Chapter 89 - 88

Chapter 89: Chapter 88

Chapter 89

Alex’s POV

It was a day the sun was shadowed by the moon and darkness had overtaken the light, and I hadn’t been there.

I failed to save them. Or perhaps I brought the wraith.

This was no ordinary massacre. People didn’t die this way.

Bodies lined the rugged ground. In fact, there was no path anymore. The stench of death was suffocating, and it made my muscles ache from the amount of shivering and fidgeting I’d been trapped in.

Yet my focus remained, most expectedly, on one person. The love of my life. The father of my babies. And it was all because I hadn’t saved him. All because I failed to be the Peace-bearer Aetherblood.

I failed woefully.

"I’m sorry," I broke. Tears blurred my vision. Like rain, they slipped down my lashes. I sat beside Kai’s lifeless body. The side of his face that wasn’t crushed told me of the pain he’d endured and the disappointment of me not being there for him.

"I’m so sorry."

I repeated the words like a mantra. There was nothing more I could do.

Then, a crack split the sky. A piece of light surged through. Like a tear in a balloon filled with water, it leaked into this world. Almost a droplet, but it carried a voice.

"I’m here, baby. I’m... and... need you... please, sweet..." Like a broken transmission, it failed to make sense.

But I’d recognize Kai’s voice any day.

"Kai?"

My senses began to grasp for meaning. But he was here. He was... dead. In this world.

"Unless this is a vision, and I’m not exactly here," I whispered to myself. My voice echoed, a clarifying signal aiding me in the revelation.

This world probably didn’t exist.

A lie.

A total lie.

"Kai couldn’t have died. Yes, he couldn’t. I was in training..." I began to recollect. "I was in training with Marcellan."

The world cracked and thunderstorms met my gaze.

"Nathan..."

It made sense. The crimson sky. That was his power. While mine radiated emerald green, his had always been crimson.

"Fuck..."

I closed my eyes and let go of the emotions. Everything striking through me, I pushed away and recoiled from.

"It’s not true. Never has been." I repeated the words, and clarity became my shore.

Except a hand gripped my wrist.

Kai’s once lifeless body.

"You did this to me," he seethed. "Look around you. You’re a Death-bringer Aetherblood. Look at the world. Like your parents failed and the ones before them, you shall fail too. You’re cursed. The power was always cursed."

"Let me go..." I strained, unable to escape.

"As long as there is light, there shall be darkness. The truth makes sense only when there is a lie. YOU... KNOW... THIS!"

Kai’s body began to decay.

"This is the FUTURE you’ll unleash!"

My throat tore out an ear piercing scream, the kind that shattered glass. Then the scream became distant, as though my consciousness no longer belonged to my body.

Gripped, but lost.

When I opened my eyes, I was back in the real world.

But I wasn’t exactly Alex.

I wasn’t me.

I was locked within my own body.

KAI’s POV

One moment, Alex’s eyes were closed and he was trapped in a comatose state.

The next, he was awake and rising to his feet.

The weather rumbled as familiar darkness took over. The sun faded out, and streams of emerald green struck the fluffy edges of the clouds.

Nathan’s men were through the portal. The iced-thorned daggers were upon us.

Alex floated forward, my body quivering as I witnessed the howling wind answer to him.

Never had I seen power displayed this way, and so I was left shaken.

Out of the blue, like water gushing from a hose, the wind rushing toward Nathan’s incoming men grew warm.

Within seconds, the temperature rose and the men began to scream. First, they stopped and tried to push through, but it became impossible.

My jaw nearly hit the floor at the horrifying sight.

Metals once thought impossible to bend folded, creaked, and melted into the flesh of the men before they themselves boiled like fresh meat and burned to a crisp. The only thing left behind was ash coating the air, flowing back through the portal.

The once deadly downpour of iced thorned daggers had melted into a shower of water.

Nathan stood in the distance, still on the other side of the portal, and he and Alex watched each other with such an intense, heart-wrenching aura.

