Chapter Twenty Four: A Lover's Vow

Chapter twenty- four- A lovers Vow

The soft, rhythmic light from glowing crystals suspended from the ceiling cast shifting patterns across their skin. For the first time in an age—or perhaps ever—Levistus felt a profound sense of contentment. He watched the rise and fall of Benzosia’s chest as she slept, her head pillowed on his arm amidst the dark, soft furs.

A soft sigh escaped her lips as she stirred, her turquoise eyes fluttering open. She offered him a sleepy, genuine smile—a rare, precious thing that did unsettling things to the frozen fortress of his heart. She snuggled closer, her warmth a stark contrast to the ever-present chill of his own being.

“I could get used to this,” she murmured, her voice thick with sleep and satisfaction.

The moments that followed were a silent, reverent ceremony. With her own gown scorched to ruin, Levistus retrieved a garment from a simple wooden trunk at the foot of the bed. It was a tunic of his own—a simple garment of ancient Sumerian cut, a straight length of dark woven linen meant for function, not adornment.

He knelt before her, dressing her as a squire would his queen. On her slender frame, the tunic hung like a dress, its hem falling to her knees. He gently rolled the long sleeves back to free her hands, his touch a lingering prayer against her skin.

“My strength is yours,” he vowed in a low whisper, his lips brushing the warm skin of her knee. “My sword, my life, my will. All of it is yours to command.” He kissed a path up her thigh, a tender claiming that had nothing to do with lust and everything to do with worship.

When she was dressed, it was her turn. She moved to him, her fingers tracing the hard lines of his chest as she helped him into his own tunic. The warrior’s strength beneath her hands was a heady, grounding thing. She looked up at him, her gaze clear and serious, holding him captive.

“My heart is broken, Levistus,” she confessed, the words quiet but strong. “It is a ruin, and I will not offer you its ashes.” He saw the vow then, forming in the depths of her eyes, a promise far more profound than any easy declaration of love. “But I will heal. I will piece together what he shattered. And when the day comes that we are finally free, when my heart is whole and my own again, I will lay it at your feet.”

He was overcome. The sheer, breathtaking bravery of her, to stand in the ruins of her life and promise to rebuild not just for herself, but for him. It was a trust so profound, a resilience so magnificent, it shattered the last of his icy control. This was no lovesick angel; this was a queen forging her own soul from the wreckage. He could only nod, his throat tight with an emotion he had no name for, as she rose on her toes and pressed a soft, lingering kiss to his collarbone, sealing her impossible, beautiful promise.

They held each other then, fully clothed but more intimately connected than before, lost in a final, desperate series of kisses—on mouths, throats, hands—each one a seal on the vows they had made, a futile attempt to brand this moment onto their souls to carry them through the darkness to come.

He wanted to agree, to promise her an eternity of such moments, but the shadows of their reality were already creeping back. The silence in the safe house, once a comfort, now felt like the held breath before oblivion.

It was Benzosia who finally broke the spell, her expression sobering. “The ruby,” she whispered, the name of the artifact a poison on her tongue.

Her words extinguished the last embers of their shared bliss. The Prince of Stygia returned to banish the lover. He reached for his discarded trousers, retrieving a small, cold object from a hidden pocket. He held it out to her on his open palm. It was dark, rough-edged, and seemed to drink the light around it.

Benzosia’s eyes widened, but not with confusion. A flicker of cold recognition crossed her face. “A Stone of Ending,” she breathed, her voice barely audible. She met his gaze, her own now sharp and questioning. “I know what this is. Why are you giving it to me?”

Her knowledge surprised him, a stark reminder of the ancient power and forgotten lore she carried in her blood, but he didn’t question it. The gravity of the moment was too immense. “It is a bitter mercy,” he stated, his voice tight. “But a necessary one. It will… undo any consequences. From anyone.” He met her eyes, the weight of his words—and of their recent intimacy—hanging between them. “You are a Queen, Benzosia, not a vessel. The choice to bear a child must be yours and yours alone.”

His gaze then softened, dropping from her eyes to her arms and torso, where the cursed fire from the scrolls had left angry red welts. Before the weight of their future crushed them, he needed to be certain the wounds of their past were gone. He reached out, his touch gentle as he traced the skin of her arm where the worst of the burns had been. The Stygian salve had worked its magic, leaving no scar, no mark of the fire or harm she had endured. Her skin was perfect, unmarred. A profound sense of relief washed through him—a small, tangible victory against the forces that sought to destroy her.

