The Wraith Sovereign Returns to Conquer - Chapter 7

She saw me sitting on the shoulder of a monstrous wraith, my expression empty, looking down at her like some dark god descending from the sky. Her eyes went wide with shock and terror and regret, but underneath all of it there was a sick, desperate flicker of hope. She latched onto that hope the way a drowning person grabs at anything that floats. She threw herself toward me, dragging her broken leg behind her, half-crawling and half-rolling across the floor and leaving a long smear of blood in her wake. "Nico! Save me!

Please, please save me!" She crawled all the way to the Hellfire Titan's feet and tilted her ruined face up toward me. Tears cut tracks through the blood and grime until she looked like something pitiful and grotesque, a sad, broken clown begging for one more chance. "I know I was wrong! I really do! It was all Axel, he forced me into it! I'm just a weak woman, I didn't have a choice!" She sobbed and wailed, and the sight of her was wretched enough to soften any man's heart. Yet I just watched her. I felt nothing. "T remember what I told you," I said.

My voice was quiet, but every word reached her perfectly. "That you would come crawling to me on your knees, begging me to take you in like a stray with nowhere left to go." Sasha's body locked up and every trace of color drained from her face. She remembered that night at the clock tower and every word I had said to her. At the time she had thought I was out of my mind, mere fantasies from a dead man walking. However now every single one of those words had come to pass. She looked at me and the terrifying power I now commanded, then looked down at the broken, disfigured wreck she had become.

Regret and bitter resentment hit her so hard she looked like she might collapse under the weight of it. If she had not betrayed me that day, if she had chosen to stand beside me instead, would she be the one sitting on this wraith's shoulder right now, looking down on the world, holding all of this unimaginable power in her hands? Once the thought took root, she could not tear it out. The way she looked at me changed. It became fevered, obsessive. "Nico!

No, master!" She straightened her broken body upright on her knees with everything she had and bowed so low her face nearly touched the ground. "You were right! I'm a dog! A filthy, worthless dog! Please take me in! I'll do anything you want! I'll lick your shoes, I'll work myself to the bone, just please let me live!" She had thrown away every last scrap of her dignity to survive. The horde kept its distance under the pressure of the Hellfire Titan's presence, leaving an eerie pocket of empty space around us. Countless survivors fleeing through the streets saw the whole thing.