29. Chapter 29
Izzy opened her strained eyes.
We’re alive!
Her long exhale joined Daxton’s and Simon’s in the underground garage.
Daxton tensed at her side. “Someone’s here.”
A shadow shifted in her periphery. She whipped to the right. Daxton had already positioned himself between her and the ominous figure.
The male Archfiend, shrouded in baggy tan robes, stood far enough away that Izzy could barely make out his blotchy skin. His tucked-back wings hung like melted plastic ligaments.
He wasn’t the same Archfiend who’d attacked her.
Energy saturated the air. Indigo light surrounded them; a powerful barrier to keep them trapped. The hair at the back of her neck stood on end.
The Archfiend brought his hands together in a slow clap with an enunciated back end. The familiar sound tugged at her memories. Daxton moved as if to attack, but Izzy grabbed his arm out of curiosity, halting him.
“I’m so very disappointed in you, Isi.” The Archfiend’s guttural voice echoed in the parking garage. “I see you have learned nothing from me. Caring for this man has led you straight into a trap.”
“Who are you?” she asked.
“Ah, yes.” The Archfiend stepped closer to the barrier, the light bathing his features in indigo. His greasy brown hair curling at his nape didn’t move. “I have become quite something to behold.”
His thin lips spread into a knowing smile she’d never forget. One that laugh lines had once framed, but now the wrinkles held a cruel note of malice. His once dusky blue eyes had become black.
It couldn’t be.
“F-Fotios?” Heat built behind her eyes as she stumbled backward. “It—you—you—”
Her mind reeled, not from simple disbelief, but from the sheer impossibility of it within her understanding of Archfiend genesis. Archfiends came from Fallen killing their own kind and siphoning their power. How could Fotios, her cherished Coheart, become one, and after death?
Her scientific brain searched for contradictions, for any logical flaw in the horror before her eyes.
A cold dread, born of violated logic, tightened her stomach.
Her spirit sought a rational explanation.
She had to be hallucinating again. That was it.
She struggled to force his image back into her mind.
Why would her brain sabotage her? She squeezed her eyes shut and covered her ears.
This isn’t real. I’m—I’m asleep. Have to be. There’s no way.
That gaping chasm of darkness in her mind threatened to wash over her. Warmth surrounded her, pushing away the shadows. Hands grabbed hers and drew them away from her head. She focused on Daxton’s drawn face and determined gaze.
He gripped her fingertips, bringing sensation to their numbness. “It’s real.”
“Yeah, I see him, too,” Simon said.
Panic shuddered through her. Daxton turned back to their adversary.
She cleared her throat. “How are you here? You died.”
“In some ways, yes. But I had to die to become greater. You would have stopped me had I stayed with you and your compassion.” Fotios’s wing made a cracking sound as it snapped in and out. “I believed my death might teach you the truth behind your emotions. But it appears you have learned nothing.”
Izzy winced. “You abandoned me and became this…thing to teach me a lesson?”
His face twisted into a rage so unrecognizable, it made the hair on her arms stand on end. Daxton moved more in front of her, dragon raging along the link.
Fotios looked away from them until he schooled his expression to calm. “Remnants. Do you remember my theory?”
“I remember you experimenting on a pupil to prove your point,” she said.
“That pupil, Aros, opened the door. Your angelic existence before now was without emotion. Strong. Something humans could never achieve. But a Remnant? I had to harness that ability for myself. And here we are.”
We? An image of the Archfiend stabbing her flashed through her mind. His familiar yet ravaged face. The one she’d seen in her memory. Aros was the other Archfiend? Her hand rubbed at her aching chest. Humans—no, Remnants—really could turn into Archfiends.
Fotios’s jaw ticked. “Yes, hard to control that one, after he got his first taste of Fallen energy and immortality. Well, it didn’t surprise me when he tried to ruin my lesson and siphon your power by killing you. At least now he’s distracted.”
Glass shattering echoed in the street just outside the garage. I hope Serephina and Jamal can handle Aros. “Why are you doing this?”
That unrecognizable anger sliced across his face again. “I never understood why I couldn’t shake you from my heart. Why I was so devoted to you.”
His words pierced through her like a bullet, ricocheting agony throughout her being.
She expected as much from her family, but not from this man, who had been a father figure to her.
Yet, even as the pain seared, her mind registered the precise calibration of his cruelty, the calculated jabs at her deepest vulnerabilities.
He was a master manipulator, dissecting her emotional responses as a scientist would data points.
This is an attempt to destabilize me and exploit my compassion, she thought, forcing herself to breathe steadily.
“But then, I realized I was your Remnant,” he continued. “A part of you that had splintered when you fell. And now, to complete the transformation, I need you to join me. Step away from that emotional mortal shell and become more.”
“What?” Her eyes and throat burned.
Simon shouted, “You’re sick to think she would ever—”
“Shush.” Fotios’s tattered batlike wings snapped out and in, folded and lifted off the ground as he turned his attention back to Izzy.
“I bet it hurt when your mother tried to take your life. And when I took your Coheart from you and nearly killed him twice. And now your precious foundation is under attack.”
With each reminder, despair sank into her spirit.
Fotios hadn’t been in her life for a millennium, yet he still knew her like the back of his hand.
He understood that each chink of emotion she allowed into her armor was a weakness he could exploit.
