Damien snorted, glancing at Xander over his shoulder, still trapped beneath the pile of infernals.
“Worth a shot,” the other blood mage groaned. “Oh, don’t look at me like that, kitten, you could have stopped him, clearly.”
Amma was sneering but only for a moment. She took Damien by the tunic once again and pulled him up to hisfeet. “Come on, we’re fixing this. Pippa, you too!” She marched toward the doors, dragging him along behind her. She didn’t have to do that, she could just order him to follow, or even just ask—he would do whatever she wanted.
No.
Damien’s legs stiffened, and he lurched backward as noxscura held him to the spot. “Oh, fuck.”
“Now,” said Amma, brow sharp. “Sanguinisui, follow me.”
A separate jolt of noxscura pushed at Damien’s back, and his feet thankfully decided to obey as well, but his guts were not happy about a damn thing, and he retched as he went.
“Oh, sorry, Damien,” she said sweetly, rubbing his arm. Though his insides burned, at least half eaten away by now with the luxerna, there was that voice of hers, so warm and pleasant, saying his name and nestling into his chest, finding the place it belonged.That—that was worth suffering for. “Butsanguinisui, hurry up.”
More quickly, they passed through the throne room to the antechamber, the priestess following behind.
“Master?”
“Kaz?”
Kill it.
Damien growled at the voice and tried to grin at the imp, Quaz and Katz in various states of imp transformation alongside him, but he feared it came off as a grimace. “Where did you come from?”
“I summoned them in the temple,” said Amma offhandedly. “They helped me free your mom.”
“Mymother?”
Amma pulled Damien out of Eirengaard Keep into the brighter redness of the outdoors, the eclipse still looming and the earth seemingly bathed in blood, silvery fissures drawn through the sky, a winged beast dropping out of one of them.“Yes, I brought her with me. She was enthralled, but I think she’s better now. Did you know she has a sword? She’s kind of a badass.”
Damien wasn’t sure what to say to that. “I’ve heard.” He stumbled on the stairs, and she grabbed him, a shoulder under his arm for support, and Pippa was at his other side, helping him descend.
“Amma?” A horrified but familiar voice called out from the sprawling gardens before them. “Oh, you look awful!”
“Yeah, I died.” Amma huffed, propping Damien up on a patch of soft grass. His vision was tunneling, but he could see Amma’s friends, Laurel and Perry and another woman, a small contingency of horses behind, though he must have been losing consciousness again because none of them actuallywerehorses, just creepy versions of the things. A few others came out from around the hedges, dressed in armor and wearing the crest of the Solonedys, and then there was his mother.
“Damien.” He was drawn up into a tight embrace. Divine magic pricked at him, his stomach turned over, and everything hurt, but then none of that mattered because his mother was hugging him, and this time, he knew, she meant it.
Kill them all!
E’nloc hadn’t stopped his crusade against Damien’s will, but It hadn’t counted on how quickly It would destroy Its own vessel with so much urging. Damien had little left to give it, to give anything really, as the world around him went dark and blurry. Amma was saying something, the loveliness of her voice caressing what was left of him to caress, though it was firm. More voices prodded at the edges of his mind as he tried to blink back into the vigilance he’d had in the throne room. A discussion happened around him as he sat, no, fell back onto the grass.
“Sanguinisui, stay with me.”
Damien’s eyes shot open, noxscura swelling within him, andAmma pulled him back up to sit. Behind her stood a small crowd, Eirengaard Keep looming at their backs.
“Damien, I need you to open a portal to the Abyss.”
He snorted. “I can’t do that.” It was a lie, of course, because if there was any power left in him at all, it was the power of destruction, and tearing a hole into the Abyss would surely swallow up all life. “The infernal plane, yes, lots of fissures to there,”—he pointed to a silver streak in the sky—“but the Abyss? Think of what will come out of it. Dark gods, literally, and then the end times.”
“There’s nothing there,” she assured him, squeezing his arms, and even though it was obviously not true, he believed her. “Are you ready?”
Damien shook his head.
Amma’s jaw went tight, glassiness to her eyes. “You want to stay with me, don’t you?”
He did, more than anything else he’d ever desired despite the recent, stupid choices he’d made and how often he didn’t allow himself the comfort of her presence. Existence would be destroyed if he remained alive, but…but he would have her for at least a few moments longer. “Yes.”
