A Matter of Forever (Fate, #4)

Kellan would be gone, too.

“Listen to me,” Kellan’s saying. “Chloe, just ... just listen.” His deep breath is audible. “Jonah isn’t dead. He’s waiting for you back in Annar. You just need to kill this motherfucker, and you can go back to Annar and see him.”

I tear my eyes away from Enlilkian, back to Kellan, but he’s still not looking at me. Jonah’s not ... dead? But ... my chest. It’s hollow. Our Connection’s curse is in full effect. His pain is mine to carry now.

“He’s lying,” Enlilkian hisses, thrashing in pain as Kellan’s hand twists. “My men took ...,”—he gasps sharply—“care of him. You. Saw. Him. Die.”

And I hate myself because I believe this monster. I watched his minions stab Jonah over and over again until he no longer moved. And then they threw him off an eight-story landing.

Rage and grief fight for dominance within me. Could he have survived? Is it even possible?

Enlilkian’s words slide out from between clenched teeth. “If you get the Empath to let me go, I will not give him the same fate as his sibling.”

“Obliterate him, Chloe!” Kellan’s words are bullets, blasts of hard exertion. “Do not let him get away with what he did to my brother! Don’t let what Jonah went through be for nothing!”

I want vengeance, too ... but at the cost of Kellan’s life? I’ll never be willing to pay that—not even for Jonah. And he would never want me to; I know that truth as strongly as I know my own.

So that’s it, then. After all that I’ve gone through, after all that’s happened, in the end, Enlilkian is going to get what he wants after all. I still don’t even know what the hell it is, but ... I’m willing to hand it over if it means Kellan walks out of here alive.

Kellan finally looks away from Enlilkian, toward me, surprise flashing in his eyes as he registers my resolution. And then, like some kind of horrible déjà vu, time slows down: the first Creator is on his feet within a flash, swinging an arm in a wide arc in front of him before Kellan can even move a single muscle or take a lonely breath.

OH. MY. GODS. NO.

I force myself into the room, tackling Enlilkian as I scramble to rebuild the floor before us. But it doesn’t matter. Not when an incorporeal Elder rushes through the opening and grabs Kellan by the collar of his shirt, rendering any floor or lack thereof irrelevant.

From below me, Enlilkian cackles.

The other Elder, he ... he ... his arm is a sword and it goes right through Kellan’s heart, carving a hole right in his chest, right where his heart rests. It all takes a single second in this godsdamn time warp. ONE. FUCKING. SECOND. For me to lose him. My Connection’s eyes go wide, so impossibly wide as time finally catches up to him, and then they roll back as it tosses him to the floor next to us, like this person I love so very, very much is nothing more than a piece of trash easily discarded.

Rage, white-hot and black hole deep, explodes within me. I’m shrieking, just crazed and screaming and tearing my hair out as I pummel the monster below me and I’m sobbing and the Elder in the air explodes, just ... pulses and explodes like a neutron bomb.

It’s not enough. He took my Connections. Both of them.

A new hole punches its fist straight through my chest and fills with acid. The room around me disintegrates, melting until sky is above us and all of those pieces that remain of that murdering bastard sizzle and evaporate.

Enlilkian smiles, wide and joyous, like he’s proud. And then his hands clamp on the sides of my head. “There’s what I’m looking for,” he hisses. “Game’s over.”

He’s trying to suck the life out of me, I marvel. I feel his power tugging at me, trying to coax mine to mix with his. It’s so clear all of a sudden. He wants my power. He can find any body to house in, but ... to rebuild the worlds he’s lost, he can’t do it with what he has. He needs my power.

My sobbing turns to maniacal laughter.

It’s my turn to grab what’s left of his face, the words to erase his existence from the worlds are so close to the tip of my tongue. But ... no. No. He does not deserve such a kind end. He deserves to feel every last thing he’s ever done to my kind.

I’m going to suck this asshole dry. He wants my power? I want his.

He hauls back and slugs me the moment he realizes what I’m doing; I no longer care. My fury doesn’t give two shits about pain any longer. Pain no longer controls me. Vengeance does. He took my husband. He took Kellan.

I’m taking him.