To ruin an Omega-Chapter 388: Make peace with it

CIAN

The bodies had been cleared from the hall.

Blood still stained the stone in dark patches, stubborn where it had settled into the grooves. The sentinels, with a lot of help from Omegas, worked in silence, scrubbing, rinsing, and scrubbing again. The sharp scent of cleaning solution tried to mask the copper in the air, but it did not quite succeed. Copper still clung to the back of the throat, thick and metallic.

I stood near the center of the room and watched them work.

Not because it needed watching, but because it needed to be seen.

It still needed to settle in the minds of many that this was what treason looked like when it ended.

My mind did not linger on it for long. It had already moved ahead, turning over the next steps with quiet precision. The council would need restructuring. Positions reassigned. Those who had stayed would need to be tested in ways that went beyond words. Loyalty was no longer something I could afford to assume even if the goddess had assured me that the ones alive stood by me.

Security would need tightening. Communication lines reworked. Every weak point Aldric had built into this pack would have to be found and cut out.

And then there were the external factions. They would hear about this. News like this did not stay contained. It would spread, twisted or not, and how I responded in the next few days would decide whether Skollrend was seen as stable or vulnerable.

There was no room for hesitation now.

But before any of that, there were still loose ends to close.

I lifted my gaze.

At the far end of the hall, near the entrance, three figures stood just past the threshold, the light from the corridor stretching faintly behind them, outlining their shapes against the darker interior.

Madeline was the first to catch my eye. Her brother, Wilhelm at her side, and Valentine was a step behind them.

Madeline looked exhausted. Her face was pale and drawn. The spell she had used to save me during the fight had clearly taken more out of her than she wanted to admit.

Wilhelm stood with his arms crossed. His expression was carefully neutral, but I could see the tension in the way he held himself.

Valentine looked as composed as ever. His hands were clasped behind his back. His face showed nothing, and when he noticed me, he let out a Cheshire grin.

I saw Valentine mouth something, and a second later, they all moved down in controlled and measured steps.

Their pace matched the weight of the room, as if they knew better than to disrupt it.

They stopped a few feet away from me.

Close enough to be addressed. Far enough to show restraint.

Madeline’s gaze flicked briefly to the floor before returning to me.

I took a slow breath and let it out.

"The soul kiss," I said. "It is time to break it."

Valentine’s eyes flicked toward Madeline briefly, then back to me.

"The conditions have been met," he said. "Aldric and Ronan have been punished for their crimes. The traitors have been exposed. Justice has been carried out exactly as you promised."

I nodded.

"Then we are done."

The air between us shifted. It was subtle. Almost imperceptible. But I felt it.

The weight that had been sitting in my chest since I made the first soul kiss with Valentine lifted. The magic that had bound us together dissolved like smoke.

I took another breath, and it came easier this time.

I was free.

I was finally free of him.

Valentine’s expression did not change, but something in his posture relaxed slightly. He felt it too.

Wilhelm stepped forward, and this time there was no attempt at ceremony, no effort to dress the moment up as anything more than what it was, because we both understood it too well to pretend otherwise.

I reached out first, not out of urgency but because there was nothing left to delay, and he met me halfway, his hand firm when it closed around mine.

The magic responded immediately.

It unraveled faster than before, slipping apart with an ease that felt almost unsettling, as though it had never truly settled into place, as though whatever had bound us had already begun to loosen long before we stood here to end it.

There was a brief pressure in my chest. It was not sharp enough to hurt but it was present enough to be noticed, and then it faded just as quickly, leaving behind a strange kind of emptiness that did not quite feel like loss.

Wilhelm drew in a breath that sounded steadier than it actually was.

For a fraction of a second, something in his expression shifted, his composure slipping just enough to reveal that this had not been as simple for him as he would pretend, but he recovered almost immediately, his jaw tightening as he forced himself back into control.

The pact was that strong, even though it had a short stay.

"It is done," he said, his voice quiet but certain.

I let go of his hand, and he stepped back without hesitation, as though putting distance between us was the final confirmation that nothing remained.

Silence followed, stretching longer than it should have, settling into the space in a way that made everything feel momentarily suspended.

And then there was only Madeline.

I turned to her, aware of the shift before I fully registered it, aware that this moment would not unfold as neatly as the last.

"I guess that leaves us," I said, the words coming out more evenly than I felt.

She did not respond at once.

Instead, she shook her head, a small, almost absent motion that carried more certainty than hesitation.

"No need."

The answer did not land where I expected it to.

I frowned slightly, trying to understand if I had misheard her or misunderstood what she meant. "What?"

This time, when her gaze met mine, there was no avoidance in it, no flicker of doubt or conflict, only a steadiness that felt newly formed, as though it had taken effort to reach this point and she had no intention of stepping back from it.

"I want to keep it," she said.

The words settled between us, and for a moment, everything else seemed to recede, the distant sound of movement in the hall fading into something indistinct as my attention fixed entirely on her.

I searched her face instinctively, looking for the hesitation that should have been there, for the uncertainty that usually followed a choice like this.

There was none.

"Why?" I asked because I needed to hear her say it, needed to understand what had changed.

Her expression softened, but it did not lose its resolve, and when she stepped closer, it felt less like uncertainty and more like intention.

"So I remember," she said slowly, choosing each word with care rather than rushing through them, "what it felt like to believe that I had lost control and autonomy, and what it cost me when I believed I did."

She paused, not because she was unsure, but because she was allowing the weight of it to sit where it needed to.

"And so I don’t lie to myself in the future," she continued, her voice quieter now, though no less steady. "About what I’m capable of, or how easy it is to cross that line when I convince myself I have a reason."

I did not interrupt.

"I thought letting go would break me," she added, and this time there was the slightest trace of something softer beneath the words, not quite regret, not quite relief, but something that lived somewhere between the two. "For a long while, I thought it was because I would not be able to survive it. Survive you and the separation. So I held on for dear life. But now I see... as clear as day... It was not because I couldn’t survive it, but it was simply because I didn’t want to find out who I was or could be without it... without you. I liked being drunk in love. To be sober with a reality that you were not in... It did not feel like a life worth living."

A quiet, almost self-aware smile touched her lips before fading again.

"I just didn’t want to do it," she finished, more simply this time, the truth of it stripped of everything else.

She took another step closer, closing the distance without hesitation.

"But I am not afraid of it anymore," she said, and this time the words did not feel like something she was trying to convince herself of, but something she had already accepted. "I can be sober, and I can get over you and live a long and happy life being separated.

Her gaze did not waver.

"So I’m keeping it," she said. "To remember you. To remember the past we shared and the pain I gave you... The pain I gave us... and everything that came after. I do not want my darkness to ever hurt the people I love ever again."

She closed the remaining distance between us and wrapped her arms around me.

The contact was brief, but it was not hesitant.

It was real.

A goodbye that did not need to be said twice.

"Be happy, Cian," she murmured.

Then she pulled back. 𝒇𝓻𝓮𝓮𝙬𝙚𝒃𝒏𝓸𝙫𝒆𝙡.𝓬𝓸𝒎

For a second, I just looked at her.

This was not how I had expected this to end. But I was happy she had made peace with this. Just as I had.

"Madeline," Valentine said sharply, shattering the moment.

The word cut through the quiet, edged with something that had not been there before; Disgust.

She did not look at him immediately.

When she did, it was calm.

"I can make my own choices," she said.