Page 111 of The Slayer Seduction

“What do you want us to do with yours?” she asks, holding his tome.

“Destroy it,” Balam says and Iris’ brows furrow.

“There’s a good chance that the void is gone. That your lover along with it.”

“Then I’ll find him in whatever is the true afterlife,” he says solemnly and Iris clicks her tongue.

“Can you give me Adam for a moment?” she asks, and I oblige. “Can you remember all the words to the spell?”

Adam looks over the words, not speaking them out loud, remembering the intricacies of each word.

“I’ll remember it,” Adam promises. Balam looks confused, but doesn’t question it as we take all the spell books and bring them out to where the two witches lie.

Iris places the spell books on top of their bodies and the coven circles them with interlaced hands, chanting a spell. A fire rages on, destroying the evil witches and the spell books that have controlled every slayer’s life.

I feel it the moment the spell book is destroyed, a sense of freedom I never thought I’d experience.

The blood lust that rallied through my veins is gone, the fear of dying another cycle to get sent through to the void disappears.

This is my last cycle, and there’s an endless amount of peace that comes with that realization.

After the last flame trickles out is when the witches finally break hands. There’s a lot of pain in what happened tonight for them. This coven might have been created by the hands of evil, but they’ve changed their fate. It gives me the strength to want to change my own.

I am no one’s weapon, except for my Iris.

She hugs her friends and family, quietly coming to stand in my arms as I teleport us home.

Iris and I shower in silence. I’m not sure what to say, or how to move forward now that everything is different.

All I can do is be here for her in all the ways she needs me.

“I can take over if it’s too much,” Adam says, and I know he would, but I also don’t want to shy away from the things I’m not particularly good at.

This is my official last cycle, and it’s time to learn different emotions and how to regulate them.

“Is there anyone else you need me to kill to make this better?” I ask Iris.

Adam makes the most irritated sigh in my mind, but when I look at Iris she doesn’t seem upset. She looks like she’s trying to hold back a laugh and it’s the first time I’ve seen her smile in a long time.

“No, Slayer, I think I’m good on that for a lifetime.”

“You will tell me what you need? I’m still learning and I don’t know what to say or do sometimes, but I don’t want to run away and always let Adam take control.”

Her face softens as she kisses the center of my chest.

“You being here is all I need. Just give me some time, okay?”

“I’m nothing if not a patient slayer,” I reply.

She needs time, but she also needs me, and that’s enough.

The next days pass by with Iris nearly working herself to death. It’s a mixture of working on potions, getting her shop restocked, and helping Balam.

Now, he’s my brother in some twisted way, and he helped us fight Celeste, however I don’t like how close he sits next to my Iris.

So I promptly drag a chair between them, tossing an arm over Iris’ shoulder.

She laughs at me, shaking her head as she works on the new spell book. One that could summon Balam’s lover. She’s made him aware that there’s a chance that this won’t work. We don’t know if the void was destroyed or not, or even if his lover is there. Beyond that, Iris has also imposed some rules for creating the book. If this other slayer is summoned, the book will be destroyed immediately. Balam is amenable to that rule, since this is also his last cycle. The trickiest part of Iris’ agreement is that the human vessel must give permission. I’m not exactly sure how he’s going to figure that one out, but it’s his problem.