What’s got them so agitated?
“Shit,” Finnian croaks.
The terror in his voice distracts me enough to let him go as I turn to stare where he is gawking.
“Well, hello,” I say, eyes narrowed as Dreven coalesces into his human form at my side and Voren waves a hand at the wraiths.
“Talk about unexpected,” Dreven murmurs.
We all launch back as… Nyssa, I think, launches forward, hissing like a fiend.
“Nyssa,” I say calmly as Cormac and Finnian regroup on the other side of the syphon net pit, while Tabitha comes running in as if this is the first she’s seen or heard of this shitshow.
“I had a vision!” she calls out, even though no one gives a crap right now if she had monkeys flying out of her arsehole. “Nyssa!”
“Too fucking late, as usual,” Finnian growls, his gaze never leaving Nyssa, who is slithering in a rather large snake form towards us.
I’ve seen some shit in my time—kingdoms rise, stars collapse, Voren try to tell a joke—but my woman turning into a twenty-foot metallic cobra is definitely making the highlight reel.
“Well,” I drawl, stepping neatly to the side as her tail tries to swipe me out of existence. “She certainly has a flair for the dramatic.”
“Dastian, shut up,” Dreven orders, his gaze fixed on the monstrosity that used to be our slayer.
She rears up, scales shivering with a sound like a thousand knives being sharpened at once. She isn’t flesh and blood anymore; she is the Crown made manifest, a sleek, terrifying engine of judgement. Her eyes are twin pools of molten gold, and they lock onto Finnian with a hunger that makes my chaotic soul purr.
“Stay back!” Cormac shrieks, throwing a pathetic bolt of stolen light at her.
It bounces off her scales with a musicalping. Nyssa doesn’t even flinch. She opens her mouth, filled with far too many teeth, and lets out a hiss that vibrates in my molars.
“She’s going to eat them,” Voren notes, sounding mildly impressed.
“Nyssa!” Tabitha barks, trying to get her attention.
Nyssa ignores the witch entirely. She lunges. It’s faster than thought, a blur of steel and rage. Finnian screams, scrambling backwards on his arse, but he’s not fast enough. She strikes, not to bite, but to slam her massive head into his chest, launchinghim across the room like a ragdoll. He hits the far wall with a crunch that I feel in my bones.
“Ouch.”
“We need to stop her,” Dreven says, going all commander-in-chief. “If she kills them in this form, even knowing what they did, she will feel guilt over it.”
“Nah,” I say. “She won’t.”
“She will,” Voren says, siding with Dreven. “That thing is clearly not her. It doesn’t have her rationale or her control.”
I flinch when Cormac sails over my head with a cry.
“Okay, I see your point,” I concede. “But how do we stop her?”
“We don’t,” Dreven says, shaking his head. “We can’t stop the god of the Divine Ruins.”
“So, what then?” I snap.
“We need to get her to stop herself,” Voren says.
“Easier said than done,” I point out, dodging a chunk of masonry dislodged by her tail.
Cormac is trying to crawl away, looking like a stepped-on beetle. Nyssa coils, raising that massive, metallic head to strike.
“Right,” I mutter, cracking my knuckles. “Here goes nothing.”
