His mouth captures mine. Hot and hungry, desperate and relentless, his tongue caressing mine with firm, demanding strokes. I respond a little bit too late, dazzled and panting.
Another deep thrust releases a second climax, and I squirm in his strong hands, my body weightless, glowing.
"Remember that I am doing this only because I have no other choice, Celeste."
I don't know where the dagger came from. My eyes widen when I recognize it's the same one he used to please me in that pantry back in the Lower Lands.
My panting turns into hyperventilation as he lowers the blade, and I feel its lethal coldness against my chest. My brain seems to struggle to catch up with my body, because the terror hits me while I still orgasm. Surely this cannot be happening, right? Probably some sort of sick Fae game, I guess.
The panic attack hits me full force when the blade slowly and deliberately slides between my ribs; the unbearable pain, violating coldness, and fear petrifies me. I try to scream, yet no sound escapes me.
"I am so sorry, Celeste," he murmurs, shoves the dagger deeper, and releases me.
I feel the icy metal buried inside me, draining my life as he lets me fall.
I plunge to my death. Lethal pulses of raw, raging magic mark my fall. The tree absorbs my raw terror, my savage release of primal energy, amplifies it, and shoots it back. The vines around me glow up in fantastic colors of a supernatural spectrum.
Wave after wave, I release roaring cataclysmic magic and agonizing pain into this eerie, violent world. Far beyond the Underworld.
Cleansing, destroying, white-hot agony.
I hear disembodied screeches of pain and terror.
They depart.
Faëheim is safe.
The branches of the Sentinel painfully break my plunge into the abyss, yet the forest floor is so far away. Magic streams out of my body with each hit of the branches on my way down.
I hear my ribs crack, and my left arm twists at an impossible angle.
Agony cuts my body in half, and I gasp, unable to take another breath. My body squirms and glows, tossed from branch to branch by merciless gravity. Shimmering streams of pulsating energy, of life, are leaving me, and the sounds of the battle below fade.
Darkness closes me in, and the Crystal Serpent's glowing body, stretching into eternity, welcomes me.
And takes away my pain.
