The shadows speak to me, Des admitted back on earth. It was how he learned so many secrets.

“Do you think that means anything to them? To me?” the Thief says. “I existed before the dawn of day.”

The shadows around us begin to shiver and grow.

“Do you know what they told me?” Des says.

Euribios falls silent.

Des’s face hardens. “Even shadows can deceive and gods can die.”

Des looks at me then, and like a thunderclap, I feel that look down to my bones.

Love, love as endless as the night. That’s all I see in his eyes.

“Now, my queen,” the Night King says to me, “where were you?”

He’s handing off the torch, letting me resume the insidious task I’d begun.

Slowly, a smile creeps along my face.

Vengeance, at last.

I lift my chin. “Des, you are to ignore every command I give from this point forward.”

His eyes flash with devilish delight. “As you wish, my sweet siren.”

With that parting line, he vanishes, melting into the darkness as he has so many other times since I first met him. Our bond sings, and I can feel him down the other end of it, sure and steady.

My gaze moves to the Thief, and my whole persona changes. For a minute, I set aside the knowledge that Des appears to be alive and well.

Right now, an entity needs to pay.

“Face me, Euribios.”

Slowly, the god rotates around, his expression incredulous.

He’s dominated others for so long that he can’t possibly recognize the position he’s now in.

“I will enjoy paying you back for this—” he vows.

“You will not threaten me,” I say. “Nor will you use any of your magic on me or anyone else. Right now, you are powerless.”

The Death King’s mouth curves up. “I will never be powerless, enchantress,” he says, wading through the souls to get to me, still resisting my earlier command. He doesn’t look frightened—I don’t think the Thief even knows what fear is; he’s never had to fear a thing in his life.

As he moves towards me he begins murmuring. His oily magic stirs, and I sense him redrawing his ward.

Too late, Death King.

“Drown,” I say, my voice hypnotic.

The Thief barks out a laugh, interrupting his work. “You cannot kill me—”

“I can do whatever it is I want. So come closer,” I say, moving out into deeper water, souls slipping past me. “Find me beneath the waves. Feel my watery kiss. Drown in my arms. Die for me, my undying king.”

Sinister. Seductive. Even death is tempting when a siren delivers it sweetly.

The Thief continues to wade towards me, only now, his torso is beginning to disappear beneath the water’s surface.

“I cannot die.”

“Yes,” I breathe, “you can.”

I move to the middle of the pool, feeling my magic in my veins and in the water. Euribios’s eyes are locked on mine, longing shining bright in them. The water has nearly reached his shoulders. He begins murmuring once more.

“Meet me down in the water’s depths,” I say, coaxing, coaxing. “There’s nothing to fear. Breathe it in. Drown.”

My words strike like an anvil.

The Thief’s breath catches, and a spark of something enters his eyes; it’s not fear, he’s too alien a creature for that; shock, maybe—or betrayal.

Or maybe it’s that, for all his dealings with death, this eternal thing can’t conceive of it happening to him.

And now it is.

Whatever ward he’s been casting, it sits in the air unfinished, and it’s not clear that it would be useful at this point anyway. My eyes, my body, my magic—everything that I am beckons to him.

Join us down below.

It doesn’t matter that he’s a god and I’m not, nor does it matter that my power is infinitesimal next to his. I promise a dream, a beautiful, deadly dream, and what is more powerful than that? Dreams, desire—what wouldn’t you do to have what you most want?

I slip beneath the lapping surface. All around me howling, phantom things grab and claw at the Thief.

They hadn’t harmed me—I hadn’t even thought they were capable of it—but they’re harming Euribios, his skin splitting open, his blood looking like ink in the water before his skin heals over.

“Drown, drown, drown.” Even down here I whisper it.

The waterline climbs up his neck, then his jaw.

I don’t know whether he sinks the rest of the way himself, or if he stops fighting against the powers pulling at him, but all at once, his head sinks below the surface.

“Drown.”

The Thief—Euribios—opens his mouth and draws in water.

That’s all it takes for the spirits to swarm him, descending on the god like ravenous beasts. If I thought they were hurting him before, it’s nothing compared to their onslaught now. I see muscle and bone as they tear into him.

More disturbingly, the dead shove their way into his mouth.

The Thief’s eyes are open, and the entire time he stares at me, his eyes sharp with desire and alarm. Euribios reaches for me, either in want or in need, the water around his arm darkening with his shadowy blood.

But I never take that offered hand, and the spirits crowd in so thick that after several moments, the Thief disappears behind so many ephemeral bodies.

The moment the two of us lose eye contact, his screams start up, the sound muffled by water and the spirits forcing their way into his mouth.

I linger underwater, my ears feasting on his dying cries. They grow fainter and fainter, until eventually they vanish altogether.

And then—

BOOM!

The Thief’s magic detonates, rippling outward. It slams into me, throwing me back before continuing on, blasting across the throne room.

In its wake, the spirits begin to fall away from the Thief. Only, there’s no more Thief. No body, no bones—just a few drops of inky blood. The last of his dark magic unfurls in the water, then dissipates away.

His death wasn’t the sweet seduction I promised him it would be. It was painful, brutal. As it should’ve been.

He’s gone.

The Thief is finally dead.

Maybe there will always be darkness and shadows and all those things that happen when the sun goes down. Maybe night will always be waiting to swallow up the earth, but today—

Darkness died.

Chapter 45

When I rise from the water, the dead cling to my clothes, not wanting to release me. Eventually—and reluctantly—they do. I gave them the blood they demanded, after all.

They slip back into the pool where they wait for whatever it is that the rulers of the underworld do with the souls of the dead.

Now that the Thief is well and truly gone, his staggering magic lifts from the air, and the room around me brightens.

The siren’s savage nature is still riding me hard. I want to kiss and touch and taste and torment. I want it all so badly that my wings and claws throb.

I’ve only taken a step or two when Des appears several feet from me.

I come to a stop, and I don’t dare breathe.

This feels like a spell, one that will be broken the moment I move.

We stare at each other for one beat, then two. And then the spell is broken.

Des disappears, only to reappear right in front of me. The Night King crushes me to him, and it is everything I’ve needed.

I gather his shirt into my fists as his lips find mine. Suddenly, it feels like I can breathe again, like the world has colors and purpose and joy because Desmond Flynn, King of the Night, is alive and in my arms.