Chapter 93: Temporary Act [4]

The silence that followed was long.

Augustus looked down.

The wound wasn’t closing.

That was the wrong part. The part that made something cold reach up through his chest into his throat. The black fire along the cut’s edges was eating his mana — the progenitor blood’s healing dissolving before it could engage. His body tried to knit and found nothing to knit with.

"Why..." He pressed a hand to himself, genuinely confused in a way he hadn’t been through any of the fighting. "Why am I not—"

The overload hit all at once.

It started in his chest and spread outward — not pain exactly, more like every system in his body trying to shut down simultaneously.

The excessive blood had been running his frame at a level no human body was built to sustain, and whatever had just happened to the wound had removed the only thing holding that instability in check.

He collapsed.

His legs went out from under him and he was on the ground in the snow, shaking, the manic energy of the last hour dissolving all at once into something small and frightened.

Alden walked toward him.

"An overdose," he said simply. "You consumed more than any human body can process. The volume of dark mana let you ignore the cost for a while." He stopped in front of Augustus. "Everything has a limit."

Augustus stared up at him. His black-and-red eyes were doing something they hadn’t done through any of the fighting.

They were scared.

"The blood didn’t make you immortal," Alden said. "It pushed your body past its limit. Now the limit is being enforced."

Augustus scrambled backward through the bloody snow, dragging himself with his elbows, trying to create distance.

"Wait—" His voice had lost the manic quality. Had lost most qualities. "W-Wait, I yield! You win! The fight is over!"

Alden tilted his head slightly. "Is that so."

"I yield! I swear! I’m done!"

"I seem to remember you saying this fight would be to the death."

Augustus froze.

Alden’s voice came out quiet. "Didn’t you say that?"

"DEATH?!" The terror on his face was genuine and complete. "I didn’t! That was just— I wasn’t being serious about that—"

THUD.

Alden’s boot came down on Augustus’s ankle.

Augustus screamed. Pounded the snow with both hands. "STOP! You can’t kill me! I’m the Crown Prince! Do you know the consequences if you murder me?! Do you have ANY idea—"

Alden crouched down beside him.

"Of course I do," he said. "Crown Prince Augustus Solaris. That’s exactly why I’m not going to kill you."

The screaming stopped.

A pathetic wave of relief began to form on Augustus’s ruined face.

Alden placed one hand gently on top of his head.

"But I am going to make you pay for what you did to her."

The relief evaporated.

"Wha—"

Augustus went completely rigid.

It slammed into his mind all at once and kept hitting him. It was not physical pain but something far worse. The final moments of every creature Alden’s blade had ever ended flooded into his consciousness simultaneously. The primal terror of ancient beasts facing death. The agony of wounds that couldn’t be healed. The desperate, hopeless last seconds of things that had fought to live and lost. Every one of them felt completely real, happening to him, right now, all at once.

"WHAT IS THIS?!" He grabbed his head with both hands and screamed at the frozen sky. "AAAARGH! GET IT OUT — PLEASE, GET IT OUT—"

He rolled in the snow, screaming continuously, tearing at his own face with his fingers.

"PLEASE! ALDEN! PLEASE STOP THIS! I CAN’T — I CAN’T TAKE THIS — PLEASE I’M BEGGING YOU—"

Alden stood over him and waited.

Augustus reached out with one trembling hand and found the hem of Alden’s coat and held it with both hands like a lifeline.

"PLEASE! I’LL DO ANYTHING! JUST MAKE IT STOP! I BEG YOU—"

Alden looked down at him.

Tears streaming through blood on a face that had stopped looking like a prince or a monster or anything with a name. Just a person on the ground holding onto someone’s coat, completely empty.

"Fine."

He lifted his hand.

The pressure vanished.

Augustus collapsed face-forward, gasping, shaking, every bit of everything that had been in him since the cliff just — gone.

It took a long time before he could raise his head.

When he did, his voice was barely a rasp.

"Please." He looked up at Alden. "Please just kill me."

Alden raised an eyebrow.

"I can’t live with this." The words came out cracked at every syllable. "I can’t — please. I don’t care about the throne. I don’t care about any of it anymore. Just end it."

Alden was quiet.

"Alright," he said.

Augustus went very still.

"I’ll kill you," Alden said. "But not yet."

The stillness broke into something awful. "What—"

"You need to suffer a little longer," Alden said, his voice carrying no cruelty in it. "For Seris. And for everything you destroyed that can’t be put back."

"Please DO IT NOW! I can’t! I regret doing that to her okay? Please I can’t take this anymore It hurts!"

He reached his hand out and placed his palm gently against Augustus’s chest.

The black smoke moved differently than before.

It did not crawl. It pulled something deep out of Augustus’s body that went beyond his flesh and blood. Augustus felt it happen as his eyes went wide and his mouth opened.

Alden looked at him.

He had written Augustus Solaris as a hero. That was the honest truth of it. The brilliant, proud prince — the formidable rival who would grow through the story, who was supposed to stand alongside Nicholas in the world’s darkest hours, who was meant to earn his place not through being born to it but through what he chose to do with it. He had built this character carefully. Given him intelligence and pressure and a kingdom’s worth of expectations and a rival who would push him into becoming someone real.

That was who Augustus was supposed to be.

Looking down at the hollow broken figure in the snow Alden did not feel like he had won at all.

Just the quiet, heavy sadness of something that had gone wrong in a way that couldn’t be undone.