A set of teeth bit into the back of Finnian’s right shoulder. He stumbled a little on his feet as claws impaled the base of his tailbone. Sharp talons ground over his spine. The nervesspasmed down his legs and his knees nearly buckled from the shock.
He growled.
Fucking nightrazers.
Their skeletal fingers roved over the side of his cheeks, dragging across his forehead.
With haste, Finnian formed a fist and yanked back his elbow. The muscled organ burst through Malik’s chest and met Finnian’s open hand.
Malik’s body hit the ground.
Finnian gripped the blood-soaked heart and ripped his body around. With ground jaws, he plunged his knuckles through the core of one of the nightrazers. Violent-blue currents crackled in his palm, electrifying the whirring shadow masses nearby.
Their wails screeched against the glass walls of the hall.
The flashing rays of lightning dimmed, and the disengaging particles of the nightrazers drifted like smoke.
Two left. Finnian searched through the abyss, gauging its veil for movement.
Marina’s powerful aura fabricated behind him, but before he could decide on how to diverge her attack, the slick tearing of flesh sounded. Pain ruptured between his shoulder blades. Liquid pushed up his throat, metal coating his tongue. He coughed, his circulation of breath suddenly cut off.
Tension squeezed behind his sternum. The beating of his pulse stuttered and his vision flickered.
Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Marina over his shoulder, feel her arm plunged into his ribcage, her fist wrapped aroundhisheart. One sudden tug and he would pass out instantly, just as Malik did.
“I amnothinglike Naia,” she spat roughly next to his ear.
The muscles in his shoulders contracted.
He thrusted his arm overhead and siphoned the energy from within the walls of the moonstone crystal. Hundreds of glowing particles levitated in the air.
Like fireflies.
A moment flashed in his mind—clear yet unfamiliar. A man with a face he had no recollection of stood next to him, peering into the distance that Finnian was pointing to. The air filled with the dazzling specks in a haze of summer-budded trees and a tranquil, gliding stream.
Finnian blinked.
The memory dissolved as the magical particles built and mounted above him. A beaming sphere of light, celestial and blinding.
Its form expanded and devoured Marina’s shadows, splitting apart the night.
Finnian pulled his arm down in a slicing motion and the bright, glaring orb dropped like a meteorite. The force pricked at his cheeks like a bitter frostbite. The glaring rays burned his retinas, but he refused to close his eyes.
Marina howled out in pain as she released the organ from her fingers. The scream was a sweet melody of what was to come.
But first, he needed to pluck the thorn out of his back that was currently her arm.
He pushed against the soles of his feet and drove himself forward. The release was instant, like the removal of a spear. Relief greeted him, followed by the throbbing of the wound. The stitching of skin and muscle was grounding.
An unrelenting anguish snarled and provoked his anger. That vibration of emotion echoed in his chest, up his neck, and into the tense muscles of his jaws.
How many years had he dreamed of this moment? To come face-to-face with hisfamily. To revel in satisfaction with their blood coating his hands. Their bodies limp on the floor. Weak.Insignificant. Feelings he was all too familiar with. Feelings that seemed to follow him and Naia around and torment them every day of their immortal lives. These were feelings the triplets and Marina and Mira had never known the touch of.
It was an honor for Finnian to introduce them to such misery.
The incandescent light waned in its brilliance. The hall stretched out around them once again. Freya remained atop the platform, worry creasing her forehead as she frantically sought to find him through the dimming glow. Her look of concern caused his lips to twitch.
Marina’s silhouette came into view a few paces from where he stood. Scarlet tears streaked down her cheeks as she shielded her eyes with her hands. A deity of night was, he figured, sensitive to light—a theory he was glad to confirm true.
