“Join the queue,” Dastian throws my earlier words back at me.
The path fractures ahead. Dreven is already moving, shadows flinging outward, stitching a corridor through the air to the tear. The darkness goes from smoke to wall. “Go.”
I run. I am breath and blade and a pounding heart that refuses to quit for a second time today. The crown is cold against my palm, colder than Voren, colder than death. It’s not humming, but it feels heavier the closer I get to the exit. Like it knows I’m about to remove it from its lovely mausoleum, and it’s sulking.
Halfway there, the gold guttering stutters. Something under the surface shifts. A hairline split zips towards me, fast as lightning.
“Nyssa!” Dastian hurls a bolt that fuses the crack shut a heartbeat before my foot lands. The impact rattles my bones. I keep moving.
The tear is the size of a dinner plate now. “That’ll fit my foot,” I mutter.
“Make it bigger,” Dreven orders.
“On it.” I skid to a stop at the edge, drag my blade across my palm again, and slap my bloody hand to the stone. The runes on the steel flare and the split answers, widening with a choked, reluctant shriek.
Without waiting another second, I jump through the tear.
Cold, damp, real air slams into me. The crypt. The rank stink of old stone and damp earth never smelled so magnificent. I stagger as the momentum carries me forward. The crown bites my palm. I glance down. For a second, the etched scales ripple like a snake deciding whether to hiss. Then it goes dead again.
Figures.
Dreven steps through behind me. Dastian tumbles out sideways, laughs breathlessly, and gives the crypt a jaunty salute. Voren steps through last, and Dreven throws his weight behind sealing the fissure with a temporary patch.
It seals with a groan like the earth grinding its teeth. Dreven’s shadows stitch the split shut and hold, ugly and effective. I don’t ask how long it will last. I don’t want the answer.
Dreven’s gaze flicks to the crown clenched in my fist, and his jaw tightens.
Voren is quiet. Too quiet. His eyes are glacial and everywhere, cataloguing threats, cataloguing me. He reaches without asking, takes my wrist, and presses two fingers to my pulse. The cold licks up my arm. The beat’s erratic and a fraction too fast. I yank my hand back.
“I’m fine.”
“You are stitched together with willpower and profanity,” he says calmly. “It’s working. For now.”
“Then let’s keep moving before the realm changes its mind.” I tuck the snake under my arm like a handbag I’d cheerfully beat someone to death with and turn towards the door.
The crypt spits us out into rain and darkness.
“Home,” I mumble as I sway on my feet. This day has taken its toll. Dying has taken its toll.
“Hey, sis,” Rynna’s voice says from behind me. “Where the hell have you just crawled out from?”
I turn and stare at her. Her dark hair is piled up in a messy bun, her eyes flashing wickedly as she takes in the three gods surrounding me and my bedraggled state.
“Ryn,” I sob and fling my arms around her.
Startled, she hesitates to hug me back, but then she embraces me awkwardly, patting me on the back. “What’s up?”
“I’m sorry,” I say, shaking my head as I pull back. “I didn’t mean for any of this to happen.”
“What happened?” she asks slowly, eyeing up the guys with a different predatory gaze now. Lesshello, boysand moreif you hurt my sister, I’ll slay you where you stand.
I stare into her eyes when she looks back at me, waiting for an explanation. I don’t see any difference. I check her over, scanning for the confidence that I felt when becoming the slayer, when the not-quite-mortal, not-quite-supernaturalstrength flooded my veins, and I became the first line of defence against the creatures of darkness.
“Are you okay?” I ask.
She purses her lips and crosses her arms. “Been better. Thanks to you going AWOL, fucking Cormac called me in to deal with a newly arisen vampire.”
“And did you?” I ask, all business.
