Withdrawing Pierce, I jam it deeply into Amadeus’s now-occupied chest until my fingertips nearly sink into his crepe-paper-like, unnatural flesh.
The Entity’s hoarse scream cuts through the air like the most beautiful hymn I’ve ever heard.
I want more. I want him to suffer the way he made me suffer.
Cuttrina has already morphed back into knife form in my other hand, and I stab that into his chest, too. Over and over. I’m so overwhelmed by fury and rage that it takes me a moment to realize that Amadeus is…crying.
The gleam of moisture is difficult to make out in the dim flicker of green light around us, but it trickles over his colorless temples as he wheezes.
“D—daughter….daughter…”
“I am not your motherfucking daughter,” I snarl, my pulse pumping in my ears as my heart squeezes painfully.
Amadeus’s breathing shudders as his ink-line blood pools on the arena floor below us. Somewhere nearby, I hear a fiend shriek at the sight of the dead Entity. Others in this battle begin to notice and react to his demise, but I pay it no attention as Silas quickly takes Everett’s heart from Amadeus’s limp hand andrushes to Everett’s motionless side. My necromancer flips him over and begins chanting.
I can’t breathe. Whatever Silas is doing, it has to work.It has to work.
Amadeus’s black eyes roll to look at me. “I…I feel. Ifeel,”he gasps.
One of his skeletal hands grips my arm, and revulsion sweeps through me, but I’m arrested by something on his face.
It’s wonder. Horror. Fear.
A dozen other emotions mixed together.
Amadeus is feeling the weight of mortality again for the first time in thousands of years, but unlike me, he can’t stand it. All he can do is weep as he dies beside me.
“G—Galene chose this for me,” he rasps. “This end. If—if it is by my daughter’s hands that she wills me to go to the beyond…l—let it be mercifully. End me.End me, daughter.”
I used to fear this weeping creature, but now?
He’s fucking pitiful. Just a withered, empty husk—a shadow of the prophet he once was.
Still…
With a small sigh, I remove one of my gloves and force one of my fingers to graze Amadeus’s hand, still bloodied from Everett’s heart. Whatever peace I instill in him, his eyes widen, and then they just stay open.
His chest stops rising and falling.
And a moment later, I sense it. New death, like a thick, heavy tide pulling away from this shore.
The moment Amadeus’s spirit separates from his body, the Nether ripples around us. The darkness lifts and clouds part. People are shouting and screaming all over the citadel, shadow fiends shrieking as they run from the new light invading this twilight realm.
But I ignore it all as I quickly move to Everett’s side, sitting beside Silas with my heart pounding in my throat. I haven’t felt the bond snap. That means something, right?
You did it,Baelfire murmurs through the bond.
He’s right. I did it.
Not that it matters if I lose Everett. I did all of this for a future with my quintet. Without him…
Crypt wraps me in a hug from behind, kneeling behind me as we ignore the chaos. Fiends flee all around. Reformists are driving them deeper into the Nether, shouting out orders and checking their motionless comrades for pulses.
I watch as Silas finally places Everett’s heart back into the hole in his chest. Sweat beads on my necromancer’s brow as he whispers more necromantic chants. His nose starts to bleed, but he perseveres.
Everett is still lying too still.
A moment later, Baelfire joins us. He’s naked from shifting back and covered in soot, blood, and dirt, but his brow is furrowed as he, too, watches Silas work.
