**Chapter 75 – They Say No One Dies From Love**
December 14, 2030 – Aerie Academy, then Xibalba**
They say no one dies from love.
Well, I might just be the first.
It starts with a week that is actually, infuriably normal.
Classes.
Office hours where freshmen cry because Rowan rewrote gravity again.
Kayo teaching "Intro to Chaos" by turning the cafeteria into a zero-G rave.
Nerida winning the void-skate championship while literally eating a black hole for style points.
Remy and I sneaking off to the floating island every night just to breathe the same air and pretend the universe isn't trying to kill us again.
Seven whole days of ordinary married-student legend life.
Then Thursday happens.
I wake up and the bed is cold on his side.
No note.
No scent trail.
No heartbeat in the pack bond.
Just the faint smell of wet limestone and marigolds.
The kind of flowers you leave for the dead.
I'm in the council chamber in under thirty seconds, still in his T-shirt and panic.
The others are already there.
Seras's armor is half-on, sunrise flickering like a broken neon sign.
Lucian's wings are mantled so hard the air burns.
Rowan's grimoire is bleeding ink.
Kayo's tails are lashing hard enough to cut glass.
Nerida's tentacles are black holes, swallowing light.
Kael Stormrider is the one who says it out loud.
**Kael (voice flat, lethal):**
"Xibalba.
Death-lord faction.
They took him through an unregistered cenote gate in the lower catacombs.
They left this."
He hands me a jaguar mask carved from obsidian.
On the inside, written in Remy's blood:
**"The crown is the key.
The coyote is the lock.
Come alone or he wears his own skin as a coat."**
The Thunder Crown on my wrist flares white-hot.
I don't scream.
I don't cry.
I go very, very quiet.
The kind of quiet that comes before lightning learns a new language.
**Celeste:**
"They want the Twin Thunder Crown to crack Xibalba wide open and let the death lords walk topside forever.
They think if they kill my husband while I'm wearing it, the backlash will shatter the veil between life and death."
I look at my court (my family, my everything).
**Celeste:**
"They just declared war on the wrong storm."
Kayo grins, all teeth and nine kinds of apocalypse.
**Kayo:**
"Field trip?"
Rowan snaps his grimoire shut; the sound cracks like a guillotine.
**Rowan:**
"I've already calculated seventeen ways to make the underworld regret being born."
Seras's armor finishes forming, pure molten gold.
**Seras:**
"I call dibs on whoever touched him."
Lucian spreads his wings; the room temperature drops thirty degrees.
**Lucian:**
"I'll bring the sky down on them."
Nerida's tentacles unfurl into actual event horizons.
**Nerida:**
"I'll bring the dark."
I pull the obsidian mask over my face.
It fits perfectly (because of course it does).
The Thunder Crown splits into two pieces (one on my brow, one hovering where Remy should be).
**Celeste (voice like the end of the world):**
"No one dies from love.
But a lot of death lords are about to die for it."
We step through the cenote gate together.
The water is black.
The air smells like marigolds and betrayal.
And somewhere in the dark, my husband is waiting.
Xibalba just kidnapped the wrong coyote.
I'm coming, Remy.
Hold on.
Love didn't kill me.
But it's about to kill everything else.
** The Trade**
December 14, 2030 – 4:11 a.m., Aerie Academy dorm**
I wait until they're all asleep.
Seras passed out on the couch with her armor half-dismissed, one boot still on.
Lucian curled protectively around her, wings draped like a thundercloud blanket.
Kayo snoring in fox form, nine tails twitching with dreams.
Rowan at the table, head down on his grimoire, glasses crooked.
Even the dorm is quiet, the living mural dimmed to embers.
I stand in the dark, crown spinning slow and cold above my heart.
The obsidian mask the Death lords left is in my hand, warm now, pulsing like a second heartbeat.
Remy's heartbeat.
They took him six hours ago.
Six hours of me pretending I could plan a rescue while every second without his bond in my chest felt like drowning in reverse.
I can't feel him.
But I can feel them.
Waiting.
I write the note on a scrap of starlight paper Rowan left on the table.
**"They want the crown.
They want me.
I'm giving them what they want.
Don't follow.
If I don't come back, burn Xibalba to the bedrock and salt the ashes.
I love you all.
Tell Remy I'm coming.
– C"**
I leave it under Seras's hand.
Then I put on the mask.
The world flips.
I'm falling through black water that isn't water, through screams that have no sound, through the smell of marigolds and old blood.
I land alone in the heart of Xibalba.
The throne room is a cenote turned inside out—walls of obsidian skulls weeping liquid starlight, floor of polished bone, ceiling the night sky of a world that never saw sun.
Remy is there.
Chained to a throne of frozen screams with chains made of his own shadow.
Eyes closed.
Breathing shallow.
Alive.
The Death lords circle him (twelve of them, masks of jade and gold, eyes like empty graves).
The one in front wears a crown of hummingbird feathers and human teeth.
**Death Lord King:**
"The queen comes alone.
As requested."
I step forward.
The crown above my heart spins once (slow, deliberate).
**Celeste (voice steady, seventeen, done):**
"Release him.
The crown is yours.
I'm yours.
Let him go."
The King smiles with too many teeth.
**Death Lord King:**
"Love is such a quaint weakness."
He snaps his fingers.
Remy's chains dissolve.
He drops to his knees, gasping, eyes snapping open—gold, terrified, mine.
**Remy (hoarse):**
"Celeste—no—"
I don't look at him.
If I look at him, I'll break.
**Celeste:**
"Take me.
Leave him.
That was the deal."
The Death lords close in.
Their hands are cold as the void.
The crown above my heart flares one last time (warm, proud, loving).
Then it goes dark.
I feel it rip free.
Not from my head.
From my heart.
The pain is everything.
I drop.
The last thing I hear is Remy screaming my name like it's the only word he's ever known.
Then silence.
Remy finds himself back at Aerie Academy on the floor of our dorm room.
And the Death Lord King laughing as he places the completed crown on his own head.
The girl who made the sky kneel just traded herself for a coyote.
And the underworld is about to learn what happens when you take the heart out of a storm.
It doesn't stop beating.
It just finds a new way to burn.
To be continued…