But still, Mace runs the distance, his strides becoming laboured. And we let him.
“It’s over,” Aurelia tells him as he nears Ghoul’s body, breathing hard now. Does he mean to take our fifth mate hostage? Xander won’t let him, landing heavily in front of Ghoul and the vortex, cutting off Mace’s path and battering him with wing beats.
It’s my Aurelia who delivers the blow—my beautiful regina taking her revenge. Dealing justice with her powerful claws,she slashes Mace’s spine, high up between the shoulder blades, precise and final.
Mace drops to the ground with a heavy thump, his body not dead, but paralysed from the diaphragm down.
We gather around him, my regina standing next to me in human form, looking down on the once serpent king. His eyes flick around the group, his breathing ragged. Now he’s as helpless in the same cruel way he made Athena Boneweaver.
“My, my,” Savage chants, running up to meet us. “Whatever has become of the wicked serpent king?”
“It seems your time has come,” I say, taking my regina’s bloody hand in mine. “You have been dethroned. You have failed. And you will pay for your crimes.”
Marduk lands next to us, and in his bloody, dirt-streaked hand is a pair of pliers. I look to my regina for permission. Her lips are pressed together, but she nods. “Do it.”
“I will not beg,” Mace hisses through his teeth.
“No,” I agree. “But youwillscream.”
I take the pliers and crouch over him, pushing back his upper lip to reveal the fangs that snapped out in fear. I work on the left one, gripping it between the metal pincers and pulling as slowly as possible.
Mace screams in his throat, his breath heaving while his immobile body takes the pain. It comes out with a pop and rush of blood. Savage holds his hands out, and I give it to him before working on the second.
Behind me, Savage dances about, waving the fang in the air like a trophy, singing, “The serpent king is dying! The serpent king is dying!”
When I toss the second fang to my brother, Savage throws them to the ground, crushing them beneath his feet. Lyle stalks forward, controlled fury lacing each step. His big lion’s mouthsnatches up Mace’s right hand and gnaws it right off, tossing it into his face where it bounces off into the dirt by his head.
“Never again will you make a blood covenant,” Aurelia says. “Never again will you enslave or hurt or take advantage of an innocent creature. You will die as if you never existed at all.”
“Never again will you sell a daughter for profit,” I say. I look to Aurelia, her eyes shining. “How do you want it done?” Aurelia goes still. Behind Xander, the vortex still spins in its violent dance.
“There are still three debts owing,” a deep, familiar voice sounds from behind us.
We all turn, and Aurelia’s gasp is breathless. Eko the Greenland shark, my mentor, and Athena Boneweaver’s third mate, is walking towards us. There is blood on his pale feet, his long silver hair is windswept, and his eyes are red-rimmed from the light.
He’d walked here, I realise in shock, as if on a pilgrimage.
Chapter 119
Aurelia
My mother’s mate, her shark.
Eko’s voice, deep and strong, rings out. “I will take him from here. We have waited a long time for justice.”
He stops by me and raises a hand, running it gently over my hair in a father’s touch I have not received since I was a child. Tears burn in my sockets as he looks at me with soft eyes, and that tells me everything my heart needs to hear.
One day, when we meet again, child, we will know of happier times together. But you will know happiness now, with your mates. Let them love you like your blood family could not.
He drops his hand and walks past me to my sire, and I watch him, clutching at my heart while he crouches down. He takes Mace into his big arms, the pale muscles of his back bunching under the dead weight.
“Do you have my venom on you, Scythe?” I ask. Scythe hands me a small plastic vial from his pocket. I take it from him and step towards my father, unstopping it and tipping the milky contents into his mouth. He tries to spit it out, but I think it’s Lyle who pinches his nose shut and forces my basilisk venomdown his throat. It only takes a moment before his eyes turn glazed.
“Give your power when you enter the vortex,” I say to both of them. “Give it all, in one shot. Between the two of you, it should be enough to counter Ghoul’s vortex.”
Everyone is silent as Eko nods, then turns around and faces my mates. “Look after my daughter.” He stares a moment at Xander and before I can wonder what he’s saying, Xander bows his head and Eko is turning to me. He says gravely, “I go to my regina now.” There is a gleam in his eyes I understand, something like relief and love and hope. It fills me now with those same emotions, and I feel my mates at my side as Eko the Greenlander takes the brother bonded to him by the Wild Goddess and walks straight into the vortex.
His pale feet barely reach Ghoul’s supine body before he’s swept up into the vortex’s hold, the dark shadows pulling him in like welcoming hands until I can no longer see him.
