The end will begin. It always does. On the wind and with stinging pain. Faster than you can see and always when least expected. Enemies will come and they will go— forever seeking to bring you low. But stand you must, and in even fewer trust. Thyself alone, thy heart of stone. One faith. One truth.
One war.
And so it was long ago, and centuries in our future. One Malachai son who began his race. Whose true love and devotion to his precious Rubati caused them all to be cursed forever. So it began.
So it will end.
One Malachai son cursed to destroy the world because of the love of one woman. Or to save it because through her faithful heart he learned of salvation and forgiveness.
His choice.
To defy his destiny.
Or embrace his fate.
To build or destroy. The same decision that all humanity faces from the moment of birth. A road wide open to all that narrows with every decision made until we make the final one that ends our days with the last exhale we take to extinguish the candle on our lives forevermore.
Pawn or master. Choose wisely or perish from the foolishness of that last poor decision.
The immovable rock or the unstoppable force.
In truth, we are both. Situations have dictated and will dictate which we must be in order to survive. Today we are bitten, yet yesterday, we bit someone else. Tomorrow has yet to tell us which role will be ours, for it is in flux and could fall to either side.
Biter or bitten.
Life is ever a complicated symphony of catastrophes. Ever seeking to lay us low and lift us higher.
And no one has ever understood this better than the Ambrose Malachai. Born Nicholas Ambrosius Aloysius Gautier. Many things to many people. Son. Friend. Boyfriend. Squire. Brother. Dark-Hunter. Malachai. Demon. Husband. Father.
Betrayer.
Destroyer of the world.
Our could-be savior.
Nick stared at the stark words that condemned him. As harsh as they were, they were made twice as bad by the fact that they’d been written in his own handwriting.
In blood.
And they struck him like a blow.
With this he couldn’t argue. His clairvoyance was flawless as he stood beside himself in the future, looking down at the words he was writing in his grimoire.
“How did I get here?” he whispered.
He still didn’t know.
Because the future isn’t set in stone.
His best friend Acheron’s voice teased him from deep inside his mind. Every decision made impacted the next. An endless rippling stream of indecision.
One moment he’d been a clueless kid in high school. The next, he’d been a willing servant Squire for the Dark-Hunter Kyrian of Thrace. One who’d helped shield the immortal warrior from humans while Kyrian protected them from the demons who preyed on their lives and souls.
The next thing Nick had known, he’d become a Dark-Hunter himself. Only to learn that Menyara, his voodoo godmother who he trusted implicitly, was actually an ancient goddess who’d bound his own powers and hidden him from his demonic father and others who would kill or use him. That his true destiny was to become the demon who ate the world whole.
That had been his first lifetime.
Until he came back and tampered with it.
Or did he?
Man, Nick could lose his mind with this. Because what Ambrose—his future self—had failed to tell him was the secret he’d learned last night.
The secret he now knew.
For the first time ever, he understood Tabitha Devereaux’s tattoo from his vision of their future fight, and why she’d placed it on her arm.
Not as a motto for herself.
A note to him to serve as a reminder …
Fabra est sui quaeque fati. She creates her own destiny.
That was why the Ambrose Malachai had stopped in the middle of battle to stare down at it. Why he’d screamed out in agony on the day he killed her.
I made myself the monster.
My choice.
Son. Friend. Boyfriend. Squire. Brother. Dark-Hunter. Malachai. Demon. Husband. Father.
Betrayer.
Destroyer of the world.
Or savior …
My choice alone.
As with all things. The future would be made by the very decisions he made today. Good, bad and indifferent. He was the master spinner of destiny.
And he, alone, would bear it out.
“He will kill you.”
Cyprian Malachai paused as those dire words hung in the air. A slow insidious smile spread across his face as he looked up from his homework to see the obsequious demon servant who stood on his left. “You don’t know my father at all, do you?”
The demon stepped back into the shadows, cringing if the truth were known. Not that he blamed the creature. It was always good to fear him as he valued nothing and no one. That was the curse of the Malachai bloodline that he’d inherited from Ambrose.
They loved nothing and no one.
Except for his father. Ambrose had been cut from a different Malachai cloth.
Nicholas Ambrosius Aloysius Gautier. The so-called Ambrose Malachai had been a unique creature unto himself. Out of all the Malachai born after their downfall and curse, he’d been the only one to ever know a mother’s love.
The only one to have a family and …
Friends.
Something that baffled Cyprian to this day as no one had ever liked him.
He’d never understood his father’s life or the loyalty of all those who’d died by Ambrose’s side when they’d faced off in final battle all those centuries in the future.
Even now, he could see them as that fateful day had dawned. Lined up for battle. Both sides stood ready at the head of their armies. Cyprian’s dark Mavromino forces had salivated for his father’s good, Kalosum blood.
The Ambrose Malachai had stood strong at the front with his wife and her brother at his side. For the first time in all of history, the Naşāru and Arelim had ridden to fight with a Malachai and his generals at their head.
As had the last Sephiroth. Brothers and sisters in arms.
All the forces of good and light had aligned themselves against Cyprian’s demonic army. The primal sources of evil and night-shadow were ready and more than willing to finally take them all to their graves.
“Remember,” Cyprian’s mother had whispered in his ear as she prepared herself for war, “your father isn’t as strong as he appears. Your mere presence here weakens him with every breath you draw while it strengthens you so that you can defeat him. Not to mention, half his army still thinks that he’s betrayed them. It will take nothing for them to turn against him now.”
Because they had no idea that Cyprian had been born. Or that he and his mother had been playing havoc with all of their lives by masquerading as his father. He’d been having quite the time playing Ambrose at all their expenses. None of the poor fools had been the wiser.
Not even his father.
Unable to tell the two of them apart, the sheep had followed after him and done his bidding. They’d been duped without knowing. He made fools of them all, and he’d laughed at them the entire time.
Because they didn’t know better.
For all his powers, the Ambrose Malachai wasn’t impervious to everything. He had a great blind spot whenever it came to those he trusted and called friend and family. And Cyprian’s mother was an ancient goddess of supreme power and vengeance. She’d promised Cyprian long ago that this day of reckoning would come.
And here they were.
Here they were …
Facing off so that he could rise to power and his father could die by his hand and exact revenge for her.
That was the way of the Malachai curse. The father perished whenever the son came of age and killed his father to take his place.
Only one Malachai could live at a time.
Today Ambrose would die and Cyprian would rise.
Embrace your fate.
And Cyprian had gleefully seized it that day on the field when he’d killed Ambrose.
Now he was in the past to make sure that day in the future came.
One way or another. And there was nothing Nicholas Gautier could do to stop him.