Adrian had lived through a lot of scary magic in his life, but he’d never felt anything like this. The burning razor wasn’t even aimed in his direction, but he swore he could feel its sharpness in every cell of his body. The strike cut through air, cut through sound, cut through the unknown magic of the gods that was the foundation of Paradise itself. It sliced through the golden bubble around Gilgamesh’s fortress like a red-hot wire through spun sugar before slamming into the palace itself.
The attack hit the white stone like a comet, burning a line of glowing destruction from the thick base where all the spires connected to the top of the frontmost tower where Adrian had been kept prisoner. He swore he saw the windows of his old workshop shatter back into sand before a cloud of dust and debris exploded upward, and the whole tower began to tilt.
It was only one out of a dozen, but Adrian still held his breath as the front tower of Heaven’s Holy Palace—the one with the golden balcony where his father had brought him to watchBex’s defeat—toppled like a chopped tree. It fell sideways into the city to the palace’s west, crushing the ornate white buildings and throwing a plume of sparkling dust into the air that rose higher than all but one of the palace’s remaining gold-roofed spires. The crash was still echoing through the empty White City when the shining creature Bex had become suddenly wobbled.
Her blinding light vanished at the same time, leaving the Bex Adrian remembered from this morning plummeting out of the sky like a shot bird. Fortunately for them both, Bran was quicker on the uptake than his witch. The broom started moving before Adrian could even think the command, darting into the perfect position to catch the falling queen as she flew by.
“Gotcha!” Adrian cried, trusting his broom to keep them balanced as he snatched Bex out of the air. Boston managed to stay on as well, digging his claws into his witch’s back as Adrian dragged Bex onto the broom in front of him. He was feeling her limbs to make sure she wasn’t hurt when he saw something that made him freeze.
The pale woman gasping on the broom in front of him looked like Bex. She had Bex’s lovely face and glowing eyes, her dark hair and small frame, but her head was crowned with not two, not four, butsixtowering black horns. They were the same shape and size as her old ones, but instead of just poking out of her forehead, these new horns encircled her entire skull like the points of a crown. They were so tall and spearlike that Adrian had to watch where he put his face so he didn’t lose an eye. But although the new horns were like nothing he’d ever seen, the dazzling smile on her face was one hundred percent pure Bex.
“Adrian!” she cried, throwing her arms around him. “You’re okay!”
“I’m fine,” he said, dodging her spikes. “But areyouokay?”
“I’m amazing,” Bex replied in a dazed voice as her now very dangerous head whipped back toward the plume of whitedust that was still rising from the broken tower. “Did you see that shot?!”
“I did,” he assured her. “I also saw you fall out of the sky.”
“Yeah, I might have gone a bit too hard,” she admitted, though her smile didn’t budge. “But I did it! I actually got damage on the Palace of the Highest Heaven!”
She grabbed him as she finished, almost knocking them both off the broom as she pulled Adrian into a rib-creaking hug.
“We did it!” she cried as golden fires flared back up all over her body. “Ishtar said it was impossible, but we did it! We did it! We did it!We did it!”
Her voice was borderline hysterical by the end, but Adrian didn’t want her to calm down. He just hugged her back, leaving the flying to Bran and the panicking to Boston as the four of them dropped out of the sky toward the grass-covered square.
They were still ten feet above the ground when Bex suddenly hopped off the broom. She lit back up as she did so, exploding in a column of fire that missed Bran by inches. She raised her sword at the same time, greeting the enormous crowd of demons, who were all screaming so loudly that their voices shook the ground. There was so much chaos that Adrian didn’t realize the packed square was crammed with more than just demons until he set his broom down beside her.
“I don’t believe it,” Boston said, pushing the brim of Adrian’s hat down with his paws as he climbed onto his witch’s head for a better view. “Did your mother bring theentirecoven?”
It certainly looked that way. It was hard to see through all the celebrating demons, but there was a torrent of Blackwoods coming into the square. Black-dressed women were pouring out of the rootway and zipping through the branches of his tree on their brooms. From what he could feel through his new roots, they’d brought their support staff as well, all the partners andadult children and other family members who weren’t witches but still lived under the Blackwood’s protection.
It looked like a full-on invasion. Bex’s demons were still too excited about what their queen had done to pay the witches much attention yet, but the crow-shaped Morrigan was watching the incoming army with pride from her perch on top of the Hells’ Gate, completely ignoring the very angry-looking Lys, Iggs, and Nemini who were standing in front of her.
“Oh, ho, ho,” the Morrigan laughed, finally turning her beak to the demons, who looked like they were about to jump her. “You see? It turned out exactly as I said. Now get out of my sight before I change my mind about eating you.”
If she’d said that to Adrian, he would’ve scrambled away as fast as he could, but Lys had always been fearless. All they did was flip the giant crow off before leaping off the black cube and flying down to their queen on their dusky, still-bandaged wings.
“Bex!” they cried as they landed practically on top of her raised sword. “You did it!”
Bex responded with a whoop that made Adrian’s ears ring, grabbing Lys out of the sky and spinning them around. It was absolutelynotsomething she should’ve been doing given the state of Lys’s shoulder, which was already bleeding through the bandages again, but Adrian couldn’t bring himself to tell Bex to stop. Lys was already falling to their knees on their own, staring up at Bex with an expression of holy wonder.
“I still don’t believe it,” they said, raising a trembling hand. “Your horns, your sword—Ishtar has given us a miracle!”
It might’ve been Adrian’s imagination, but he would’ve sworn Bex flinched at Ishtar’s name. Whatever the look meant, though, she hid it immediately. Or maybe the expression was shocked off her face when Nemini ran over to grab Bex’s head.
“You have a new name,” she announced, peering deep into her sister’s glowing eyes.
She said that like an accusation, and Bex flinched again. Before she could reply, though, Iggs elbowed his way in.
“Who cares about that?” he cried, giving his queen a crushing hug before whirling to point at the cloud of dust rising from Gilgamesh’s broken palace. “Did you see what she did to that tower?” He slammed his fists together with a fang-toothed grin. “Oh, it isonnow!”
“Gilgamesh won’t know what hit him,” Lys agreed, looking more fired up than Adrian had ever seen them as they surged back to their feet. “So what’s the plan from here? Fly back up and chop off some more architecture?”
Both of those questions were aimed at Bex, but she turned to look at Adrian instead, grabbing him by his shirt sleeve and pulling him down so she could whisper in his ear.
“Whatisthe plan?” she hissed. “The witches are here because of you, right? What are they planning to do?”
