She brushed a snow-white hand over the tattoo of a crescent moon now on her forearm. Rhys’s bargain-mark. A reminder—and warning.
To go. To hurry.
She faced the rocky path half-visible to our left, Ianthe’s jewel splattered with blood where it sat atop her head. Strode right to the guards stationed there, who we’d been climbing the cliff face to avoid. Some of them jolted. Stryga smiled once—a hateful, awful smile—and leaped upon them.
A diversion.
Amren shuddered, but we launched into motion once more. The guards were focused on her slaughtering, sprinting from their posts up the hill to meet her.
Faster—we didn’t have much time. I could feel the Cauldron rallying—
No. Not the Cauldron.
That power … it came from behind.
Nesta.
“Good girl,” Amren muttered under her breath. Just before she grabbed me by the back of my jacket and slammed me face-first into the stone, ducking low.
Right as a pair of boots strolled down the narrow path. I knew the sound of his footsteps. They haunted my dreams.
The King of Hybern walked right past us. Focused on Stryga, on Nesta’s distant rumble of power.
The Weaver paused as she beheld who approached. Smiled, blood dripping off her chin.
“How beautiful you are,” he murmured, his voice a seductive croon. “How magnificent, ancient one.”
She brushed her dark hair over a slim shoulder. “You may bow, king. As it was once done.”
The King of Hybern walked right up to her. Smiled down at Stryga’s exquisite face.
Then he took that face in his broad hands, faster than she could move, and snapped her neck.
It might not have killed her. The Weaver was a death-god—her very existence defied our own. So it might not have killed her, that cracking of her spine. Had the king not tossed her body down to the two naga-hounds snarling at the foot of the hill.
They ripped into the Weaver’s limp body without hesitation.
Even Amren let out a sound of dismay.
But the king was staring northward. Toward Nesta.
That power—her power—surged again. Beckoning, as the Cauldron atop this rock now called to me.
He gazed toward the sea—the battle raging there.
I could have sworn he was smiling as he winnowed away.
“Now,” Amren breathed.
I couldn’t move. Cassian and Nesta—even Rhys thought there was no shot of survival.
“You make it count,” Amren snapped, and that was true grief shining in her eyes. She knew what was about to happen. The window that we’d been bought.
I swallowed my despair, my terror, and charged up the hill—to the crag.
To where the Cauldron sat. Unguarded. Waiting for us.
The Book appeared in Amren’s small hands. The Cauldron was nearly as tall as she was. A looming black pit of hate and power.
I could stop this. Right now. Stop this army—and the king before he killed Nesta and Cassian. Amren opened the Book. Looked at me expectantly.
“Put your hand on the Cauldron,” she said quietly. I obeyed.
The Cauldron’s endless power slammed into me, a wave threatening to sweep me under, a storm with no end.
I could barely keep one foot in this world, barely remember my name. I clung to what I had seen in the Ouroboros—clung to every reflection and memory I had faced and owned, the good and wicked and the gray. Who I was, who I was, who I was—
Amren watched me for a long moment. And did not read from the Book. Did not put it in my hands. She shut the gold pages and shoved it behind her with a kick.
Amren had lied. She did not plan to leash the king or his army with the Cauldron and the Book.
And whatever trap she had set … I had fallen right into it.
CHAPTER
74
I gripped my sense of self in the face of the black maw of the Cauldron. Gripped it with everything I had.
Amren only said, “I’m sorry I lied to you.”
I could not remove my hand. Could not pry my fingers away. I was being shredded apart, slowly, thoroughly.
I flung my magic out, desperate for any chain to this world to save me, keep me from being devoured by the eternal, awful thing that now tried to drag me into its embrace.
Fire and water and light and wind and ice and night. All rallied. All failed me.
Some tether slipped, and my mind slid closer to the Cauldron’s outstretched arms.
I felt it touch me.
And then I was half gone.
Half there, standing silently next to the Cauldron, hand glued to the black rim.
Half … elsewhere.
Flying through the world. Searching. The Cauldron now hunted for that power that had come so close … And now taunted it.
Nesta.
The Cauldron searched for her, searched for her as the king now sought her.
It skimmed across the battlefield like an insect over the surface of a pond.
We were losing. Badly. Seraphim and Illyrians were bloodied and being hauled out of the sky. Azriel had been forced to the ground, his wings dragging in the bloody mud as he fought sword to sword against the endless onslaught. Our foot soldiers had broken the lines in places, Keir screaming at his Darkbringers to get back into position, plumes of shadows flaring from him.
I saw Rhysand. In the thick of those breaking lines. Blood-splattered, fighting beautifully.
I saw him assess the field ahead—and transform.
The talons came first. Replacing fingers and feet. Then dark scales or perhaps feathers, I couldn’t get a look at them, covered his legs, his arms, his chest. His body contorted, bones and muscles growing and shifting.
The beast form Rhys had kept hidden. Never liked to unleash.
Unless it was dire enough to do so.
Before the Cauldron swept me away, I beheld what happened to his head, his face.
It was a thing of nightmares. Nothing human or Fae in it. It was a creature that lived in black pits and only emerged at night to hunt and feast. The face … it was those creatures that had been carved into the rock of the Court of Nightmares. That made up his throne. The throne not only a representation of his power … but of what lurked within. And with the wings …
Hybern soldiers began fleeing.
Helion beheld what happened and ran, too—but toward Rhys.
Shifting as well.
If Rhys was a flying terror crafted from shadows and cold moonlight, Helion was his daytime equivalent.
Gold feathers and shredding claws and feathered wings— Together, my mate and the High Lord of Day unleashed themselves upon Hybern.
Until they paused. Until a slim, short male walked out of the ranks toward them—one of Hybern’s commanders, no doubt. Rhys’s snarl shook the earth. But it was Helion, glowing with white light, who stepped forward to face the male, claws sinking deep into the mud.
The commander didn’t so much as wear a sword. Only fine gray clothes and a vaguely amused expression on his face. Amethyst light swirled around him. Helion growled at Rhys—an order.
And my mate nodded, gore dripping from his maw, before he lunged back into the fray.
Leaving the commander and Helion Spell-Cleaver to go head-to-head. Spell to spell.