Through the blasted walls of the palace, I watched the Pots drop from the sky to the northern perimeter of the grounds. The same perimeter where Rover and Sol fought my brother, and where our strongest soldiers had advanced—lured in by a false sense of security.
The demons fell like tephra, and if it weren't for the portal masking my scent, I knew they'd have sought out my memories faster than greyhounds chasing prey.
Then again, with Regulas at the helm, it would take nothing more than a thought to end me.
When I glanced back at the demon king, his pale fingers had found the old fireplace poker lying on the ground behind him—a tool blocked from Will's view. And as tatted knuckles curled around the iron bar, I realized it wasn't for defense.
"Will, move!" I shrieked.
His alarmed gaze locked on my position, as if he'd sensed me there all along, but my warning came too late.
Regulas swung the metal rod straight into his brother's kneecap, and the harsh crack of bone—followed by Will's agonized gasp—filled my vision with bloodlust.
I immediately sank to the ground, bent on sending Regulas into yesteryear, but a metal-clad body crashed into mine before I could so much as graze the floor, and the world tipped sideways.
My spine smacked the stone corridor, and the Pan who'd tackled me there bared her teeth as she pinned my wrists above my head, palms up.
Power nullified.
Utility extinguished.
But I didn't have time to dwell on her menacing expression, nor the absurd weight of her body. My gaze was back on Will in an instant.
He'd fallen on his good knee, clutching tight to his other leg as darkness rained upon the battlefield. I waited for him to rise, to shake it off, but his eyes remained closed, and he didn't move a muscle.
He can't, I realized with a nauseating twist in my gut.
Regulas, spared from my power, staggered to his feet, still gripping the poker as he kicked Will's sword out of reach. "Don't you remember my first rule of training, Ace? Only the dead know defeat." He tsked. "Amateur move on your part."
"Get away from him," I snarled, thrashing against Two-Ton's grip, doing everything in my power to escape this human snare.
Regulas wouldn't take Will away from me.
Not again.
"Ikelos..." Bloodshot eyes trailed my way, and he smiled, pleased to see me alive for a plethora of nefarious reasons, I'm sure. "I was beginning to think you wouldn't show."
I was finally close enough to see the toll of this massacre on him, the cost of such powerful magic. And though Havard insisted that Godric—and Godric alone—paid the price for opening a bridge, I had to wonder if something changed the day he died.
Because there was no questioning it: Regulas was beyond sick. He was corrupted—mind, body, and soul. Poisoned by hate and something much, much darker. And it was turning him into a creature far worse than I'd imagined.
I squirmed again, kicking out beneath the Pan, but she was too strong. Too heavy.
"There's no point," Regulas said, inclining his head at my futile efforts. "Why don't you just...sit back and watch?"
Watch what, I didn't know, and I had no intention of finding out.
Cinder started forward to intervene, a low growl in her throat, but with one irritated glance from her son, a dozen Pots diverged from the swirling mass overhead and dove for her—falcons of smoke and avarice.
The canine, wise enough to flee, darted into the ruins with angry wisps of darkness on her heels, and my veins thrummed with anxiety as she vanished from sight.
Great. There goes our arbitrator.
I craned my neck to peer through the Pan's curtain of long, oily hair, but I couldn't find Lucy anywhere. Perhaps she'd fallen victim to our incorporeal visitors, or maybe she'd wandered deep into the palace, disinterested in her brothers' fate.
Either way, Will and I were all alone here in the pit of Godric's contingency, and it was high time I intervened in family matters.
I calmed my heart, thinking back to what Will taught me that day in the Gritz. We'd practiced this exact scenario after Miss Crazy Eyes staked me in the palms like a disturbed taxidermist.
Pelvic floor, elbows down, arm wrap—
I jerked my hips upward, throwing Two-Ton off balance, and as soon as her hands lifted from my flesh to catch her own body weight, I rolled sideways to plant my bare palm against the floor.
Or attempted to, at least.
But a second pair of hands seized my wrists—longer and slimmer than the first—and when they tightened around my limbs, I knew there was no escaping them.
