Chapter 722: The Gods Don’t Bleed For Us

There is a specific kind of agony that comes from watching your brother, a man who had carried you more than once through the trenches, beg for the woman the Goddess gave to you instead of him because he genuinely loved her.

The love was real. It had always been real. A day hasn’t gone by where Lucian didn’t understand that.

But the Goddess had decided that genuine wasn’t enough.

Tristan was on his knees saying the things Lucian felt but didn’t have the words for and she would never know. And it didn’t matter because Tristan was a good man who deserved her.

River’s face crumbled in front of Tristan and her grief flooded into Lucian’s chest, his own already underneath it.

"If I die, I die having loved you. That is not a tragedy, River. That is the best life anyone has ever lived. But I am not ready to die yet. I am not ready to let go. So please. Come home with me. Let me hold you tonight. Let me wake up tomorrow and see your face and feel your hands and know that the boy on the rock still has the girl he carried. Give me that. One more night. And then another. And then another. Until we find the answer, or until the dark takes me, and if the dark takes me then at least it takes a man who spent his last days exactly where he wanted to be."

Tears were falling down his face. He made no attempt to wipe them because that meant letting go of her hands. The veins were black on his cheeks and the tears ran over them and the image was a ruin, a prince on his knees crying over the hands of a woman whose leaving was killing him faster than the corruption.

"I love you with everything I am. I want to be beside you. Please, baby. Come home."

River broke.

Her fingers were tightening around Lucian’s. Her body was already choosing him the way her body had always chosen him, automatically, without consulting the parts of her that knew better.

She was about to say yes. Lucian felt it through their matebond. The yes was in her mouth.

Then she saw Lucian.

Lucian stood apart from both of them. He was silent. His eyes were red and filled with pain. His breathing was shallow.

And she understood, in the space between one heartbeat and the next, that saying yes to Tristan meant watching Lucian walk away carrying something he would never recover from, and he would do it without making a sound.

She saw a man who understood better than anyone. Who had bared his heart to her and lost his best friend in the process. Who would watch her leave and carry the loss and never blame her for it. That was who Lucian was. That was who he had always been. And the realization that his silence was the loudest love on this road hit her so hard her breath stopped.

Two men. One loud in his love. One silent in his. Both real. Both breaking. Both hers in ways the Goddess had made impossible to honor at the same time.

She pulled her hands from Tristan’s. Finger by finger. Slowly.

"I love you, Tristan. I will always love you. And I cannot stay. I’m sorry," she whispered.

Tristan’s hands stayed open. Still shaped around fingers that were no longer there. His chest caved inward on an exhale that sounded like something being punctured.

His eyes found Lucian.

For one second, one fraction of a second, the rage was gone and what was underneath it was grief, raw and mutual, because Lucian’s face was carrying the same destruction Tristan was feeling, and the mirror of it produced something that almost looked like understanding, two brothers ruined by the same woman in different directions, both of them losing, both of them aware.

Then the recognition sharpened. The understanding caught fire and the grief turned into pure rage.

Tristan lifted his hand.

"Tristan?" River whispered, confusion etched across her face.

WHOOSH.

Green magic exploded from Tristan’s hand. River lunged between them in the same second.

The blast moved through her like she wasn’t there, his magic recognizing her on a frequency that should not have been possible without a tie, fated or chosen, and their tie had been severed. It passed through her body, refilling her energy and magic in the same breath and kept going.

Gold magic erupted from Lucian before impact.

CRACK

The collision between green and gold split the air with a concussion that knocked soldiers off their feet on both sides of the line.

The gold magic was a surprise to everyone, except for Lucian, who had felt it once and hadn’t been able to call it since. But the bigger surprise was Tristan attacking Lucian and holding the blast.

The gold magic held like a shield, not attacking. The green magic was on the offense and not letting up.

Two seconds went by before River’s brain fully understood what was happening.

"Tristan! Stop!" she cried.

Tristan was back on his feet, standing, his focus locked onto Lucian.

"Please, Tristan. This isn’t you. It’s the corruption. You would never."

His eyes moved away from Lucian, landing on her. His irises were more black than green. He blinked a few times, disoriented.

Then his face broke.

Silence.

The green magic flowing out of him stopped in a vacuum.

Lucian’s wolves moved. Lucian held up a hand. They froze.

Without looking away from River, Tristan’s other hand raised.

WHOOSH.

Green magic erupted from his palms with a force that cracked the stone beneath his boots. The magic was massive, raw, carrying the output of the most powerful Fae prince ever born operating at a capacity that should have been impossible for a man whose body was riddled with corruption.

The green light hit the cliff faces on both sides and spread upward, climbing the stone, arching overhead, connecting at the apex in a dome of emerald energy that sealed the chokepoint from sky to ground.

A barrier. Total. Encompassing. Locking both armies, both leaders, and the woman standing between them inside a cage of green light that had no exit and no negotiation and no intention of opening until the man who made it decided it would.

Lucian’s wolves surged forward. Their snarls hit the green barrier and the barrier held, the emerald light absorbing the impact without a flicker, the magic so dense and so powerful that two hundred wolves hitting it simultaneously produced the structural equivalent of a raindrop hitting a cliff.

"Nobody leaves. She comes with me," Tristan said, and his voice was quiet now, which was worse than the screaming because the quiet was the register that preceded actions that couldn’t be undone.

"Tristan, this is the corruption talking," Lucian panted. "I can see it from here. The veins are past your eye. You are draining reserves you don’t have to maintain this barrier, and the draining is going to trigger another seizure."

"Then I’ll seize. And when I wake up, the barrier will still be here, because I will recast it every time I open my eyes until she walks back through that gate."

"Please, brother—"

"You are no brother of mine."