Dark Harmony by Laura Thalassa
Chapter 44
Des.
My heart thumps painfully.
Dear God—Des.
He’s right there, a stone’s throw away.
The Night King has draped himself over Euribios’s throne, his back leaning against one of the armrests, his legs propped up against the other, lounging like he wasn’t all but lost to me only moments ago.
My connection throbs, just as it has since the Thief exposed his true power and identity.
It must be a trick, a cruel, calculated trick. Euribios holds Des’s life in the palm of his hand.
Only, the Thief is looking a bit startled too. He swivels to face the Bargainer, even as he still struggles against my command.
Never have I seen a creature withstand my glamour this long.
Des lifts his eyebrows. “Didn’t expect the shadows to fuck you over, did you?”
The Night King hops off the throne and saunters over to the pool. Briefly, his eyes touch on mine, and I see a thousand things in them. Most of all, I see yearning, so much yearning.
It matches my own.
My Bargainer.
I stare at him like he’s an apparition. All that pain I’d been working on overcoming just to function—it’s like the wound reopened. But now there’s hope to accompany the pain. So much hope I can barely breathe around it.
Maybe this is a trick … but perhaps I’m not the one being played.
The Thief fights against my glamour and the pull of the dead who still cling to him. It’s now his turn to attempt to escape this pool, wading towards the edge.
“You’re to stay in this pool, Euribios,” I command from behind him, the full force of my glamour folded into my words.
Beyond him, Des sways a little towards me, even as he stares at Euribios. I can tell my mate is trying hard not to look in my direction. He’s no longer immune to my glamour, and I’m no longer holding my powers in check.
Between us, the Thief’s progress slows.
He looks over his shoulder at me. “You will pay for this later,” he says, his voice laced with venom.
The room around us darkens with Des’s vengeance.
People like us are someone’s nightmare.
I narrow my eyes on the Thief, and smile a little. “I don’t think so.”
The King of Night comes to the edge of the pool and crouches down, studying our foe. The Thief jerks against the incessant pull driving him downwards.
“You might have power, Euribios,” Des eventually says, “but there is one thing you never considered.”
My heart beats faster. Somehow, Des orchestrated this.
“Loyalty.”
Euribios’s back is to me; what I would give to see this conniving monster’s expression.
“For centuries, the shadows and I have been the closest of confidants.”
The shadows speak to me, Des admitted back on earth. It was how he learned so many secrets.
“Do you think that means anything to them? To me?” the Thief says. “I existed before the dawn of day.”
The shadows around us begin to shiver and grow.
“Do you know what they told me?” Des says.
Euribios falls silent.
Des’s face hardens. “Even shadows can deceive and gods can die.”
Des looks at me then, and like a thunderclap, I feel that look down to my bones.
Love, love as endless as the night. That’s all I see in his eyes.
“Now, my queen,” the Night King says to me, “where were you?”
He’s handing off the torch, letting me resume the insidious task I’d begun.
Slowly, a smile creeps along my face.
Vengeance, at last.
I lift my chin. “Des, you are to ignore every command I give from this point forward.”
His eyes flash with devilish delight. “As you wish, my sweet siren.”
With that parting line, he vanishes, melting into the darkness as he has so many other times since I first met him. Our bond sings, and I can feel him down the other end of it, sure and steady.
My gaze moves to the Thief, and my whole persona changes. For a minute, I set aside the knowledge that Des appears to be alive and well.
Right now, an entity needs to pay.
“Face me, Euribios.”
Slowly, the god rotates around, his expression incredulous.
He’s dominated others for so long that he can’t possibly recognize the position he’s now in.
“I will enjoy paying you back for this—” he vows.
“You will not threaten me,” I say. “Nor will you use any of your magic on me or anyone else. Right now, you are powerless.”
The Death King’s mouth curves up. “I will never be powerless, enchantress,” he says, wading through the souls to get to me, still resisting my earlier command. He doesn’t look frightened—I don’t think the Thief even knows what fear is; he’s never had to fear a thing in his life.
As he moves towards me he begins murmuring. His oily magic stirs, and I sense him redrawing his ward.
Too late, Death King.
“Drown,” I say, my voice hypnotic.
The Thief barks out a laugh, interrupting his work. “You cannot kill me—”
“I can do whatever it is I want. So come closer,” I say, moving out into deeper water, souls slipping past me. “Find me beneath the waves. Feel my watery kiss. Drown in my arms. Die for me, my undying king.”
Sinister. Seductive. Even death is tempting when a siren delivers it sweetly.
The Thief continues to wade towards me, only now, his torso is beginning to disappear beneath the water’s surface.
“I cannot die.”
“Yes,” I breathe, “you can.”
I move to the middle of the pool, feeling my magic in my veins and in the water. Euribios’s eyes are locked on mine, longing shining bright in them. The water has nearly reached his shoulders. He begins murmuring once more.
“Meet me down in the water’s depths,” I say, coaxing, coaxing. “There’s nothing to fear. Breathe it in. Drown.”
My words strike like an anvil.
The Thief’s breath catches, and a spark of something enters his eyes; it’s not fear, he’s too alien a creature for that; shock, maybe—or betrayal.
Or maybe it’s that, for all his dealings with death, this eternal thing can’t conceive of it happening to him.
And now it is.
Whatever ward he’s been casting, it sits in the air unfinished, and it’s not clear that it would be useful at this point anyway. My eyes, my body, my magic—everything that I am beckons to him.
Join us down below.
It doesn’t matter that he’s a god and I’m not, nor does it matter that my power is infinitesimal next to his. I promise a dream, a beautiful, deadly dream, and what is more powerful than that? Dreams, desire—what wouldn’t you do to have what you most want?
I slip beneath the lapping surface. All around me howling, phantom things grab and claw at the Thief.
They hadn’t harmed me—I hadn’t even thought they were capable of it—but they’re harming Euribios, his skin splitting open, his blood looking like ink in the water before his skin heals over.
“Drown, drown, drown.” Even down here I whisper it.
The waterline climbs up his neck, then his jaw.
I don’t know whether he sinks the rest of the way himself, or if he stops fighting against the powers pulling at him, but all at once, his head sinks below the surface.
“Drown.”
The Thief—Euribios—opens his mouth and draws in water.
That’s all it takes for the spirits to swarm him, descending on the god like ravenous beasts. If I thought they were hurting him before, it’s nothing compared to their onslaught now. I see muscle and bone as they tear into him.
More disturbingly, the dead shove their way into his mouth.
The Thief’s eyes are open, and the entire time he stares at me, his eyes sharp with desire and alarm. Euribios reaches for me, either in want or in need, the water around his arm darkening with his shadowy blood.
But I never take that offered hand, and the spirits crowd in so thick that after several moments, the Thief disappears behind so many ephemeral bodies.
The moment the two of us lose eye contact, his screams start up, the sound muffled by water and the spirits forcing their way into his mouth.
I linger underwater, my ears feasting on his dying cries. They grow fainter and fainter, until eventually they vanish altogether.
And then—
BOOM!
The Thief’s magic detonates, rippling outward. It slams into me, throwing me back before continuing on, blasting across the throne room.
In its wake, the spirits begin to fall away from the Thief. Only, there’s no more Thief. No body, no bones—just a few drops of inky blood. The last of his dark magic unfurls in the water, then dissipates away.
His death wasn’t the sweet seduction I promised him it would be. It was painful, brutal. As it should’ve been.
He’s gone.
The Thief is finally dead.
Maybe there will always be darkness and shadows and all those things that happen when the sun goes down. Maybe night will always be waiting to swallow up the earth, but today—
Darkness died.