I glared at the soldier beyond my brow, and my heart quivered at the familiar face scowling down at me.
Koji.
My comrade bore two milky white eyes, and with his sharpened canines and body piercings, he looked more sinister than any Pan on the battlefield.
Gritz. Jo's gonna be devastated.
His nostrils flared, as if I reeked of something addictive, something too redolent to ignore. Meanwhile, Two-Ton leaned back, distributing her weight to the lower half of my body and driving fresh, warm blood out of my thigh.
It was damn near impossible to contain my groan of pain, but I refused to gift my enemies even a granule of satisfaction.
Regulas hummed to himself, assessing my self-discipline, and then he redirected his attention to his brother.
No...
No, no, no...
Will blanched, quickly realizing this wasn't the king's finishing blow, but a beating. And far too slowly, he started crawling away.
All I could do was watch as Regulas brought the poker down on the same leg—this time from the opposite angle.
Will screamed when the bar made contact. He screamed.
I'd never heard him make that sound, not as an adult, and it struck me like a whip. "Stop it!"
A third blow snapped the bloody arm holding him upright, and hot tears flooded my eyes as the prince collapsed.
"Enough!" I sobbed, straining against the stone-faced demons pinning me down. "Leave him alone. Please, Regulas!"
The king paused to look at me, then observed his crippled sibling once more. Grudgingly, he lowered the poker, but the grin on his face told me his vendetta wasn't over.
"You're right. Asa's too willing to accept my punishment. He knows he deserves it." He pivoted to face me, and his thought process was as transparent as the window shards that littered the floor.
I swallowed as he sauntered toward me. He sought reactivity, and he knew hurting me would torment Will like nothing else.
"Ray—" Will pleaded, fighting for consciousness. He tried to rise, but his broken ligaments wouldn't take any weight, and his panicked eyes flicked to the man's retreating spine. "Don't..."
Regulas didn't listen. He dragged the poker behind him, the weapon eerily silent as it slid over maroon carpet. "You two can plead and beg as much as you like. But only an idiot would extend mercy to the sibling who betrayed him and the living weapon who made him a threat." He halted before the doorway, and his eyes narrowed on my face. "It may come as a shock to you, but I have little sympathy for the girl who stole my army."
"You can't steal something that was never given," I spat, and it tightened his smile a notch.
He glanced over his shoulder. "What do you think, Asa? Should I kill her myself? Or should I let the demons feast on her soul? Let them tear her apart, memory by memory?" His gaze rose to the famished shadows beyond the corridor, and even though his inquiry raised every hair on my nape, I refused to wither in his presence.
"Indecisiveness is an ugly trait for a king," I said. "You scared of what'll happen when you cut me open?"
It was risky to antagonize him, but it was also my best bet at delaying my execution. And maybe if I stalled long enough, Rover would come to our rescue. Maybe if I ran this clock, Will wouldn't have to watch me die.
Regulas let out a mirthless chuckle. "I'd be lying if I said I wasn't curious," he waved the poker at my stomach, "to see what lurks beneath your shell."
Will's distressed gaze found mine, briefly, before I broke eye contact.
I wasn't ready to say goodbye. Not yet. There was still a chance someone would rescue us. There was still hope, however meager.
"But iron won't do the trick, will it, Ikelos?"
Regulas tossed the poker aside and pulled Koji's sword free from the demon's scabbard—a vanadium weapon he'd brought for necessary lethal force, just as our superiors had advised.
I studied the long, unremarkable blade as the king lowered it to my jugular. Would this be the weapon to kill me? A borrowed sword intended for a speedy getaway? Because after surviving a spear, my treasured knife, and a set of poisoned arrows, it almost felt like an insult.
Better than a bullet in the back, came a thought that didn't quite feel like my own.
"Ray," Will begged, dragging himself closer with his upper body strength. "You're not Godric. It doesn't have to end this way—"
"Quiet," Regulas hissed, watching me like he was still debating how he might peel me open. "You've taken my people, my army, and now you've destroyed our home. You'll soon understand what it feels like to lose everything you hold dear, brother."
