Chapter 27
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
WANE
I was in a hundred places at once, my shadows cast across the field, so many of them that I struggled to hold onto each one. I was stretching myself thin, dismantling shadow soldiers at the same time I sent my own shadows at enemy gods, scanned the field for my family, and kept myself alive.
I swarmed dark magic in a cloud across the muddy battlefield, plunging into the titan’s army until they unravelled fifty at a time. It wasn’t enough—they kept coming—but if I stopped, he would win. We’d be overwhelmed, Haley would feel our deaths, and she’d falter in the final moment.
I speared my consciousness toward the shadows that hovered near my mate, the queen, and the titan, but I flinched when his towering form sending a chill down the tendril of magic until it pierced my soul. He was so powerful I felt his brand of magic from here, and I quailed in the face of it. But Haley never did. She never stopped fighting, so I wouldn’t either.
I jumped into a stream of darkness, moving from enemy to enemy, cutting them down in swaths like Asta burned them out of existence with her deathfire flamethrower. Between us, we must have cleared this field of soldiers three times over, but they were endless. Until the titan was dead, they would keep coming back.
I speared myself across the field towards Haley and Lili, barely breathing as the queen encircled the titan in a fire that burned so hot it even made my shadows flinch back. But I pressed on, sensing a weakness in their plan, seeing the place the titan would surge to escape her fire. I shored up the gap and gritted my teeth against the flash of burns on my soul, jumping across the field to my next target.
I tore past where Cerberus battled a woman with red wings I didn’t recognise, another green-skinned god caught in one of their three heads. A god-descendant with brown curls floating around her shoulders leapt for Cerberus’s vulnerable back, a sword raised over her head aimed at their spine.
No.
I raced through shadow, skidding in the mud when I jumped out the other side, and coiled a whip of shadow around her wrist. I lashed it so tight that it bit through skin and bone and left her hand hanging by a single tendon. My ears rang with her scream, the sound cutting through me like a sword through my soul, slicing my nerves, but the noise gave Cerberus enough warning to turn and snap through their next assailant.
I let out a quick breath of relief before gathering shadows around myself again—and staggered when a bright beam of light burst around me, snatching me up so suddenly that I only had a thin veil of shadows to fight back.
I could do nothing as it ripped me away, carrying me through a river of cool silk until I stumbled, the ground unsteady under my feet. Hands caught me, steadying me, and I glared—at Wynvail. My glare turned to confusion.
“I figured you wanted your head attached to your body,” he said, his silver eyes intense in his blood-streaked face. Like mine, his dark hair was plastered to his head and his leathers shone with viscera. “That fucker was about to behead you.”
I whipped my head around to look where I’d stood behind Cerberus just seconds before and saw a behemoth with tawny skin and golden wings tipped with black staring at the empty space in front of him. His broadsword was arrested mid-stroke, the angle perfect for cleaving my head from my shoulders.
I blinked fast, trying to stay aware of my surroundings even as a brittle pain filled my chest. “You saved me. Why…?”
Wynvail frowned, flicking his wrist at a blur of movement to our right. A woman crashed to the ground with a scream of agony. Ten others matched her scream, white light tearing through them. “Why? You’re my fucking brother. What kind of question is why?”
I shook my head, a tight sickness in my stomach. This just proved how good a person Wynvail was; he hated me but still saved me.
“Thank you,” I said, choking back all the other words that wanted to pour out.
“Don’t be stupid, you don’t have to thank me.” He gave me a worried look, snapping a bolt of light at another enemy; they dropped with a scream.
I twisted away when a ripple of warning went down one of my shadows, a gasp forced from me when I saw through the film of darkness as Emlyn crashed to his knees in the mud and Tali attacked Kai.
“Stay safe,” I breathed to Wynvail and jumped through another shadow, unleashing myself on the enormous red panda before she could slice her vicious claws across Kai’s throat. His chest was already bleeding, leather and skin parted in two deep stripes.
“Not Tali,” Kai hissed, swinging his arm around in a powerful arc. The force of his magic hit me, and I staggered, the thrum of power making the cuts on my hands, my face, and my arms sting. I was covered in mud and blood like Kai, and I knew I had the same bright, frantic light in my eyes. “It’s not her.”
Kai had never given me a reason to doubt him, and I trusted him with my life. So I struggled through the strain on my power and called up a storm of shadow, surrounding Tali as she struck out with her claws again. The razor edges missed Kai, but I wasn’t so lucky. I flinched, biting back a shout at the spike of blinding pain, a slice ripped through my shoulder. It matched all the others pouring blood down my body. I hadn’t been fatally wounded, but my whole body pulsed with stinging, gnawing pain.
Gritting my teeth, I dropped a blanket of protective shadow around Emlyn, relief weakening my knees when warmth met the darkness—and a heartbeat. Alive. He was alive.
