A Stygian claw shot from the weeping darkness and plunged inside of Soren’s thigh. Another sliced through his wrist in a savage sweep.
A legion of her phantasmal beings swam up from the midnight, forming a circle around her and the child—one no god nor witch would dare breach.
The nightrazers levitated above the snow, growling and baring their needle-sharp teeth in the black folds of their face.
The High God stepped back in a surprised jolt, finally releasing a stream of sanguine red. There were no more fragments of forest green. This was him.
Her hunch was correct.
She flipped her palms out and curled her fingers, conjuring more of her grim apparitions up from the ground. They multiplied, swathes of floating shadow, all aimed for Soren.
She let out a feral scream and shoved her hands forward. The nightrazers burst forth like the ignition of Mansi’s bullets.
Soren jumped swiftly in and out of focus. Replicas of himself swept through the battlefield.
Marina’s eyes jumped over the ones attempting to squeeze through her barrier of nightrazers, hunting for the real Soren who bled from his leg.
Lethargy pulled at her bones, the vibration of her heartbeat fading against the walls of her chest.
Not fucking yet.
She pushed her fading energy, expunging every drop of her divine power as it churned in her core. The abyss whorled and convulsed like a living being at her feet, snaking through the snow and birthing more of her creatures.
They jumped in and out from it like creatures of her mother’s sea, the sharp ends of their talons slicing through the illusions before sinking back into the pool of darkness.
Marina’s gaze fell back onto Ash as he sobbed and shook at her feet, still fumbling around to find something to help her.
I can’t leave him alone.
Marina forced out the rest of her strength before allowing her knees to fold into the snow.
Copper filled her throat, but she swallowed it down, refusing to cough it up in front of Ash. The nightmare would etch in his mind forever.
She grabbed him by the wrist, halting him from digging in the cold.
He looked up at her, lips turned down and quivering, eyes wide and leaking with fat tears. “I-I-I?—”
She yanked him into her embrace. His weight knocked her balance off, and they crumbled into the snow.
She curled her body around him, and everything went black as a protective shield of her Night draped over them like a shell.
Death might’ve been taking her into its hollows, but she would protect him still. Even in death, if she had to.
Ash collapsed in her hold, blood coating the inside of her arms in a gummy texture. He wailed, no longer fighting against her.
“I’m sorry,” Ash cried into her chest. His short arms squeezed around her frame as tightly as he could. “Mommy said she would come if I called her!”
He was a demigod, capable of summoning. And yet, it was as if his call was mute among the deities.
Marina could hear the distant sound of her nightrazers growling, still serving her, all the way to her bitter end.
The end.
Of my life.
A wistful grief filled her chest, and she buried her nose into Ash’s silver hair, inhaling the jasmine and floral fragrance. Beneath it, she could smell the faint aroma of a sugared pastry.
A smile touched her lips, envisioning Naia shaping batter on a pan, flour coating the countertops, and Ash at her side, licking the spoon.
