Terror locked my muscles, but I forced a breath. I tried to let fear pass through me, as some guru said that it would work. It didn’t. Fear turned to ice and lead in my bloodstream.
“Too early, and he will counter. Too late, and there will be nothing left of you to act.” She glanced toward the horizon where the foul darkness gathered. “I am sorry for all of it. But mostly for this, for what you must endure. Take what I offer. You know how.”
“I don’t?—”
“Then I will make it easy for you.”
Agony contorted her remarkable face. Her phantom wings spread wide, and then the feathers began to fall like burning snow. The wings dissolved into motes of light. Her entire form began to compress, folding in on itself with a sound like dying stars.
“I started the fight, but you’ll end it,” she whispered, her voice fading. “Be brave, my beautiful daughter. You have always been most worthy.”
Where the archangel had stood, a starstone now pulsed in my palm—a star compressed into the purest diamond, containing the light of galaxies in an object small enough to swallow. It burned against my skin, radiating both immense heat and infinite possibility.
I knew what to do. The knowledge was written into me, a dark inheritance in my very blood.
I brought the starstone to my lips and breathed it in.
Brilliant starlight flooded my veins, a searing, cosmic fire. I held it inside, tasting the essence of a fallen star—my mother. Endless sacrifice, a will of steel, a duty that crushed, and a regret that poisoned. A love that had long since curdled into obsession. Lilith’s entire existence condensed into pure energy, filling hollow spaces within me I never knew were empty.
The starstone turned to mist.
The last light that had held the darkness at bay winked out.
I now possessed all five elements. The Arrow was lodged in my chest like frozen lightning, disguised as a tattoo. The Seed swam in my marrow like liquid starlight. Death magic, taken from Killian, shielded my mind. My dark flame raged at my core, full of hunger and vengeance. And now, star fire—a final gift from the mother who made me to die.
A sound like the very air tearing announced the return of my father.
The God of Ruin had come to feed.
The cage shuddered as the pure evil’s vast, void presence drew near. I gripped the bars, the rust embedding itself in my palms.
I was ready. And yet, I could never be ready, as every cell in my body screamed to break the chains and run.
Chapter
Thirty-One
Sy
Killian lasted three hours and seven minutes after finishing Barbie’s letter. I’d been counting.
The heirs tried everything. Reason bounced off him; threats were meaningless to a male whose mate was in the hands of an evil god. They resorted to dogpiling him twice more, a chaotic tangle of supernatural strength that would have been funny if our world weren’t hanging by a thread. Silas sported a new black eye. Louis lost a fang that would take a day to regrow. Cade’s wine-red hair was singed at the tips from a burst of dragon fire.
In the end, they hammered out the only compromise he would accept: he’d take a small, swift strike team ahead while the main army mobilized to follow in a day.
“Just Cassius, Rock, and Archer,” he growled, his hands already tearing a portal into existence. They weren’t shaking from the effort but from the raw, barely contained fury vibrating through him. “Fast and quiet.”
Fast and suicidal, more like. But I understood it down to my bones. My own skin felt like a cage, creation magic churning beneath the surface with nowhere to go. Every flower I passed bloomed violent and wrong. The air around me tasted of storms and fury.
Only Rowan’s steady presence kept me from plunging through that portal after them. His arm around my waist was a tether to reality when every instinct screamed at me to follow Killian, to find Barbie, to burn anyone in my way and tear the evil god apart with my bare hands.
“She asked for three days,” he reminded me, his voice low.
“She asked for a lot of things,” I shot back, the words sharp. “Doesn’t mean we have to listen.”
While Cami and a new general rushed to the chaos court—someone had to stop Killian’s father from seizing power in his absence—Rowan and I remained in the House of Chaos.
A kingdom-sized bounty had been placed on our heads.
