Bodies were everywhere, discarded swords lying beside their ripped corpses.
Weapons clashed.
A hair-raising roar echoed. Jax was partially shifted; he had a bear’s head and razor-sharp claws. Infected dropped around him as he swiped.
Cobra was covered in writhing shadow snakes, and they were all over the room, biting infected and sending them to their knees, screaming.
Otherworldly wings clattered as the angels hovered on the ceiling and stabbed downward into the fray. They’d ditched their ice swords in favor of the lighter, easier-to-wield enchanted swords.
The room was chaos.
Pieces from the paintings that had once filled every inch of wall space smoldered as they fell like rain.
The dying screamed.
Our plan had been going perfectly until someone had detonated an incendiary device. When the dust had cleared, Arabella was missing.
She had to be nearby, but for some reason, we couldn’t find her.
It was maddening.
Our Revered had disappeared.
The tether on my control was fraying precariously, and I couldn’t remember why I held myself back from unleashing my voice and slaughtering the world.
Why did I care?
My vocal cords ached to be used.
I chucked a dagger at an ungodly as I dropped to my knees, and Scorpius swung an enchanted sword where I’d stood. Blood splattered. He sliced two infected clean in half.
Ungodly ripped from their flesh, but Corvus tore their heads off before they could stand tall. Scarlet flames poured off him as he threw the severed heads down onto the red-and-green rug and stomped.
At one point, the rug had been white.
Corvus tipped his head back and growled like a beast. He’d dropped his weapons when we’d realized Arabella had disappeared, and he’d been fighting with his bare hands ever since.
He was no longer a soldier.
He was an Ignis whose Revered was missing—a feral creature.
Arabella had to be nearby because the bond sickness hadn’t incapacitated any of us, but we’d searched every corner of the large living space where the fighting was concentrated.
She wasn’t beneath the piles of corpses.
We’d checked.
“Where the fuck is she?” I whisper-yelled as we stabbed, lunged, and dodged in unison.
Panic mounted every second she didn’t appear.
Cherry blossom petals drifted faster across my collarbone, and I gritted my teeth as gore splattered across my face.
Five minutes. If we didn’t find her in the next five minutes, I was unleashing my powers, and I didn’t care if we slaughtered our own soldiers.
They could all die.
“Is Aran with you?” one of the twins shouted as they punched an infected man, stabbed him in the heart, then sliced the emerging ungodly in half.
“No,” Scorpius snarled as he spun and kicked. “We can’t find her.”
The twins stopped moving. Clad in all black, they seemed to disappear into the shadows as the battle raged around them.
“Excuse me,” Luka said with vehemence, “where the fuck is my wife?”
I was startled by his voice because he never spoke; it was deeper than his twin’s.
“She’s not your wife yet,” Corvus replied harshly. “Arabella is unmated and unbonded.” Flames multiplied on his shoulders.
John scoffed as he gutted an infected. “Keep my wife’s name out of your mouth.”
Corvus growled viciously as he grabbed an infected woman’s face and snapped her head to the side like he was imagining it was the twins’. She dropped dead. He repeated the motion with the ungodly. Green gore covered his arms.
Flames poured off his fingers and set the rug aflame.
“She has to be nearby,” I said to the twins. “Because the bond sickness hasn’t set in.”
Scorpius dropped his sword and unsheathed serrated daggers.
He stabbed at one of the remaining male soldiers repeatedly but didn’t kill him. He knelt close, arms and torso painted red, as the man writhed and screamed beneath him.
He didn’t stop.
I watched him mutilate the man with disinterest.
We were unraveling.
Being separated from Arabella was like taking a bullet to the skull. After a lifetime we’d spent searching for her, she wasn’t allowed to leave us.
If we didn’t find her soon, the ungodly would seem tame in comparison to what we’d do, because the sun god himself couldn’t save the realms from us.
“We’ve checked the entire room. We don’t know where the fuck she can be!” Corvus bellowed with frustration to the twins.
All five of us looked around desperately as we fought.
Even with her clad in black from head to toe, we would recognize Arabella because her long legs and lean muscle definition were uniquely hers. No other woman compared.
She was our Revered.
Our soul.
We’d recognize her with our eyes closed and ears covered.
One of the twins pointed at the hole in the wall. “Is she out in the hall?”
I shook my head. “We looked and didn’t see her.” I stomped on the exoskeleton of an ungodly and wished this stupid compound didn’t have so many hidden rooms and corridors.
Scorpius abruptly stood up straight and buried his dagger in the heart of his victim. He didn’t bother to kill the ungodly that sprang from the corpse; instead, he whirled around and stalked toward the far corner of the room.
I killed the ungodly as the four of us followed him.
When he got to the corner of the room, Scorpius pushed his ear up against the brick wall beside the broken paintings.
We waited.
“I can hear her breathing!” he yelled over the fighting. “There must be a different corridor along the perimeter of this side of the room. I think we should—”
Corvus slammed his fists through the bricks, and debris fell from the ceiling as he pummeled through the wall with nothing but brute strength and rage. He slammed his body forward.
The wall exploded, and he stumbled into a dimly lit hall.
We followed.
Scorpius shoved past him and stilled with his mask-covered head cocked to the side as he listened.
We all heard a scream.
Corvus exploded with unbelievable speed, and the rest of us followed close behind.
Up ahead, he turned into a room.
A few seconds later, we followed him inside.
A dozen infected clustered in the corner, hiding, and an enchanted sword pointed toward us, dripping red.
I stilled.
Inhaled.
The copper scent was underlaid with something familiar, an icy scent tinged with power and death. It tasted like adrenaline on my tongue.
It was Arabella’s blood.
I opened my mouth to scream as cherry blossoms floated in the air around me. Before I could unleash my voice, the room’s inhabitants exploded in red flames.
If I weren’t shaking with fear and rage, I would have been amazed that Corvus had unleashed so much fire outside of our powers being activated.
There wasn’t time to think.
Ungodly shrieked as they ripped from the flaming corpses, and we launched forward as a group, slaughtering them.
There was movement in my peripheral vision, and my heart stopped beating.
I ran toward the figure.
Crouching low, I screamed as I applied pressure to Arabella’s sliced-open abdomen.