I frowned up at him, this sulky child donning a worthless crown. "Please. You've only lost what you've abused and neglected. But you can't admit that, so you've made it your life's mission to make everyone else as lonely and miserable as you are."
Suffocated by pride, he'd pursued a detrimental path. And now, he was so far down the hole he'd dug, he couldn't come up for air. In his eyes, there was no correcting course. Not anymore.
It's out of our hands, he'd said when Will asked him to dismantle the portal. But maybe a lose-lose situation was the only reality he could tolerate. Maybe Lucy's "switch" wasn't so much a nonsensical riddle as it was a homonym.
He pressed the sword against my cheek. "We could have made a difference, you and me. We could have reset the world. Started over. But you fell for your military's propaganda like every other unsuccessful revolutionary." Rejection gleamed in blackened irises. Rejection and pain. "I'm disappointed in you."
I scoffed, even as the toxic metal flayed my skin cells. "What, you think you're some trailblazer? Butchery is the oldest tradition known to man. You're just another power-hungry fool on a booster seat."
Koji's nails dug into my wrists—a warning—but I was glad for the company. If this was the end of the line, at least my friend had a front-row seat to my defiance.
"Such a childish farewell," Regulas taunted, and I spotted Will shaking his head across the floor, rejecting my fate, rejecting our separation.
"Oh, we'll meet again," I assured the king, keeping my voice level, even as Death hovered in my periphery. "They call me the God of Nightmares for a reason." I suddenly remembered what Nova told me before she died, and I channeled her cheeky disposition as I whispered, "Until next time, Your Highness."
Hatred flattened his lips as the blade carved a bloody line to the corner of my mouth, then dipped to the small, vulnerable space between cuirass and pauldron.
Time's up, Al.
You're going to die right here in a sea of red, broken concrete.
But at least I'd killed the king's smug grin. At least I'd wormed my way into his brain where I could haunt him long after my departure.
I turned my head to share my final moments with Will, and his wet eyes made my tears slip free. They rolled down over my nose into my snowy hairline, heavy with unfulfilled goals and mighty burdens.
There was so much pain in Will's gaze, so much heartache, and I wished I could reach out and clasp his hand one last time.
You'll be okay, I wanted to tell him. But it felt wrong to end this life with a lie.
As Regulas slowly twisted the blade into my flesh, eliciting a desperate roar from his brother and a fountain of white mist from my chest, a number of things happened at once.
First, an object whizzed past my ear and punctured the meat of Koji's hand. The projectile triggered a plume of black smoke, and the demon released me with a howl of pain. Then, before I could even think to act on my freedom, a terrifying growl sounded near my ankles, and Two-Ton screamed as some quadruped dragged her away.
I didn't waste any time piecing together what had happened. Amidst the chaos, I slammed my bare hand to the stone, and Regulas and Koji collapsed to the ground like training dummies.
Seizing the abandoned blade, I rolled into a sitting position, and Will, just as confused as I was, struggled to do the same.
Blinking away the tears and the burning light of my power, I gaped at the perplexing squad of soldiers on the other side of the room.
The smallest individual, and perhaps the most bewildering, was Eagan. The bunker-raised child stood at the front of the huddle, swathed in leather armor three sizes too big.
Taking note of the journal in his hands, I began filling in the blank spaces, one detail at a time.
To his left, Valerie lowered her bow, still wearing her traveling gear and a layer of eye makeup so thick, I could see the charcoal crescents fifty feet away. And Torian, standing to Eagan's right, was already scrounging through his satchel for medical supplies.
Then there was Mason, bringing up the rear of the group and staring back at me with a strange blend of relief, accomplishment, and horror.
I didn't know what to make of their miraculous timing, nor the shield of white ether surrounding them.
A shield that appeared to stave off vicious demon energy.
A shield that just so happened to sprout from Mason's open, glowing palm.
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Woohooo! This probably needs another round of edits, but I was too excited to post it!
Thanks for reading! ❤️❤️❤️