Defeating him was an impossibility that chilled her to the bone.
“Not even finding this dragon will save you. I’ll always be a shadow, Isi. A constant barb in your Fallen heart until you learn you don’t need it anymore. Starting with that dragon you brought me.”
“Try me.” Daxton lunged, a flash of shifting light consuming him.
“No.” Izzy jumped and grabbed Daxton’s changing arm.
Hot skin and scales met her grasp. Her mind, despite the terror, raced with tactical assessments.
A confined parking garage was a death trap for a dragon of his size and power.
Fotios, the ultimate strategist, would have accounted for this, likely having further traps set.
Daxton shifting here wasn’t a solution; it was a predictable, fatal variable, leading to certain injury or worse.
She couldn’t live with herself if Fotios hurt Daxton. With her heart in her throat, she whispered, “Daxton, please.”
Daxton halted, body heating to scalding. Pain shot up her arms, but she held on, tears falling down her cheeks.
“Let go of me.” Daxton’s voice rumbled, barely discernible. “You don’t deserve this.”
“You don’t know what he’s capable of.”
“And you don’t know what I’m capable of.” Daxton ripped his arm free from her grasp. Light flooded from his pores.
No! She slammed a wall down along the link, cleaving him off.
Daxton roared. Energy smashed against her mental block with such rage, pain splintered across her skull. Daxton’s glow stuttered, and he stumbled forward.
Whipping around, he panted in breaths. “What the hell did you do?”
The words pierced through her, but the fear in his eyes of becoming Lost without her side of the link had kept him from shifting. Her desperate move had done what she needed.
“Hold his leash, Isi, but it still won’t save him.”
“Look out.” Serephina’s scream came in from outside the garage.
The floor shook, jostling Izzy’s hold on Daxton as dust dropped from the roof. An explosion sounded overhead, followed by more shattering glass. Izzy fell, hands scraping against the concrete.
When the dust settled, Daxton chased Fotios out the garage door. Shit.
“We have to move,” Simon yelled, hoisting Izzy up by her arms.
The two of them ran out of the building.
Sunlight blinded Izzy for a moment. Red feathers blew in the wind down the sidewalk.
Izzy recalled Serephina shifting into a magnificent dragon when they first arrived.
Her shiny red scales had reflected gold as she flew up the skyscraper.
The color was like patina, or the coloring of metals using different combinations of chemicals to oxidize them.
Her gaze landed on Serephina’s form, her wingspan of burgundy feathers mangled across the bloody pavement as Daxton and Jamal bent over her. Izzy’s breath hitched. No…not Serephina. She stumbled forward with Simon.
Both men stood as Sarah rushed over. Blue light emitted from her healing hands.
Jamal paced back and forth, hands frantically coursing through his hair as he said, “We didn’t see the trap. I petrified the Archfiend, and a bomb went off. Serephina took the brunt of the explosion.”
Daxton grabbed the other man in a hug, twisting Izzy’s insides. Silas crashed down beside Serephina. The shake in his hands tore at Izzy, and she stopped moving.
“She’ll live,” Sarah said, eyes pinched with concentration. “But I don’t know if her wing will recover.”
Darkness threatened to consume Izzy, pressing in on her until she gasped for breath.
Her knees wobbled. If I hadn’t been caught up in emotion, we wouldn’t have fallen into Fotios’s trap.
They are all in danger being around me. She twisted her shirt in her hands and concentrated on the itchy cotton.
If she wanted to defeat Fotios, she’d have to produce a new plan.
One that didn’t involve emotion. That was the only way to defeat him at his own game.
Compartmentalizing every emotion she had, she shoved them away from herself and attempted to become numb.
“What are you doing?” Simon asked, noticing she hadn’t followed him toward the group. “We have to help.”
“We’ve done enough here.”
Simon’s lips flattened into a grimace. “Izzy, this isn’t on you.”
“Let’s go,” she said, turning toward the street.
Simon grabbed her arm. “Wait.”
She tore free. Daxton came up behind Simon. His bronze eyes swam in turmoil, and his body was tense with barely controlled rage.
“What the fuck was that?” he asked.
“I had to keep you from falling into his trap. He provoked you with emotion, and you fell for it.”
He shook his head. “There you are again. Up in your head. Take down the wall. Now.”
“No.”
“I don’t have time for this.”
“Impatient to get to your deathbed? Another trap is more than likely waiting for you.”
His jaw ticked. “I’ll take my chances.”
“Stay with your clan. I will handle this on my own.”
“You’re to be a martyr then?”
“No, it’s the most logical thing for me to do.”
“Right. I don’t know why I thought you could change. Let me help you be more logical.” He blocked the link on his side.
It snapped.
Any energy between them dissipated on her gasp. The link was gone. A gaping hole punched through Izzy’s mind where the link had once been. But she shoved that loss aside, just like any other emotion.
Pain scored across Daxton’s scrunched face. “I guess it’s your lucky day. You never wanted the link or whatever the hell this was.” His voice turned guttural, inhuman. “I’ll bring him down, Izzy. Because that’s what dragons do. We don’t cower from our emotions. We live in them.”
Light enveloped him, and he shifted. The tidal wave of heat crashed against Izzy. The dragon scorched her with his bronze, maddened eyes as he launched into the sky.