Chapter 68
Chapter Sixty-Eight
BELLAMY
W e wasted no time getting to the jungle. My brothers were surprisingly strong after so long being cursed. But of course they were. I’d never known anyone as resilient, strong, courageous as them. They’d never sit back at the castle and let everyone else fight for them. I should’ve expected them to want to fight.
They’d each found weapons from the armory, all of them now with swords or spears to fight with. We didn’t know how much of their magic they’d be able to use after being cursed for so long, and I wanted to make sure they were armed.
Rain soaked us, and the sky rumbled with thunder, a promise of the storm to come.
We walked through the smashed wall surrounding the village, all the shadows gone. It felt eerily still and quiet. Too quiet.
“We have to hurry,” I said, my voice still so raspy and raw.
It was almost like I’d forgotten how to speak. I didn’t know how to pitch my voice to make the right sounds. My tongue felt heavy and thick in my mouth.
My brothers all crowded around me. I wanted to reach out and touch each of them, to hold onto them, keep them by my side in case somehow this was a trick. Part of me wondered if Khalasa was in my mind, creating this alternative reality as another punishment, that maybe my brothers weren’t really here at all.
Soloman’s wing brushed my arm, and I looked over at him. His eyes were distant, unfocused. Guilt gnawed at me over what had happened to him. It was so unfair that he would be stuck with this reminder of the curse for the rest of his life.
“I’m okay,” he said quietly as all of us ducked under a low-hanging branch.
The thick air surrounded us, and despite the rain, sweat pricked my skin.
“You can stop looking at me like that,” Soloman continued. “Like I’m a fragile piece of glass that might break.”
I snapped my mouth closed, not realizing I had been looking at him like that.
“Do we know where this battle is taking place?” Phoenix asked, walking behind me.
“It’s right in the middle of the jungle,” I said, pointing forward. “It’s about a twenty-minute walk, and then we’ll be there.”
Marcello slung an arm over my shoulders and pulled me into him. “Thanks for saving us, Bell.”
“We’re not saved yet,” Ryder said over his shoulder. “We have a big battle to face. The biggest yet.”
“I still can’t believe our father was immortal,” Klaus said, walking next to Killian. “That he fell in love with a goddess and then she took her revenge on him by cursing us.”
“That Bell is her daughter,” Killian added.
I swallowed, and Jorah shot a glare Killian’s way.
“She’s not her daughter. That monster isn’t worthy of being a mother.”
This time, it was Soloman’s wing I felt settling over my back. “She’s our sister, and that’s enough.”
Tears pricked my eyes. After all this time, after everything we’d discovered, everything we’d been through, my brothers still stood by me. They didn’t care that I wasn’t their full sister anymore. That meant the world to me.
“How are we actually going to defeat these gods?” Marcello asked. “They can’t be killed. So what? Eventually we’re going to run out of magic. We’re going to tire. And then it’ll be easy enough for them to kill us.”
He was right.
“I have to get into Khalasa’s mind,” I said. “I need you all to distract her. Do something, anything, to make her let her guard down. Once I get into her mind, I’m going to find that memory, the one where she discovered how to strip the gods of their powers. Once I know that, we can hopefully retreat, make a new plan.”
“That’s not a problem,” Jorah said from in front of me.
“I’m ready to make that bitch pay for what she did to us, to our father,” Ryder added.
My heart squeezed. We had to leave him on the terrace, bleeding out, not having any time to give him a proper goodbye like he deserved. But we would. After this was all over, we’d make sure our father was buried with honor.
I sniffled, and Marcello’s arm tightened around my shoulders. “It’s going to be alright,” he said.
It didn’t feel like it, but with my brothers here, the curse broken, I almost believed his words.
In the distance, shouts rang out, followed by loud booms and screams.
We all paused, then looked at each other.
The battle had begun. There would be no turning back now.