Page 36

36

DANTE

She’s gone.

The words echo in the hollow cavity where my heart should be as I stare at the empty space where Gaida stood moments ago. The chamber has stopped collapsing. Reality has ceased its catastrophic implosion. Everything is suddenly, unnaturally still.

And she is gone.

Her body dissolved into particles of crimson light, scattering outward in all directions before vanishing completely. The chalice, that cursed vessel, lies in her place, and I glare at it in disgust.

“No,” Luke whispers, crawling to where she stood. His fingers splay across the stone floor, searching for something, anything. His composure shatters completely. “No, no, no.”

Felix is motionless. He isn’t even breathing.

Constantine stands to the side, head bowed in what might be respect or might be exhaustion.

I can’t move.

Can’t speak.

Can’t process what’s happened.

The chamber around us has stabilised, the rifts between worlds sealing themselves as if they never existed. The chamber has healed itself around us as we mourn, just as the worlds outside have done the same. They will keep turning, their occupants will keep living.

And we…

She saved everyone. Everything. All worlds. All realities.

And she’s gone.

“Luke,” Constantine says.

When Luke finally looks up, his eyes burn with a fury I’ve never witnessed before, not even in the most ancient of our kind. “You gave her the chalice,” he says, voice deadly quiet. “You helped her do this.”

Constantine meets his gaze without flinching. “It was her choice.”

“Get out.” Luke rises slowly, his entire body vibrating with barely contained rage. “Get out before I forget our centuries of friendship.”

“Luke,” I croak.

But he ignores me completely.

Constantine hesitates only briefly before nodding. “I understand your rage. Believe me, I understand more than most.” He vanishes without another word, teleporting away.

The moment he’s gone, Luke’s fury collapses into grief so profound it’s painful to witness. He presses his fist against his mouth, a sound escaping him that sounds half whimper, half growl.

“She can’t be gone,” he says finally, voice raw. “Not like this.”

“We need to see what’s happening up there. MistHallow, your students, the staff, they need you,” I say quietly, needing to leave this place. If I think about her, about what just happened, I’ll shatter completely.

Luke takes a shuddering breath, visibly pulling himself together through sheer force of will. “You’re right.”

“Felix, you need to snap out of it.”

He blinks rapidly, like someone waking from a trance. “She...” His voice breaks on the single word. “She’s really gone.”

“Yes,” I say, the single syllable the hardest thing I’ve ever had to say.

Luke rises to his feet, straightening his shoulders with visible effort. When he turns to face us, his eyes hold a desolation that makes me look away. He reaches down and picks up the chalice, handling it with reverence rather than the disgust I feel toward it.

“This contains her consciousness now, along with the Blood Queen’s,” he says quietly. “We must protect it at all costs.”

“I should have stopped her,” Felix says, his voice hollow.

“We all should’ve,” I reply. “She made her choice.”

Luke cradles the chalice against his chest. “A choice we should never have allowed.”

We stand in silence for a moment, the three of us united in grief and regret.

“We need to check on the academy,” I finally say again, finding purpose in practicality. “See what survived.”

Luke nods and gestures toward the entrance. He teleports us out of the chamber to the world above, and we freeze.

Everything is… normal.

Students, some of them were ferals but are now intact, meander the paths as if nothing has happened, and the staff is teaching, their voices carrying through the chill night air through open lecture hall windows.

We exchange glances at the perfect landscape of MistHallow, intact once more and moving on despite the grief and loss that tears through us.

“Why?” Felix asks.

“Why what?” Luke asks.

“Why don’t they remember, but we do?”

“They are innocents in this. We are not.”

His words, said so bitterly, feel like a stake to the heart. No, we aren’t innocent in all of this. We killed her. We didn’t save her. We didn’t do enough to break the bond she had with the Blood Queen.

We did this.

And now…

She’s gone.