Page 182 of Evermore

I yanked her away from Archer’s body, pulling her into my arms as we collapsed together on the cold stone. I rocked her back and forth, our tears mingling as we mourned the loss of our bond, the loss of the best of us, the loss of the greatest good either of us would ever know in our lives.

Her small body shook with grief too enormous for her frame to contain. The sky darkened above us as clouds gathered, responding to her power as it blanketed the world in sorrow. Through the haze of our shared agony, I vaguely heard Minerva shouting in the distance. Her voice penetrated the fog of grief, insistent and commanding.

Quill looked up, her tear-stained face transforming as sadness ignited into something else. Something furious and ancient. Raw and vicious. Because sadness is only the root from which anger grows.

I stood, gently setting Quill aside. My legs felt foreign beneath me, as if they belonged to someone else. Someone who could still walk in a world where Archer no longer existed.

“I know it hurts, Quilly. And you can feel those feelings. Every one of them. Fuck the world that would tell you to be less. Feel less. You feel exactly everything you need to feel. Let the world burn, my girl. But give me a second to breathe, okay? And then I’ll come right back and I will stand beside you in the darkness. Just like Archie would.”

She nodded, eyes sliding back to his slain body. I commanded the Remnants to slide back to her. To drop that pup in her lap and hope for a few brief moments she could breathe. Because I had something, someone, to take care of.

Minerva had Aeris pinned to the garden wall with magic. The goddess’s feet dangled above the ground as an invisible force held her by the throat. Aeris clawed at the air, her perfect face contorted with rage and fear.

Wordlessly, Minerva extended her arm, offering me a sword. But not just any blade. Levanya’s. A weapon of power. I took it, the weight familiar in my hand, as if it had always been meant for me. It only made the ache in my heart deepen. I didn’t want anything to fit me perfectly anymore. Because that was his role and he was gone.

“Please,” Aeris gasped as I approached, her eyes wide with sudden terror. “Daughter—you don’t understand?—”

“I understand perfectly,” I said, my voice hollow, empty of everything but grief and rage. “You took him from us. But good news mother, now you won’t have to worry about the Fates punishment for killing a mortal king.”

“Who do you think sent me?—”

I drove the blade through her heart before she could finish, twisting it with a savagery I hadn’t known I possessed. I yanked it back and shoved it forward as I yelled, trying to releasewhatever had died inside of me when he took that last breath. It didn’t work. Blood spilled down the front of her dress, glowing faintly in the darkness. I yanked the sword back and struck again. And again as Aeris screamed.

“Paesha,” Minerva said.

I ignored her, dragging my shadows forward to lift Aeris’s drooping face until she looked at me. “You will fucking watch as I take from you, as you’ve always taken from me. It wasn’t enough that you left me, was it? You had to take him too. You fucking monster. That was my family. He was everything you never were. That man helped teach me what family means and it sure as hell never looked like this. In all the eons to come, in all the stories they tell of gods and their fall, your name will be nothing but a footnote in my legend—the goddess so worthless even her own daughter forgot her name. You took everything from me,” I hissed, tears streaming down my face as rage consumed me. “Now I take everything from you. Not merely your life, but your legacy. Your memory. Your divinity. It’s mine now, and I’ll use it to build a world where no child ever feels as abandoned as you made me feel. And I’ll do it in his fucking name. The only one that ever mattered.”

I watched her die. I watched her take her final breath and hoped like hell it would soothe something, anything in my soul. But it didn’t. It only made me hate her more. She’d died too fucking fast. She hadn’t hurt enough. Her power rushed into me, a torrent of raw energy that seared through my veins like liquid fire. The transformation from demigod to goddess crashed over me in waves of unbearable intensity. My body was barely able to contain the vastness of what I was becoming. Nor the anguish of what I was leaving behind.

But the power meant nothing. Less than nothing. What use was godhood in a world without my best friend? I turned back to where Archer lay, still and silent under the weeping sky. Quillhad curled against his side, her small hand clutching his, as if she could will warmth back into those fingers through sheer determination.

Rain fell, gentle at first, then in heavy sheets that soaked us all, washing Archer’s blood from the stones but not from my hands. Never from my hands.

I fell to my knees, covered in his blood, soaked and broken. And then I crawled to them, shrouded in rage and wrath and fear and sadness, a goddess and queen born from loss, baptized in the blood of the man I couldn’t save.

56

Paesha

Icouldn’t feel my heartbeat anymore. Couldn’t hear the voices beyond my grief. Couldn’t cry another tear. They’d all fallen. Just like he had.

The garden had died with him.

Roses that once bloomed in vibrant reds and pinks had withered to brittle husks. The hedges, once meticulously trimmed, now stood skeletal and bare, their leaves crumbled to dust. The grass had browned and retreated, leaving patches of bare earth like open wounds in the ground. Not a single living thing remained in this place where Archer had fallen.

Perhaps it was fitting. A physical manifestation of the grief that had hollowed me from the inside out.

I stood at the exact spot where I’d held him as he bled out, where I’d felt his last breath, where the Treeis bond had severed with a pain so acute I thought it might kill me too. The flagstones had been scrubbed clean, but I could still see his blood when I closed my eyes. Could still feel its warmth on my hands, no matter how many times I washed them.

My black mourning dress hung heavy on my shoulders, the same one I’d worn when they’d lowered his body into the ground three days ago. The weight of his crown still felt wrong on myhead, a foreign, unwelcome presence conferred on me in a hasty ceremony after the funeral.

I bent down, my fingers tracing the outline of where he had lain. The stone was cold, unyielding and indifferent to the tragedy it’d witnessed.

“You shouldn’t be here.”

Thorne’s voice was gentle but firm as he approached from behind me. He wore mourning clothes as well, though he had exchanged the formal attire from the funeral for something simpler today. The shadows under his eyes spoke of sleepless nights that matched my own. Of the way he’d paced outside my door, guilt ridden for not being here, and anxious that another god would come for me.

He’d been following the whispers of Ezra’s Unmade. Making sure there was no word of the Fates from anyone. He’d been protecting us all, and felt like he’d protected no one.