It was this look of stark relief that made her own expression cloud with concern. “You speak as if there is no future to bear a child into,” she observed, her perception cutting straight to the heart of his dread.

The truth came out of him then, a torrent of grim reality. “Because I am no longer certain there is,” he confessed, the admission costing him more than he could have imagined. He stood and began to pace, the clockwork devices on the walls clicking like a countdown to doom.

“The ruby is not merely a source of power, Zosia. It is his soul. Everything he was—all his light, his divinity, his rage—is in that stone. Before, I believed we were fighting to unseat a tyrant. Now I know we are fighting something that has unbound itself from the laws of creation.”

He stopped and turned to her, his eyes burning with a terrible, helpless fire. “If Asmodeus learns to fully wield it, to become one with it, he will not simply rule. He will unmake. The repercussions will ripple beyond the heavens and hells, beyond the nine realms. He will be a poison that seeps into the fabric of all that is, a madness that will end everything.”

The promise he wanted to give her died on his lips. Victory was no longer a matter of strategy; it was a prayer against the inevitable.

The confession, the sheer scale of the looming catastrophe, hung in the air between them. But instead of pulling away, Levistus moved toward her, a desperate, magnetic pull he couldn’t fight. He gathered her into his arms, holding her not with gentle comfort, but with a fierce, crushing desperation, as if he could physically shield her from the cosmic horror to come. He buried his face in her hair, breathing in her scent—the one real thing in a universe poised to dissolve into chaos.

His arms were a fortress, but even he knew they were a fortress made of sand, standing against an unstoppable tide. Finally, he released her, his expression hardening with the grim necessity of their parting. “It’s time.”

He led her to the center of the room. With a series of sharp, precise gestures, he drew a complex circle on the stone floor with a fine powder of crushed bone and iron salt. Runes flared to life as he chanted in a low, guttural language, the very air in the room growing thin and sharp. He knelt and placed his palm in the circle's center, and the air shimmered and tore open, revealing not a place, but a state of being: Avernus. The air that billowed out was hot and smelled of rust and ancient despair.

“Stay close,” he commanded, taking her hand and leading her through the gateway. They stood for only a moment on a jagged obsidian plain under a sky of bruised crimson, a neutral, unhallowed ground. Before the hellscape could fully register, he began a new incantation, his voice slicing through the oppressive heat. Another portal ripped open, this one bleeding a blast of frigid air.

They stepped through and were in Stygia. An endless, frozen sea stretched before them, jagged mountains of black ice clawing at a sky filled with cold, distant stars. The biting wind whipped Benzosia’s borrowed tunic around her legs. And there, shivering impatiently by the portal’s edge, was the small, hunched figure of Snick.

Levistus gave the imp a sharp, commanding nod before turning to Benzosia for the last time. He pulled the hood of his own cloak over her head to shield her from the worst of the Stygian wind.

“He will see you back to the Malsheem,” he said, his voice a low rumble against the howling gale. He gave her one final, intense look—a universe of despair, love, and grim acceptance. Then he stepped back, and the portal to Avernus snapped shut behind him, leaving her alone with the imp in the frozen heart of his realm.

The transition back to her chambers was jarring, leaving Benzosia alone in suffocating opulence. The Stone of Ending felt heavy in her hand, no longer a simple mercy, but a choice in the face of annihilation.

There was no guarantee of a future. No promise of a life with him. There was only a terrible, vast darkness on the horizon, and the man she loved standing against it.

She walked to the hearth. She looked at the stone, a tool to erase a consequence in a future that might not exist. If all was to be lost, what was the point of caution? If all that was left was a legacy, a memory, a single act of defiance against the end of everything…

With a clarity that was both terrifying and absolute, she opened her hand and let the stone fall. It landed in the fire with a soft, final hiss and was consumed.

She didn't need to ring a bell. She knew who would be there, waiting silently in the antechamber as he always was—a quiet shadow of loyalty in this house of gilded lies. The small harem boy she had saved from the King's cruelty slipped into the room, his head bowed. She had never ordered him to serve her, but at some point, he had attached himself to her, never speaking, never questioning, but always present when she needed assistance.

“Summon my healers,” Benzosia commanded, her voice pure steel. “I require my daily fertility tonics. Early.”

The boy looked up, his large, dark eyes filled not with judgment, but with confusion. “My Queen?”

Benzosia met her own gaze in the reflection of a polished obsidian panel. She saw a queen who had just been told the universe might end, and who had chosen to plant a tree in defiance of the apocalypse.

“The King,” she said, her voice devoid of all emotion, “must have his heir.”