Page 103 of Kiss the Filthiest King

"It's not up to you," I tell him gently. "You had a choice back then. You could have listened. She could have listened. Instead, you've destroyed entire worlds. She doesn't hate you anymore. She just wants peace. After so long, don't you also?"

He hesitates. "I should never have doubted you. I should have listened. I failed."

The shadow fades from Ryther's eyes.

I find the page he opened for me, and say the words that were too complicated to absorb just this morning.

"I vow forever night. I promise to shadows, and blood, and ruin, until the end of ever," I recite, calling to Nyx first, then Erebus. There are herbs and chants and a time of the day when such a momentous ritual should be performed, as with all things, but they're little more than ceremony. What matters is the words.

"I swear it upon the unending darkness," I say, completing the summons.

Those words are so much more than a spell. Written by the Fates, they call the attention of all the gods who look over the vows made by mortals and immortals alike. Even the Styx is watching. I feel the deep pool of endless darkness running through her veins set on me.

The words following the incantation are a bond in themselves, creating a contract between the caster and every god with a relevant power.

"Gaia lets Uranus go."

I can't even imagine making myself say that I, Darina Thorn, let Ryther Crow go. I never could have. He was right to offer it to me, for me to learn that my bond to him is my home.

Ryther's silent for a long time, until he finally responds. "Uranus consents."

And just like that, she fades from my mind, a shower of gold lifting to the sky.

Her bond to him was the only thing holding them anchored into this world. It might have been dark and twisted and full of hatred at the end, but it kept their spirits alive even after they'd killed everything else.

"That's…good news," Loch says. "No more iron needed, I'm guessing. But how is that helping us with the eldritch, pray tell?"

Ryther smiles, and I do the same.

Then I take his hand, and both of us disappear in a cloud of dark mist.

45

THE DEAL

Darina

Idon't recognize where we appear, which is logical, as I've never been anywhere but the Hollow.

"Night," Ryther says immediately, answering the question in my mind. "Close to my wilderness. We can stop by my home after, if you'd like to see it."

I smile back. "I'd love to."

We're in the middle of a forest, cold and murky. There's a twisted ash tree that almost seems dead, it's so white and bent. Nonetheless, there's power pulsing out of it. Beyond, something dark lingers. And something just as dark comes to the gate.

"Come out," I call into the blackness. "I'm sure you didn't travel all the way to our little world to play hide and seek."

The things stepping out of the shadows would have made me curl up into a ball and weep for the rest of time, not long ago. Some are monstrous. The worst are so unbearably beautiful I can't look away.

"You feel old and taste new," one of the creatures tells me.

He's in the shape of a man, remarkably handsome and, strangely, not so different from Ryther himself, though his hair is white as snow, and his eyes, more silver than blue.

Hypnos. It's his brother beyond the gates.

"New Gaia," the woman at his side says, with a slight bow of her head. "We mean no harm, and would part as friends."

There's a bigifthere.

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