Faye and Ruin

Death and Ruin

**BAYNE POV**

She was ice cold. Broken, shattered in ways I couldn't imagine. I had felt it when Runa's powers had snapped her body in half and she crashed to the snow. But there had been an understanding, an awareness that had slid through the bond right before as if she knew. But she hadn't told me. Or I hadn't realized what she'd meant soon enough.

I had killed her.

I was the one who had shredded Runa to pieces and as a result killed my love. "Little witch." I sobbed into her lifeless body, against her neck. "Please." Deimos crawled back towards me, avoiding the fissure in the Earth that I had created. He placed a hand on my back and I turned to face him.

My lips trembled. She was gone. The bond was dying, everything that tethered us together was gone. "I killed her. I killed her." I muttered over and over. Her eyes were so dull, the brightness that had once flowed from those amethyst orbs was completely gone. It seemed as if they were glass, cracked and blurry.

My heart died the moment she did and now I wanted out. "KILL ME!" I roared at Deimos. He shook his head, refusing to heed my command. Without letting Azora out of my arms, I split my voice, it crashed through the skies around us. "KILL ME! IT'S MY FAULT! KILL ME!"

But Deimos refused. He didn't understand, didn't know what it felt like to have that bond die. So I turned back around and buried my face into her once more. The sleet pelted against my wings, my back, out of control. It became snow, heavy snowflakes and silence filled the valley. We had won, but this felt like anything except a win.

"Son." My father's voice echoed near my ear. Deimos shifted away as my father's hands gripped my shoulders. "She's not yours, so back away."

I whipped around, still clutching her tight and rose. Leveling with my father, infuriated, I snarled at him. "She was mine. She will always be mine." I couldn't believe that was what he had said, when she was dead. Gone. He couldn't care less that she sacrificed herself for him, for us, for our cause. All he cared about was the loss of power.

His eyes darkened. "Put her down. I will take care of her." I shook my head no, rocking her even tighter against my chest. "You don't want to do this." He reiterated.

"Oh, but I do. Just because your mate betrayed you and then killed your second mate, my mother, doesn't mean you have any right to claim mine." I bellowed at him, my words, my voice everywhere, threatening. He would not touch her, ever again.

My father looked startled, surprised that I had figured it out. But I'd known for quite some time how Runa had been his first mate. How she had turned and betrayed him within her heart long before he ever had to carry out the sentencing that killed her parents. Long before he'd ever met my mother. Long before they would've ever even been allowed by law to be soulmates.

He stuttered. "You don't know what- You don't understand- It's not what you-"

"Don't." I growled, cutting him off. My father looked weak, broken. But I didn't care. Once I had great respect for this man. Once I had viewed him as my hero. Now, that time had long since passed. "Azora is dead and all you care about is the loss of power that has caused."

My father slumped his shoulders, backing away, submitting to someone else for the first time. "I care more than you realize."

"About who? Yourself? That's not the same." I turned my back to him, disgusted and worked on calming the storm that raged in the sky. Deimos knelt down in the thick snow as I gently placed Azora's stiff body against the ground.

"I'm sorry, brother. I didn't know it would kill her." He choked out, pain evident in his eyes.

I nodded, understanding but unable to say anything else. Closing Azora's eyelids, I placed her hands across her chest and finally stepped back. She looked so empty, so unlike herself lying there in the blackened snow. So I made some purple and blue flowers appear, surround her, rise beneath her so she laid upon a bed of soft warmth.