Chapter Eighty-One
Nicole
NICOLE’S SCREAM ECHOED WITH BELLS’ MUFFLED ONE AS Aífe’s blade sank home. The woman had twisted her wrist at the last moment, which plunged the knife into Nicole’s father’s shoulder, not his heart. But it was close.
Too close.
Aífe yanked the knife out. Blood poured from his wound in such a furious dark tide that Nicole could barely breathe.
‘You win,’ she rasped, as her father tried to straighten, tried to keep his head up. They needed to get him medical attention, now. She had no idea how a Demon God healed. Not one who poisoned himself regularly to keep that power at bay.
How much time did they have?
Her vision blurred with furious, helpless tears as she looked into her father’s pained eyes, and struggled against the bruising grip the Empyreal had on her.
‘You’re right,’ Nicole panted. ‘There’s more and I can help you figure it out. Just please, please, let them go somewhere safe. Get someone to help him!’
‘And you’ll swear the oath?’ Aífe asked sweetly, the knife glinting a garish red with her father’s blood in the low light.
‘Yes.’
Bells sobbed. Their father swayed with the sudden blood loss.
Aífe’s eyes narrowed, pleased. ‘There. That’s all I wanted. And look at that, we’ve also discovered the difference between you and Freya. You’re just a girl. Angry, out of your depth. And outmanoeuvred. Now, get in the pool.’
The Empyreal behind Nicole dragged her up and shoved her closer to the steps, into the gently steaming water. The world spun and she staggered, her still-bound hands jerking.
She dug into herself, reaching for the gleaming power within that had saved her before, but it was weak, curled into itself in her solar plexus like a wounded animal.
She couldn’t even get a grip on a vision, an essence of Aífe’s past kills that could – if the woman wasn’t an Empyreal – transform Nicole. Last time she’d been in a life-or-death situation, her Empyreal had saved her.
But now … now that wasn’t going to happen.
Her heartbeat felt razored, each pump sending terror through her.
She couldn’t trust her Empyreal to protect her anymore, and it fractured a kernel of something crucial inside.
It was this or nothing.
Because despite the core of immortal power inside her, she was still just a young woman who loved her family and would do anything to protect them.
Nicole started into the warm, almost hot water, trying not to think about Bells’ gentle crying and her muffled words – like some kind of prayer. Her sister’s eyes darkened with pulsing veins like she was trying to force herself to See something.
A thud sounded from the left: the other black glass wall running parallel to the pool.
Then a splintering lashed across it.
Nicole paused waist-deep. Did they have some kind of beast half restrained in there? Something Aífe might let loose on Bells and her father?
As hairline fractures went through the glass, the dark effect turned clear, revealing Kyan on the other side, fighting off what looked like half a dozen Empyreals. He was feral, almost glowing with rage.
His eyes locked on hers amid the fray, and his roar shook the glass.
A tremor of relief, of fear, shook the very core of her.
‘Change of plans,’ Aífe said, snapping her fingers at Alexander, who turned her bleeding father around slightly.
‘No! Wait!’ Nicole threw herself deeper into the water. It swallowed up her legs, hips, and waist with warmth, but pushing through it in her tonic-weakened state had her legs shaking. The strange water doused her with soothing heat, sinking into her bones and cloaking her in sudden lethargy.
Fighting it, Nicole tried to run, slipping on the slick stone base of the pool. For a moment, water smothered her, rushing into her mouth, up her nose and closing over her head.
She burst back out, coughing, to find her father kneeling before Aífe, his left side facing Nicole.
‘I’ve changed my mind,’ Aífe said, her gaze flicking up to where Kyan slammed an Empyreal against the wall.
If he made it through, he’d kill her, and she knew it.
That made her even more dangerous.
A deep, all-encompassing terror spiked through Nicole. She needed to stop everything. Fix everything. It was going to kill her, this need, this desperate feeling. It was going to warp something essential inside, and she could feel it happening like the twist of a dark knife.
‘Stop!’ she shouted. ‘We had a deal!’
But Aífe didn’t stop.
‘Say hello to Freya for me,’ she said, the glint of her knife emerging. The snarl on her face incandescent with hatred.
In the next second, her father’s eyes shot to Nicole.
