“It’s fine.” Poppy sighed.
“I wish it were,” he muttered, and all the tension that had left me returned. “Ash was right.”
“Ash?” Kieran questioned.
“Nyktos,” he clarified.
The Asher. Made sense.
Delano looked at the bay and the still-fighting kraken, its limbs flailing.
“What…was he right about?” Poppy questioned.
“He said it was a diversion.” Rhahar stepped back, and I wondered if he was having a more detailed conversation in his mind. “The attack here and the one on the Shadowlands. One was a diversion.”
There was something vaguely familiar about that.
Iliseeum, Kieran told me through thenotam.Where Death reigns.
Rhahar’s attention shifted back to the sky. “Son of a bitch, he was right.”
Kieran stepped forward. “You want to key us in on what he was right about?”
“That it was…” Rhahar’s nostrils flared as the shadow that had not lifted deepened over the wharf and the bay. The dense clouds started to churn. “A trap.”
Lightning flared overhead, arcing from one thick cloud to the next. When the blinding flashes receded, thin streaks of crimson seeped from the center of the inky mass, spreading across them like veins of fire. A heavy, choking sensation settled over me.
Poppy pushed to her feet, swaying. Kieran steadied her.
Eather pulsed, filling Rhahar’s eyes as he turned to us. “He’s coming for—”
Water exploded from the bay as Primal mist spilled out of Rhahar. He shot into the air like an arrow as the kraken’s tentacle broke the surface.
Instinct seized me. I grabbed Poppy by the waist as red-tinged lightning struck in rapid succession, hitting the wharf and the bay as the wind lifted Rhahar toward his cousin.
Lifting Poppy in my arms, I held her to my chest as eather bled from Saion, distorting the air around him as the kraken’s limb lashed through the air like a jagged spear of bone.
Poppy shouted, her fingers digging into my shoulders—
A sickening crack reverberated through the air as crimson-tinged lightning struck the spot where Saion and Rhahar had been, and it kept coming, one strike after another, each with a clap of thunder that would shatter the eardrums of any mortals on the ship or the wharf.
Silver light erupted in a mass of crackling, hissing sparks. I could no longer see the Primal gods or the kraken as the air warped and started to roll.
“Get down!” Kieran shouted, dipping to grab Delano.
I spun, glimpsing my brother flattening himself to the ground as I pressed Poppy into the wharf.
An intense, scorching wave of power rippled through the air. My jaw clenched as I saw Malik grab on to anything he couldas the release of energy traveled across the wharf. Windows shattered throughout Lowertown as the slender palms dotting the landscape snapped. Buildings all along the lower street collapsed.
It’s okay,I told Poppy through thenotamas she jerked beneath me.It’s okay.
Roofs peeled back on the structures behind them as the shockwave howled, and the ground trembled beneath us.
It’s all right,I reassured her, even as the earth cracked, splitting into thin fissures, and the sound of the rocking ships echoed all around us. I kept telling her it was okay until the screaming roar of unfettered power receded, and the weak rays of the evening sun fell upon the wharf.
“Cas,” Poppy whispered, the press of her fingers against my chest surely leaving bruises.
Exhaling raggedly, I dipped my head and kissed her forehead before rising just enough to look over my shoulder.