Alex’s hands twirled, one raised above the other. The portal obeyed, turning from a vertical position to a horizontal one. It folded into the shape of a slicing blade and raced toward the rest of Nathan’s men on the opposite side, cutting them down before the portal itself faded away.

Our view of the other side vanished.

Once the portal was gone, I took a few cautious steps toward Alex, casting wary glances behind me. Clawface and Marcellan wore the same shock I felt. Behind us, our men watched their Luna with utter disbelief.

But then I stopped.

Another gust of wind surrounded Alex.

He began to rise into the air. His arms hung at his sides, his face tilted heavenward, power dripping from him.

This time, I reached through the mating bond with far stronger intent. I slammed against Alex’s consciousness so hard that, on any normal day, it would have left him with a splitting headache.

"Come back to me," I poured through the mark.

"Let the structures around me lose their hold and begin to fracture under their own weight."

Those same incoherent words escaped Alex’s lips.

In response, the buildings cracked, bricks splitting apart without being touched.

"Let the wind rise beyond control and the world outside stone begin to answer my pull."

More of the spells blasted toward the distant forest. The trees swayed beneath the force of the wind.

My nostrils caught the sharp scent of salt and sand.

The ocean was in turmoil too.

"I command heaven and ground to break their unity and fracture apart."

The sky and the earth both cracked. As thunder struck the heavens, heat consumed the land. Once solid ground, lava began to rise.

"I love you, Alex. From the moment we met on your graduation night," I said.

This time, the words came from my heart, and I let them.

"When you tried to hide yourself and fit into Leo’s world. From the day you asked me how much alcohol it’d take to get you drunk because you wanted to belong. From the first time you rolled your eyes at me without even knowing my name, or when you distanced yourself after learning Leo was into me."

My vision blurred.

"You didn’t even know my lineage or my position, yet you accepted me. And when you became mine, I realized paradise was the love you showered me with. You completed me, Sweet Peach."

I swallowed hard.

"Please... don’t crush me now." The bond was beginning to open. "And if you wish to, I only ask that you do it when you’re conscious of it, my love. Be my beginning, and be my end, by your own will and not by another’s."

The moment there was an opening, I forced myself through.

There was Alex, sitting within a blinding darkness. His eyes were closed as he sat cross-legged.

"Sweet Peach..." I muttered as I took his hand.

I removed the blindfold, and his eyes met mine.

Breathtaking.

He was breathtaking when he smiled.

"My ass King, you’re here."

I tightened my grip around him, making him frown.

"You’re... this is an illusion, Alex. You’re not exactly here, and we need you to stop."

"Stop what?"

The darkness faded as light took over, and I found us both suspended within the whirlwind. We hung in the air together. Alex’s eyes widened as he took in our surroundings.

For reasons I couldn’t explain, I kissed him. Slowly, we drifted back to the ground. My hand cupped the back of his neck, holding him close as I stole another kiss.

When I pulled away, I whispered, "I love you so much."

"Uh... I love you too, Kai." He blinked, confused. "Did I do this?"

Alex turned, surveying the destruction around him before finally settling his eyes on me.

"I..."

"You saved our lives. All of us," I said.

His arms wrapped around me. The fabric over my shoulder soon grew damp as Alex sobbed into it. Even as I rubbed his back and Marcellan approached, the tears only came harder.

"He knows what he did," Marcellan mouthed, gesturing behind Alex.

In the near distance, Clawface was tending to the wounded. Beyond him, healers from the infirmary were already rushing to their aid.

I carried Alex bridal style, careful of his tummy bump, and headed toward the castle ahead of everyone else.

"Know how to patch cracks with cement?"

"What?" Alex paused his crying for a moment.

I grinned.

"Well, I’ll be needing you to be less of a crybaby and more of a bricklayer."

I directed his gaze toward the cracks running through the walls, and that finally coaxed a laugh out of him.

Quite a wash of relief.