The Seed needed time to work its way through Ruin’s metabolism. Every heartbeat stretched into an hour. I whispered names like a prayer:Killian, Tyson, Sy, Bea, Louis, Cade, Silas, Rowan, Rock, Cassius, Cami…
I listed every reason to endure, to keep breathing even as the act of drawing breath became a greater agony than death itself.
Ruin suddenly paused, a frown etching onto his features. “The old magic…tastes…wrong.”
“Does it?” I asked, my voice a thread of sound. “It’s old, Father. It’s supposed to taste old and wrong…like you.”
He jerked back as if scalded, his face a terrifying canvas of shock and dawning rage. The truth broke over him—he’d been tricked.
“This is not the oldest magic!” he bellowed, the sound ugly and terrifying, shaking the very stones of the chamber. “What have youdone, daughter?!”
“My, my,” I drawled with cold satisfaction. I tried to smile, but the agony had frozen my face into a rigid mask. “You see, Father dearest, you’re absolutely right. What you consumed wasn’t the old magic. It was the Seed of Heaven. A gift made specially for you. You thought the fallen star was your bitch, but she played you. Made you a fool. She forged me astheweapon against you and hid the last drop of the old magic in my soul. I already freed the old magic into the world and came here alone to finish you. She’s now safely tucked away, beyond your reach.”
“No poison can touch me!” he roared, though a tremor of doubt now laced his fury. “Not even Heaven’s!”
“Of course not,” I said amiably, my words beginning to slur as my strength bled out onto the stone. “Even Death refuses to admit you. The Seed wasn’t meant to kill you. Only to weaken you. A task made possible once it mixed with the star-essence of my dear mother that flows through me. I absorbed her, you see. And that wrongnessyou detected? That was both the Seed and my mate’s death power.” I’d borrowed Killian’s death shadow while leaving my siphoning ability with him when he made love to me. “I soaked the Seed in it, crafting a special cocktail just for you. You don’t like it? Quit complaining. We do hate whiners, don’t we?”
Understanding dawned on Ruin, and with it, his uncontainable rage. “I’ll take your skinnow,” he bellowed. “I will become you before the Seed reaches my core!”
His void shadows erupted like a tidal wave of ink, flooding the chamber and surging toward my open chest. But my mating bond roared to life, an impenetrable empyrean shield protecting what belonged to another. Dragon fire erupted from my very being, a golden inferno that scorched the foul shadows away from my wounded body.
Broken and drained, I was still Killian’s. I was still Tyson’s. The bond would not suffer me to be possessed.
“WHAT IS THIS?” my father screamed, stumbling back as his power recoiled.
“True love, motherfucker.” I’d have laughed if I had any energy left. “It’s something you will never, ever understand.”
Frost spread across his too-perfect features, leaching the color into a deathly blue as the Seed took hold. It wasn’t enough to kill him—nothing could kill the void—but it was enough to slow him. To weaken him.
Time for phase two.
Heaven’s Arrow burned with ice-cold fire in my chest, invisible to my father’s sight. I reached for it with my will. As soon as it was free of me, my own darkest flame would merge with its divine power, driving it straight into Ruin’s black heart.
It would freeze him.
It would haul his ass to the Red Room, then through it, until I cast him back into the world beyond—the void.
That was the final stage of the plan I’d forged with the Oracle and the two other ancient gods who had lingered at the doorway of the void, awaiting their revenge for eons.
But my fingers wouldn’t move.
I tried again, a silent scream echoing in my mind.
My arms were locked, heavy and unresponsive as stone.
The final, crucial step was now beyond my grasp.
My father’s void shadows bound me even as Heaven’s poison coursed through him. I was too broken, too drained. The chains still bit into my skin, muting what little power I had left.
Tears of pure frustration and fury rolled from the corners of my eyes.
I had come so far, given everything, only to fall agonizingly short at the finish line.
Ruin’s laughter, a chilling, scraping sound, echoed through the bone palace.
Then, Pucker phased through the wall of bones. Cold dread seized my damaged heart.
“No, Pucker!” I wheezed.