Tali fought against my shadows, a deep, chilling sound of warning in her throat.
“It’s not her,” Kai panted, alert for more attacks. We stood in the middle of the titan’s most dangerous army—those he’d had locked in the prisons, those we weren’t able to get out in time. Only Kai’s swarm of snakes and my fragile shadow kept them at bay, and that would only work for so long against gods and titans.
“Are you sure?” I asked, breathing faster. “Absolutely certain?”
Kai hesitated. It was all the opening Tali needed to surge forward and shred my magic with claws of pure silver. I faltered back with a cry, pain cutting me deep inside where my magic came from, a far worse agony than any cut on my body. It was the same pain I felt when the titan touched my power, when he ripped out a swath of magic.
I stumbled, breathing faster, memories crowding my mind. My foot hit Emlyn’s leg hard enough to rip my balance from me, and a chill swept my body as I fell, vulnerable. An obvious target. I was going to die here. Hated and useless.
I wrapped myself in shadow, wrenching myself back to my feet with a scream of effort, my shadows roaring a warning—
The whole army seemed to pause, seemed to freeze in place. For a chilling moment I thought it was the titan’s magic slowing time to a crawl, but no. It was shock that rendered them silent; people turned in place, all looking to the same place across the bloody field.
“He’s gone,” someone said beside me. Russ, Queen Lili’s tall, golden-haired lover, his glasses splattered with blood, clothes streaked with mud and gore.
It took a moment for his words to compute, for the sheer disbelief to hit.
I stared at the empty space where the titan had stood, where my mate had battled him. Shock held me in place, like it did everyone else, a hush of shock falling over even the titan’s living allies. Beyond us, the shadow soldiers still fought like robots without minds of their own, but here among his worst army, it was horribly still.
Relief came on the heels of shock. He’s gone. Thank gods, he’s gone.
But he needed to die. We needed to kill him. This needed to be over.
A blood-chilling roar came from the midst of the shadow army, and I shuddered even knowing it was my brother, even knowing he’d never hurt me. But Harvey hated me, resented me. He would never forgive me for the secret he’d kept. And yet, I knew he’d never turn the ruthless power of Harveil upon me.
Another answered that roar, shockingly similar. Moonlight split the dark sky and I staggered back, power blasting from that column of light like wind, like a ripple of warning.
It took me a moment to understand why. Took a moment for my blood to turn to ice.
I staggered back, shaking my head. No. No.
Lili flew, her dark wings cutting powerfully through the air, the halo shining at her brow. But Haley was gone. I couldn’t see my mate anywhere.
“He took her,” I gasped, struggling to breathe, to see, to think. The battlefield tilted and swam.
He took her.
He’d force her to her knees and cut her apart. He’d make her scream for mercy and take sick pleasure in denying it. Was Andryas Revairs already waiting to cleave her beautiful wings from her back and hang them above mine?
“He took her,” I whispered over and over, falling apart in the middle of a battlefield. I didn’t care who saw, didn’t care who took advantage of my weakness to wound me. Nothing could hurt more than the truth. “He took her.”
Russ put a hand on my shoulder, and I was so wrecked that I didn’t immediately shake it off.
I thought I was numb to pain, thought nothing could hurt more than losing Haley. But a scream tore from my chest, shredding my throat when a spike of metal pierced my back at force, slicing skin and sinew, scraping bone before it thrust out my chest. The world blackened at the edges. I staggered, tasting blood.
And in that second, I knew Haley would be furious. She'd be absolutely incandescent with rage that I’d been hurt so badly. There was no doubt she felt it through the bond.
If she was still alive. If the titan hadn’t already killed her.
I screamed, the pain overwhelming every sense until I struggled to hold onto the shadows protecting Emlyn, until the swarm I used to fight the titan’s army, already in tatters, collapsed entirely.
I staggered, my hand rising to the spike through my chest as Russ stepped back, his face expressionless. And I realised—Cerberus fought deeper in the field. Russ was in his shifted form with his brothers, battling the titan’s most powerful allies. This wasn’t Russ.
How many of these mimics did the titan have?
Pain dropped me to my knees in the mud, the world flashing dark for a long second. I panted, rallying my magic, using it to tear the spike from me and stopper the wound before I could lose more blood. But my head swam, and the injury plus losing Haley was a deadly combination.
These creatures were taking us out, one by one, as if they’d been commanded by the titan to do just that.
“Wane!” Kai screamed gutturally, but his voice was so far away.
I fought through the pain for Kai, for the rest of our family. They needed my shadows. Screaming, I dragged myself, swaying, back to my feet, but blackness hovered very close and unlike my shadows it wasn’t comforting. It was cold. Lethal.