Another giggles.No more keeper.
Sure enough, when I turn to glare over my shoulder, our keeper is nowhere to be seen. Baelfire notices, too, and halts, ignoring how Everett swears when he walks smack into the back of the hulking dragon shifter.
"Wait, what the fuck? Where's Maven?" Bael demands.
"She went to take down the godsdamned harbinger," I seethe, turning to run back in the direction we just came from.
Moments later, Baelfire, Crypt, Everett, and I come to a screeching stop and shout in alarm when we see Maven race up the arm of a massive, ghostly white, disgustingly spider-likecreature. She uses her momentum to leap into the air, and a moment later, the harbinger's fanged mouth closes around her.
At once, the voices in my head burst into applause and cheers of approval. I cry out at the deafening commotion, covering my ringing ears and staggering.
It's difficult to perceive much outside of my damned curse. Still, I see Everett drop to his knees, ice spreading everywhere he touches the ground. He chokes out a prayer to Arati, goddess of battles, that Maven will still somehow win. Baelfire roars, sounding like his inner dragon as he claws at his collar and races forward.
Crypt vanishes and reappears a second later on the top of the massive, terrifying shadow fiend. His face is a mask of fury as he lifts his sword, ready to drive it through the creature's skull in violent vengeance?—
But just as he does, it shrieks horrifically, and Maven's blade pierces it from the inside out, slashing a gaping hole across its bulbous stomach.
The harbinger screeches one more time before slumping to the ground, its legs twitching and blackening as foam fills its fanged mouth. Baelfire gasps and catches Maven just in time as she falls out of the belly of the terrifying monster, its dark innards gushing around her.
"Maven!" I shout, hurrying to her side.
Her skin is red and steaming from stomach acid, her arms and legs are cut up, and I watch in horror as her eyes white out precisely at the same time the harbinger goes still. She goes slack in Baelfire's arms. He chokes, muscles in his neck bulging while his eyes shift to those of a dragon's. Crypt rolls away from the dead creature, dropping to his knees beside Maven.
"She'll come back. Her deaths don't stick," he rasps, but the frantic terror on the Nightmare Prince's face tells me his thoughts are spiraling in the same direction mine are.
What if this is an unknown way in which revenants can be killed permanently? What if she doesn't wake up? What if…gods above, what if I just lost my keeper?
The voices in my head cheer harder. The ringing in my ears increases until I grip the sides of my head, gritting my teeth against the darkness creeping at the edges of my vision. The fact that I can't even fucking think straight in a moment like this curdles my gut.
But then I see that Maven's skin is healing. Any sign of damage disappears, and she finally jolts awake, catching her breath as she frowns up at us.
"Did someone just scream? What's going on?"
Baelfire's head drops forward with relief. "Oh my fucking gods. Maven. You can't do that to me again, baby. Please don't ever fucking do that."
"So dramatic," she grumbles. "I'm clearly fine, so let's…"
Her gaze latches onto Crypt's sword, barely protruding from the harbinger's head since he didn't have time to properly stab it, and her face darkens with wrath. She's on her feet in a split second, gripping Crypt by the front of his leather jacket. Her voice is deadly.
"What thefuckwere you thinking? If I hadn't gutted it in time, it would have killed you!"
"Itateyou," he snaps back, parts of his hair drifting aimlessly as his anger seeps into the mortal world. I've never seen Crypt express much emotion over the years, aside from unpredictable anger and taunting—but now he looks both livid and tormented. "How the fucking hell could you think I would just stand by, waiting on nothing but a godsdamned prayer for you to emerge? I told you not to make me watch you fucking die again!"
"And I toldyou, death is part of my nature," she seethes, more upset than I've ever seen her. "I'm the fucking scourge, soI can walk it off, but I swear, the next time you put yourself in danger for no fucking reason when Iexplicitlytold you?—"
A laugh rings out over us, and we all stiffen. "My, my. Trouble in paradise, whoreson?"
Somnus DeLune strides into this portion of the maze with Engela Zuma and two dozen powerful-looking hired legacies at their side. His lips turn up cruelly when he sees the dead harbinger, and then he looks meaningfully back at Maven, and I tense.
He knows, a voice in my head taunts.He was watching. They were all watching.
Here comes her reckoning. Run and save yourself.
My eye twitches as Somnus sneers at Maven, who releases Crypt with a clenched jaw.
"So. The prophesiedtelumtruly has left the Nether. Good old Amadeus sent a revenant after us, did he? Ridiculous. How he could ever think you could be a match for us is beyond me," the immortal scoffs, approaching painfully slowly. "Though I must say, it is poetically fitting that this worthless bastard should wind up with a homely bitch from hell."
We're all tensed, but none of us move as the experienced hirelings surround us, standing at the ready. Engela Zuma makes a motion with her hand, and all the exits are suddenly blocked off.
