{The Heart Of Enki | A Few Minutes Earlier}

Recommendation: Attain minimum safe distance.

Warning: Four minutes and twenty-two seconds until maximum destabilization.

Nox stood on the training grounds under the ocean’s storm. With her energy extending outward toward the explosion, Rayne’s mindscape waned, collapsing scenes into one another. Imploding. And there, the greatest warrior in the galaxy stood with her fists clenched and her eyes squeezed shut. Tears spilled from them and transformed into gems of light, floating around her.

When the powerlessness of grief had crumbled Xelan’s composure, Nox had shed tears for Rayne. How could he possibly help her?

That’s when he noticed Korac watching through the conduit. While the others mourned Rayne or fretted over Tameka, Korac kept his eyes on the War King. With Rayne’s permission, Nox had taken shadow form and allowed her to transmit a message through him.

Now they waited for the end.

Inside her mind, Nox stood in front of Rayne, consoling her with his presence—The reminder she wasn’t alone. “Rayne.”

She trembled, but didn’t answer.

“You are disarming your enemies even now. By your own admission, you aren’t afraid and you aren’t alone. You’re strong—”

“I’m so sick of being strong.” Rayne’s voice broke, and when she turned her eyes up to Nox, there was the warrior he loved. Lightning struck the sky, and it couldn’t match the storm in her eyes. “This isn’t fair. I know. I know. What is ‘fair?’ Right? But I’ve done enough. Haven’t I?” She hiccuped on a sob, but kept going. “I was too paralyzed to say I love them—to say goodbye to them. I want to meet Echo and play with Pax. Introduce them to strawberry ice cream and boardwalks. Toss them in a pile of dried leaves and climb the most interesting tree Ishkur has to offer. Is that so much?”

Rayne’s chin trembled, and Nox had never felt so close to another person. He wanted all those things with his niece and nephew. Hunting trips in Cinder’s blackened forest. Lava surfing in the Ignis Desert. Cliff diving from Li Mountain onto soaring wings—The places they would fly.

Despite Rayne’s contingencies, Nox knew. There were few powers in the galaxy which could recover from atomic disintegration on this scale.

Rayne knew it, too. Which was why Nox said, “Punch me.”

“Wh-what?” The frown she gave him was so pretty.

Nox lifted her hand and balled her slender fingers into a tiny fist with stellar power. “Hit me, Rayne.”

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

“No.” Rayne wrenched her hand from his and stepped back. “No, Nox. All your life people beat down on you—Took their smallness and rage out on you. I will never—ever—be like them.”

Rayne shamed Nox. Of course, she was better than that. How could he even suggest—

“Don’t do that either.” Rayne recovered the step and surprised Nox by taking his face in her hands. She forced him to meet her eyes. “Don’t retreat from me. It’s not your fault. I appreciate the gesture more than you know, but you’re worth more to me than a punching bag. You mean more… to me.”

Nox stared at the King of Earth and Cinder as Rayne finished her sentence, with something new constellating in her eyes. Something brilliant and soft. He searched them, trying to decipher it. What was she trying to tell him? “Rayne—”

“My, you are taking an awfully long time to die.”

That voice.

Stilted, they both turned from each other to look outside Rayne’s external vision. Neither moved aside from that.

Celindria, in an elegant white gown with gold dripping like venom from here and there, had somehow manifested—alive—in the heart of Enki. “Little King, are you still alive in there? But of course you are. Our father wouldn’t design this death to be kind.”

Rayne winced.

Nox ground his teeth, ready to snap Celindria in his jaws. A dragon devouring a leviathan.

Celindria said, “Remorse said Nox was in there with you, doomed in an eternal Hell, subjected to your righteous sanction. He’s mine, you know?”

A shudder claimed Nox, and he noticed the same response in Rayne.

Celindria dipped her chin, conceding a point. “It’s true. During your first consummation concourse for all of Cinder to see, I’d glimpsed an attraction—A connection, even. But it can’t compare to the Eternal Bind.” She peered through the windows of Rayne’s eyes, almost as if she could see inside. Whatever she found there didn’t satisfy her. “You’ve deteriorated beyond seeing. No matter. I’ll find another way to revive Nox. There is plenty of historical data to reconstruct his nacre. And with Enki’s end, you’ll finally stop interfering.”

Interfering?

Nox and Rayne simultaneously turned and stared at one another. She was still holding his face, angled down for her. He was still leaning down to accommodate her height.

Interfering.

Rayne dropped her hands as if they burned—Burned as bright as her cheeks and her eyes.

“Enjoy dying alone and afraid, little King. I’ll deliver word of your last moments to our father soon.” Celindria waved before melting into a shadow cast by Rayne’s light.

What followed next could only be described as a culmination. As if Celindria’s presence had held it at bay, the end came to claim Rayne in racking waves of self-loss and crippling spasms.

Rayne screamed internally, no longer able to let it out. Gasping, she fell to her knees. Nox knelt with her, finally experiencing a fraction of it.

There.

He knew what to do.

As Rayne eased down into a ball from the last spasm, she stared at him, chest heaving from the aching breaths. “Not long now. But I won’t let myself pass out. I want to see it. I want to see Enki end.”

As did Nox. “Dying hurts, your majesty.” He spoke from experience which was cut short for Rayne sparing him the complete nacre disintegration the last time.

She gave a painful laugh. “I’m getting that.”

He held out his hand. “It doesn’t have to.”

Despite the agony, Rayne frowned. “What are you saying?”

“Take my hand and transfer your nerve responses to my nacre. You’ve done enough.”

A quiet followed, one in which Rayne searched his eyes with something akin to awe in her own. “Nox…”

In his last moments, Nox wanted this. He wanted to do the right thing. “No more being strong for everyone. No more martyrdom. If this is truly my final act in these worlds, let me spare you. Please. Take my hand.”