Chapter 48: Chapter 49: Now I owe you nothing

Ivy

I never believed in love.

Not the soft, whispering kind people speak of with flushed cheeks and dreamy, stupid smiles. Not the enduring kind that poets bleed ink over and fools chase until they shatter. Love, as far as I was concerned, was a beautiful lie wrapped in pretty packaging... a temporary illusion designed to keep people from facing the brutal truth of existence.

Because if love were real...

My parents wouldn’t have left me behind like discarded baggage.

They stayed together just long enough to create me. Just long enough for a fleeting spark of passion to produce a child who would bind them for a handful of years. And then...

And when they found their true mates.

Fated. Perfect. Written in the stars by whatever cruel gods watched over our world. Meant to be in every saccharine sense of the phrase.

And just like that, I became unnecessary. A footnote in their stories. An inconvenience that had served its biological purpose.

They didn’t abandon me completely, of course. That would have been too honest. Too raw. Instead, they did something far crueler.

They provided.

Money flowed like water. Status wrapped around me like a gilded cage. The finest education, the best tutors, doors opened by their names and influence. Everything a child supposedly needed to survive and even thrive.

Everything except the one thing that actually mattered.

Love.

Warmth.

The simple, devastating knowledge that you were wanted.... not tolerated, not funded.

So when they shipped me off to Altheris, it didn’t feel like punishment. It felt inevitable. Like I had always been temporary in every place I stood, a transient shadow drifting through other people’s permanent lives.

---

Then I met Elion.

And for the first time in my fractured existence, someone chose me.

Not out of blood obligation. Not out of societal expectation. Not because fate or duty demanded it.

He wanted me.

Or at least... I had desperately believed he did.

His attention had felt like sunlight after endless gray winters, bright, intoxicating, healing. For once, I wasn’t the leftover child. I was seen. Desired. Enough.

Until I wasn’t.

---

Now my gaze shifts slowly across the blood-stained clearing, landing on her.

Nyx.

Standing there like she somehow belongs in this nightmare forest, like she hasn’t been stumbling and bumbling her way through every danger since we arrived in Morvalis. Like she didn’t just accidentally kill a monster that should have torn her limb from limb without breaking a sweat.

My jaw tightened until it ached.

Lucky.

That’s all it was. Blind, stupid, infuriating luck.

Because there was no possible way... none... that Nyx was stronger than any of us. Not her. Not with that hesitant uncertainty in her steps, that constant flicker of doubt in her wide eyes, that pathetic need to glance around as if waiting for someone stronger to swoop in and save her.

I had already drawn my conclusion days ago.

If anyone was going to die in this godsforsaken hellscape called Morvalis...

It would be her.

And if not her, then perhaps Lyra with her quiet fragility, or Theo if his steady reliability finally cracked under pressure. But even those felt unlikely. At least they possessed something real, strength, skill, history.

Nyx?

Nyx had nothing.

Nothing but borrowed blades and unearned miracles.

And yet...

There she was.

Stepping forward without hesitation, placing her smaller frame directly between Thorne and Ashriel like some self-appointed mediator in a storm she couldn’t possibly understand.

My eyes narrowed slightly, a spark of dark curiosity cutting through the resentment.

...Interesting.

"Ashriel, what the hell are you doing?" Nyx snapped, her voice sharper than I expected. "We just saved you."

Saved him?

I nearly laughed aloud, the sound bitter in my throat.

Ashriel didn’t look like a man who needed saving. Towering, scarred, radiating that cold, untouchable power, he looked like the kind of predator who does the saving. Or the killing. And more importantly, he didn’t look like someone who cared about debts or gratitude.

Thorne didn’t move.

For once, the unflappable bastard actually looked caught off guard. Not weak...never that... but visibly surprised. As if he hadn’t expected her, of all people, to step between them. To shield him.

Or maybe she wasn’t shielding anyone at all.

I tilted my head slightly, studying the tableau with fresh eyes.

Perhaps she was playing a far smarter game than I’d given her credit for. Elion. Thorne. Now Ashriel. One girl weaving her way between three of the most powerful, dangerous men in our group.

My lips pressed into a thin, bloodless line.

Pathetic. And yet... dangerously effective.

My gaze flickered toward Elion.

And what I saw there made something tight and painful in my chest loosen, just a fraction.

He wasn’t tense. Wasn’t angry. Wasn’t even particularly protective. He simply watched the unfolding drama with that familiar, lazy amusement dancing in his eyes, like Nyx was an entertaining diversion, a passing amusement rather than anything of substance.

Not serious.

Not real.

Good.

That meant he was still my Elion underneath it all. Still the boy who had once looked at me like I was enough... before the world, or fate, or his own wandering nature convinced him I wasn’t.

Ashriel moved.

Not quickly. Not slowly. Just... inevitable. Like a force of nature deciding the time had come.

He walked straight toward Nyx, each step measured and heavy with unspoken weight. For the first time, I paid genuine attention. Because this moment mattered. It felt like the kind of pivot that could shift alliances, loyalties, even survival itself.

He stopped directly in front of he, close enough to disturb the air between them, close enough that most people would instinctively step back or falter.

Nyx didn’t.

He reached for her hand with an intentional calm. Took it. Not gently, not roughly, just with absolute intention. Then he placed the twin blade, the very one she had thrown to him in the chaos, back into her palm, closing her fingers around it.

His voice, when it came, was quiet. Flat. Emotionally barren.

"Now I owe you nothing."

And just like that, he released her.

Turned.

And walked away into the shadowed trees without a backward glance, as if none of this, none of us, had ever truly mattered.

I watched Nyx closely, waiting for the inevitable crack.

Confusion. Embarrassment. Hurt. Anger. Anything that would reveal her as the fragile outsider I knew she was.

But she simply stood there, staring after his retreating form with an unreadable expression. For a long moment, I couldn’t decipher what lingered on her face,regret, relief, calculation, or something far more dangerous.

Then Elion moved.

He stepped in smoothly, fluid as silk, closing the distance with that effortless charm he wielded like a weapon. He leaned down and pressed a light, possessive kiss against her cheek.

"You’re so brave, Gorgeous," he murmured, the words dripping with honeyed approval.

Something vicious twisted inside my chest, sharp, immediate, and painfully ugly.

I hated it.

I hated Her.

So this is how it’s going to be.

My outward expression remained unchanged: calm, composed, perfectly controlled. A mask I had perfected over years of being the unwanted child.

But inside, something cold and final settled deep into my bones like frostbite.

If Morvalis didn’t kill Nyx...

Then I would.

One way or another.

Because luck, like everything else in this cruel world, doesn’t last forever.

And when hers finally ran out, I would be there, smiling, composed, and utterly satisfied, to watch her fall.