And she knew.
She knew that this was it, because the bone-deep horror felt more consuming than a transformation. It was a moment he didn’t want her to see; that he couldn’t prevent.
‘STOP!’ Nicole screamed, dragging herself up the final steps and out of the water.
At the same time, Bells – whose chains must have been subtly unlocked by the Tène – threw herself between Aífe and their father, her arm outstretched.
Their father’s eyes widened with horror.
He launched as Bells did, but the knife still sank home.
To a metallic clang.
The Tène had flown up and flattened over Bells’ chest, morphing into a gold breastplate, stopping the blade and protecting its treasure.
Nicole had no time for relief, because as Aífe’s blade glanced off, she drew back, her face a mask of fury, to stab again.
Nicole screamed and shifted her weight as a huge Empyreal charged towards her from Aífe’s left. When they collided, she was able to clip him with her shoulder and use the slippery floor to throw him into the pool.
She sucked in a breath at the splash, desperate for the kill scent to slam into her but knowing it wouldn’t, turning her instead into the most desperate version of herself.
Their father knocked Bells clear and slammed into Aífe as the Tène zipped across the space between them and slithered into his restraints.
As Alexander went to the pair of them, Nicole grabbed a piece of rock from the semi-ruined columns, her hands still awkwardly bound, and launched it against Alexander’s head.
It was a sloppy throw, but enough to make him pause and turn.
As the Empyreal who’d shoved her in the pool came at Nicole, their father’s great chains unlatched and he pressed his thumbs over Aífe’s eyes as they fell to the floor.
His powers ripped through her and she thrashed beneath him like a wild animal, bringing up the knife to slam it down into their father’s back with a shriek. Stabbing and stabbing, the blade slick and dark with blood.
Bells was screaming.
Nicole could hear Kyan roar distantly.
And pure, feral rage streaked through her.
Nicole threw herself towards them, but her feet were taken out from under her.
The other Empyreal slammed her into a column, rattling her bones.
She barely managed to kick his leg out, which had him stepping back and falling into the pool as the other tried to climb out.
But as Aífe shoved their father off her, he zeroed in on Bells as Aífe did.
When Aífe threw her knife at Bells, their father jumped in the way. The Tène grew a long enough tail to whip around Bells’ ankle and drag her from the line of fire. But the little creature didn’t focus on their father, only her.
So the knife hit him straight in the heart.
Time seemed to stop, suspending as his shoulders caved in, as shock painted across his features and Nicole’s own heart ripped from her body.
Glass shattered to her left, followed by Kyan’s roar of rage that shook something archaic and primal inside her.
That restarted the world.
Nicole’s gaze locked on Aífe, on her victorious, wild face.
This would be it.
The moment Nicole killed with her bare hands.
Before she could even try, her feet lifted with a momentary lightness as a blast from behind them pulsed across the pool.
She vaguely saw Aífe thrown several feet backwards and felt Kyan grip her arm so she wasn’t thrown, too, the force near dislocating it. Instead, she slammed into the floor.
Kyan’s body shielded her father and Bells, because he knew Nicole wouldn’t survive if they were dead; that she would be reduced to nothing.
But he still had hold of her.
His fingers gripped hard, locked around their binding mark on her forearm, his teeth gritted. Those fierce eyes locked on Nicole’s, wild with fury and love as he roared against the rubble, the destruction.
She wanted to sob with relief that he was here. Alive. Fighting this insidious organisation, beside her.
Everything he’d done ripped through her mind with the heat of the explosion. It made her want to rage, to grieve the time she’d wasted.
She’d been so terrified of admitting the words to herself, because loving him was one more soft part the Wake could drive a knife into. Loving him bared her throat, but it also bared his.
But if she didn’t say it, if she didn’t admit it in this moment, she might never be able to.
I love him.
Even if it was all over.
Even if she never got to tell him why. To tell him that he didn’t need to prove himself to her. She cherished his friendship, she knew where his loyalties lay, and she loved him with all her heart.
‘Kyan!’ she sobbed, as her world was torn to pieces.
His eyes met hers through the dust and blood and spray of the Wake’s pool.
And the love in them drew that feeling tight as a noose that had suddenly snapped and freed her in the face of death.
‘I lov—’