She thought of Tova. Of Pa. Of her mother. Of Will.
Always of Will.
You will not sacrifice yourself for this war.
She swore she could hear him calling her name above the echoes of that desperate demand he’d once yelled, as if he knew what she was about to do and was begging her to stop, even from the confines of her mind.
Aya opened her eyes. She could just make out the shimmering of the veil, hidden beneath the pulses of light she continued to send into the sky.
You will not sacrifice yourself for this war.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered.
She took a deep breath and sent one more pulse of furious, blinding light upwards. Enough to hide the veil. And enough to hideheras she turned, her power still churning relentlessly inside her.
Not limitless, but enough. At least for this.
Aya’s hand shot toward Evie, that light still dancing on her skin.
She was not a god. But she was a saint, declared so by the people who did not deserve to die by this monster’s hand. By the people who did not deserve to have their gods meddle and punish because they were bored.
What is an ant to a human? What is a human to a god?
Perhaps nothing. But at the very least, Aya would be this god’s reckoning.
The demigod’s eyes went wide, the world slowing as Aya grabbed her arm andwrenched, not with her grip, but with her power.
Wrenched, just astheyhad wrenched at her own well for months, creating an inside wound so deep that no tonic, imbued in iron or otherwise, could stop her power from trying to heal it.
From breaking free of the grip they thought they’d held her under.
“You were right,” Aya seethed, her nails digging into Evie’s arm as her power tangled with the demigod’s. “There is but one saint.”
Aya’s free hand swept outward toward the guards advancing on her, throwing them back against the fortress wall with a single pulse of power.
Their shouts blended in with the sounds of the battle raging below, but one rose above it. It came not from the guards, but from somewhere on the docks: a hair-raising howl that had Aya stilling, her breath catching as she whipped her head toward the sound.
It was impossible. Tyr was dead—burned in his home on Gianna’s orders. But another howl ripped through the air, as familiar as her own heartbeat.
It was followed by someone screaming her name.
“Aya!”
The desperate cry was not in her head. It wasreal,because there was Tyr, racing through the Midlandian soldiers, his powerful paws pounding the path that led up to the citadel.
And just behind him, his sword cutting down anyone who dared step in his path, was Will.
44
Will’s lungs burned as he raced through the crowd.
He’d found her. He’d found her, and he would be damned if he lost her now.
“Aya!” He screamed her name again and again, desperation bleeding into his voice as she sent pulse after pulse of lightning into the sky.
He could just make out a cluster of people standing beside her. Her head was tilted back, her eyes fixed on the sky, her arms splayed wide.
He didn’t know why, but the sight filled him with dread.
