The roar of the Miro’dag sounded behind Vaasa. The terrible screech of the creature caused her body to lock. The cracking of bones echoed, and Reid cursed, still holding tightly to Vaasa. She didn’t look. She didn’t need to see them to know the Miro’dag had killed the guards. Zetyr had eliminated the people who knew of his magic.
“The demon is blocking our path,” Reid growled in her ear.
There was no way off this bridge. Either they faced Zetyr or they faced the Miro’dag.
Vaasa put one leg beneath her, then another, standing to her full height at Veragi’s side.
“Vaasa—” Roman choked, then went silent as Zetyr grabbed his shoulder.
Those glowing red eyes landed on Veragi, who stood next to Vaasa and Reid with a dark scowl painted across her lips. The bridge stretched between them, but the distance started to close as Vaasa held Roman’s pleading eyes.
“Finally, we meet again, sister,” Zetyr purred at Veragi. “Tell me, will your witches save you now?”
He threw his arms forward, and Vaasa lurched as the cords between her and Zetyr tugged. The magic he wielded was incredible, far more than Ozik had ever taken from her. Power pulsed down the bridge, a stream of red flying toward them. Veragi stepped forward, and a glittering black wall rose into the air, blocking the assault. It dropped, and he struck again, andagain, and again. She blocked each attack with a raise of her arms.
Zetyr cackled into the sky and screamed, “No tomb can hold me forever!”
Vaasa forced her shaking hand into her pocket and took hold of the necklace. Her magic extinguished, and she gasped at the relief, even as it hummed against her fingers. Her head snapped up to see Zetyr shake his head like a dog.
He couldn’t access her magic when it was dulled. It might not be enough to stop him, but it was enough to cause him to falter.
The crimson in Zetyr’s eyes sputtered, gold leaking through, and his face contorted in rage. Ozik was fighting. Even right now, he wasfighting. The anchor upon his hand was the only lifeline he had left.
Strike!Ozik screamed in her mind.
Vaasa burst forward, her fingers clutching the necklace, and Reid let loose a strangled holler as she broke from his arms. Reid’s steps pounded behind her. Roman screamed for Vaasa to stop. But she had already faced this. She thrust the necklace forward and Zetyr roared, stumbling back and away from Roman. That glowing red sputtered, gold breaking through entirely, and Zetyr’s body—Ozik’sbody—convulsed with his fight.
A flash of bright white lit the bridge and shadows whirled around them, growing, shifting, flares of magic so dark they swallowed any light. Veragi’s power shot at Zetyr. Glittering black mist curled around him and gripped like a vise. His body slammed into the bridge and dragged toward them as if a rope had been tied to his leg and pulled. His screams pierced the air. The shadows writhed over him, snuffing out each of his senses, burying him in magic like a tomb, his limbs going rigid in the senseless void.
Except for his hand, hisringedhand, where the licks of magic could not penetrate. They kept trying, but each time the tendrils dipped to the black stone ring, they recoiled. Something about that ring scared them off, as if they were fingers touching a flame.
“Holy shit,” Reid cursed from behind her.
Vaasa whipped her head to Veragi.
The goddess lifted from the bridge, rising into the air over the ocean. The whites in her eyes pulsed, and a wicked cry broke from her lips. A scream that sounded so much like Amalie’s. The goddess held Zetyr down, but only for so long. It had to have been using everything Veragi had.
“Jump!” Vaasa screamed to Sachia, whose crew was dragging her to the edge of the bridge, eyes wide at the goddess. Sachia took one look, waited one second, and then flung herself over the ledge.
Vaasa met Reid’s eyes. “Go!”
Reid stood there, gaze on her, and shook his head. “Not without you. Not this time.”
Zetyr lay beneath the swaths of Veragi magic, unmoving within his binds. If she released the necklace in her hand, it was possible Zetyr would harness her power again, that he could use it through Ozik’s connection to her.
She couldn’t wield.
But if she took Ozik’s ring, it would remove the last semblance of a defense he had against Zetyr.
Magic sharpened around her. Veragi’s power. A tendril lifted and then dropped like a blade, severing Ozik’s hand at the wrist. Veragi snarled at the body on the bridge as it began to convulse. To fight.
Veragi’s message was clear—take the ring, no matter what it cost.
“I need the ring,” Vaasa panted. She sprinted forward, eyes on the ring, the necklace in her hands—
Someone moved into her path. She skidded to a stop, meeting Roman’s pleading eyes. “How could you do this?” he screamed, and then his voice dropped to a strangled plea as he looked past her to where Reid stood. “Was any of it real?”
She saw the desperation in his maddened brown eyes, remembered every fracture of kindness and love that had once lit up his face as he looked at her. Fear had made a home in him, too—fear of loss, fear of powerlessness, fear of his entire existence being stolen from him just because he had loved the wrong woman. It was the sort of despair that would cause a man like Roman to do something he could never take back. To lock her in a prison, if that was what it took to save his own life. In a way, he had already died for her once. After what she’d done today, she didn’t think he would do it again. “No,” she said. “I guess that makes us both liars.”
