper arm and spins me to face him. Before he can speak, I place my fingers on his lips. “Look after Felix for me. He will need you more than anything.”

“Don’t you dare,” he grits out. “Don’t you dare do this. If we all die, then so be it.”

“No, Luke. You don’t mean that. You won’t allow trillions of creatures to die just to stop me from sacrificing myself.”

His face crumples with anguish I’ve never seen before. “I would. For you, I would.”

The raw honesty in his voice nearly breaks my resolve, but I steel myself against it. The worlds continue to collapse around us, held in stasis only by my power. A power that won’t last much longer.

“Live for me instead. I love you,” I say, looking between Luke and Dante and down at Felix. “All of you. So much.”

Focusing my attention on the chalice, the final step is clear to me now, as Draken promised it would be. I need to complete the binding by offering myself as the permanent seal—not just my blood, but my entire being.

I slash my wrist and hold it up over the chalice. My blood pours into it, sizzling as it hits the metal.

Luke lunges forward and smacks it out of my hand. It goes flying across the room. “No!”

“Luke!” I growl. “You have to let me go.”

“Never!”

Constantine moves swiftly, retrieving the chalice from where it landed. My blood bubbles inside it, the binding process already underway. I just need to finish it.

The temporal stasis holding the chamber together flickers dangerously. Chunks of reality phase in and out of existence around us. The power required to maintain this bubble of suspended time drains me rapidly.

“We have seconds,” Constantine warns.

Dante moves to stand beside me, his face a mask of grief. “Is this truly what you want?”

“No,” I answer honestly, looking him directly in the eyes. “What I want is a future with all of you. But what I need to do is save you and everyone else.”

I reach for the chalice in Constantine’s hands. He gives it to me without hesitation, understanding the necessity of my sacrifice in a way the others cannot.

“Constantine, no!” Luke shouts, but it’s too late.

The chalice burns in my grasp, hungry for the remainder of the Blood Queen’s consciousness still inside me. I can feel it pulling, drawing the ancient power toward its depths.

“I need to complete the binding,” I explain, my voice strangely calm despite the searing pain spreading through my body. “My consciousness will serve as the seal. A willing sacrifice, not a forced division.”

“You’ll die,” Dante says, his voice breaking.

“My body will,” I acknowledge. “But I’ll continue to exist, in a sense. As the binding force keeping the Blood Queen contained for eternity.”

The stasis field flickers again. Beyond our bubble of suspended time, I can see the worlds continuing their catastrophic collapse, reality folding in on itself in waves of destruction.

“There’s no time left,” I say firmly. “This has to happen now.” I meet Luke’s eyes. “I know you’re afraid of losing another person you care about. But this isn’t like those times. This isn’t senseless. This matters.”

His resistance falters, something breaking behind his eyes. “I cannot watch you die.”

“Then don’t watch. But please, let me do what I have to.”

The chalice grows hotter in my hands, nearly unbearable now. The crimson swirls in it reach upward, tendrils of ancient consciousness seeking completion.

“Dante,” I say, turning to him. “Tell me you understand.”

He steps forward, tears streaming freely down his face. “I understand. I hate it with everything in me, but I understand.”

That’s all I need. I raise the chalice to my wrist.

“NO!” Felix’s voice cuts through the chamber. He’s conscious again, struggling to his feet. “Gaida, wait!”

“There’s no other way, Felix,” I say gently. “You know that better than anyone.”

The stasis field collapses completely. Reality rushes in around us, the chamber folds in on itself as multiple versions of existence occupy the same space simultaneously.

“Goodbye,” I whisper, meeting each of their eyes one final time. “Thank you for teaching me what it means to love.”

Before any of them can intervene again, I go straight for the artery this time so they can’t stop me. My blood gushes out as I hold the wound open, bleeding out rapidly as my men lunge towards me. With my mind, I throw up a barrier to stop them from reaching me.

Power explodes outward from me in a wave of crimson light. The collapsing realities halt their implosion, suspended at the moment of complete merger. I can feel every world simultaneously, every version of existence poised at the brink of reunification.

And with a thought, I push them apart as my vision blurs at the edges.

The separated worlds drift back to their proper positions, the rifts between realities sealing as I enforce the divisions the original thirteen created. But unlike their solution, mine doesn’t divide the Blood Queen’s consciousness.

It contains it. Completely.

The last thing I see before my perception fades entirely is the look on their faces. Dante, his hand reaching for me even as my form grows translucent. Felix, understanding and sorrow mingled in his eyes. Luke, centuries of carefully maintained control shattered by grief as he drops to his knees.

“I’m sorry,” I try to say, but I’m not sure if my physical voice still functions. “I love you all.”

Then my consciousness expands beyond physical limitation, and Gaida Aragon ceases to exist.

Instead, I become something else entirely. The keeper of worlds.

The sacrifice that saved everything.