Beneath Shadows and Secrets

♔ 𝔖𝔦𝔵𝔱𝔶 ♔

♔ 𝔗𝔶𝔫𝔞𝔫 ♔

Nira's body slackens, and hovers in the air. The Stygian that spilled from her mouth twists on the ground, and grows. It grows taller, it grows arms and legs, and a head. It grows features, ones that look somewhat like the girl who has trapped us in this nightmare that she has created. Except, this new form is made of nothing but darkness. The darkness she thinks she claimed. No, it claimed her.

Her black eyes look towards us. Emotionless. Dead. "What the fuck is that?" Libitina breathes, burrowing further into my hold.

"It's Death." My reply is sombre, weighted with a terrifying truth. Whatever Calix thought of what happened to Nira in the rift, he was wrong. Keres does not live within Nira. The Goddess of Death has possessed her. The Goddess of Death walks among us. She has become Nira. She is Death.

"Lord of the Night," her voice is soft and delicate, hers, but twice as powerful and commanding. She rests her hand on his cheek again, holds it there, and the breath is stolen from my lungs when Calix's eyes snap open. "There you are."

He doesn't shy from what he sees. No, his eyes ravage her. He swallows in everything she has become. "Ker." He says. A brave fucker, if there ever was one.

The dark Nira laughs lightly. "I only intend to help her. She could do this alone, but her will is not strong enough just yet. Her emotions too volatile. She would not have made it in time to save you."

The darkness unwraps him until he has settled on his feet. She studies him, marvels at his form. "Is that what you intend to do? Save me?"

"Would you rather I let you die?" She runs her hand over his chest, pausing at the exit wound. Tendrils of the Stygian grow to be inside it. They sprout from his back. "I can, if that is what you wish."

He doesn't speak, for a time too long. I begin to wonder if he is considering it. I want to scream at him to stop being a bastard, but I can't find my voice. It seems Libitina is just the same, for she stares with her mouth agape, lost for words.

"What will Death be like?" He asks.

Dark Nira shrugs. "Lonely now. My forms are no longer there to keep the dead company. I live within her now. But it will be painless, and long, and simple. Her friend Sloan waits for you, to thank you for taking care of her friend."

He looks at Nira's true form, something flashes across his face. "And life?"

"Harder. Agony. Yet with company, those you have come to love, even though you think your blackened heart is incapable of such." She cups his face in her hands, presses her forehead to his. His breathing stutters, but I don't think with fear. With longing.

"He knew." Libitina murmurs. "He knew what she was. He still loved her anyway." I can only nod.

"Will she be in it, or will I lose her to you?"

She smiles. Her lips coast against his before she pulls away. "I have watched you fall in love with her. I have watched you accept her ugliest parts. I have watched you accept the horrors within her." She sighs, as though burdened by what she plans to say next. "I will always be within her, but I will let her keep her mind. She has been a kind host – already prepared to do the worst of things before I found her."

"Why? Why her?"

"I did not seek her out, if that is what you think. It was nothing but circumstance, the half-breed caught in the Stygian as the human in her died, but the fae fought to keep her alive. I had never had the opportunity to materialise before, and she was so angry, so full of a need for vengeance, that I knew she would take me within her if I offered. I wanted a form, I wanted power too, beyond that of the Otherworld. I am happy to share it with her. Share it with you, if she will let you have it."

She looks towards us, Libitina and I, and I wait with bated breath. "Give her back to us." Libitina snaps.

Dark Nira scowls. "You are lucky I do not drag you to the pits, demon." She passes a glance to Calix once more. "I have only kept you for his fondness. The Dragyn's."

Libitina inhales with shock that she can not disguise, her eyes flitting to Calix. The Dark Nira smiles. "I know what you are, Lord of the Night. I know what you become."

He ignores that, looking behind the darkness to the female that remains suspended, still as death. It makes me wonder if she was ever alive at all. Calix must think the same thing. "Is she still alive?"

"A part of her is. She waits in the between now. I will bring her back - I cannot live within her host without her there too." She takes a step back, closer to Nira, and as she does, Calix begins to bleed again.

He pauses on the next question. I hold Libitina back from rushing to him. "I need to speak to her. I need to know what she truly plans."

"Ah, but you cannot. Your decision must come first. So can you trust her word, or do you doubt her as you always have." I go to shout, to tell him to choose life, no matter how much or how little he trusts Nira, but like she harbours a sixth sense, a stretch of the Stygian wraps around Libitina and I, clamping over our mouths, rendering us silent. I pull at it, pointlessly, as it doesn't budge. "Pick, Calix."

She steps away again, the movement bringing him to his knees, and he splutters on his next words. "I want to live."

"How fortunate." She breathes, and she lowers to her knees before him. Her shadowed hands clasp his face and she brings her lips to his. It isn't a kiss, it's something else entirely, for his body stiffens and he falls back, the Dark Nira - Ker - chasing him, her lips a hairbreadth from his. I watch as she breaths something into him, a wisp of something transparent spilling from her lips and slipping between his.

Life.

My body is torn from the floor and whipped into the air, Libitina clinging to me as she screams, the noise muffled by the Stygian and the turret of air that sins around us. We're thrown from beyond the darkness, released as we sail through the sky, and both of us land on a heap on the cold floor, groaning from the impact.

We fight to rise, barely taking into account the frozen faces of horror around us as we look on towards the towering darkness before us, watching it rescind, melt away as it withdraws back towards it centre. Back towards Nira, who awakes with a gasp, falling to the floor just as we did, blood spilling from her nose and mouth.

She lifts her head, her eyes absorbed entirely by black, just as her hands and neck are traced with spindles of it.

She crawls towards Calix on all fours, not daring to touch him as she waits. Almost like she knows, as though the truth has just settled within her that she is Death, the materialisation of it.

She reaps it, she denies it, she assigns it.

She defines it.

For the first time, I fear her, and it is clear that so does everyone else in this room.

Especially when Calix opens his eyes.