Cupping his face while death and vengeance still stormed around us, I made him focus on me.
“We are in the middle of a war, and you’ve been with me since the moment we arrived. You’ve helped me fight. You’ve been my shield. TheDark Oneis more powerful than we expected, and he plays dirty. It wasnotyour fault. Only the Goddess knows how long he’d been stalking us, waiting to attack.”
Pressing me against his chest, he placed a relieved yet burdened kiss on my lips.
My gaze suddenly caught movement across from us, and I saw André was restored thanks to Dante’s help, but now they were both fighting side-to-side creating a barrier to keep the crawlers from reaching me.
A sharp sting of pain shot through my leg, and I stifled another moan, gripping Hannes’s arm. Pain reached him too when he noticed how bad my injury was. My fire was already attempting to heal me, but there was too much to heal, and theDark One’svenom was still causing havoc inside me.
TheDaughter of Hecatehad extracted it from my dad back into the claw, but I didn’t have that luxury.
Fire was the ultimate cleansing force, right?
“Here goes nothing.” Breathing deeply, I hardened myself for what I had to do.
Pulling on the full strength of myEternal Blaze, I sent it straight to my wound, then lifted my hand over it, adding more flames so it would attack the venom on both sides.
“Aaah!” the scream tore from my throat, unable to be contained as raw agony coursed through my leg with a vengeance.
My body slacked against Hannes’s chest, and my hand trembled over my leg, but I didn’t stop, I couldn’t. Breathing through the pain, I continued to focus my power on one area of my body, just like I’d seen Gustav do.
André ran back to my side with Dante.
“She’s burning the venom,” Hannes let them know, and Dante sent a wave of calming shadows into me, relieving my agony.
“Thank you,” I sighed, letting my fire recede once I could no longer feel the venom.
It had worked.
“Help me stand, please.”
Hannes gripped my waist while Dante and André wrapped my arms around their necks, gently helping me to my feet. My leg felt much better now, but I couldn’t put my weight on it.
Something shot toward us.
Seriously?!
My mates didn’t hesitate. They swiftly hauled me out of the way before the leg of a crawler crashed into me. His torso followed a second later.
What the?—?
A purled glowing whip whizzed past us the next second, startling me when it released another body part from a crawler, but I couldn’t even recognize what the hell it was.
“Sorry about that!” A girl with silky lavender hair that looked almost silver skidded to a stop in front of us.
Celtic symbols and runes were tattooed along her bare arms, almost reminding me of the ones Junior, Dariah’s son had on his chest. Except, hers seemed to weave along the way down her arms like beautiful braids.
“Still getting used to the whip.” She shrugged, wrinkling her nose. “I’m Eyra, nice to meet you, Natasha!” A partial squeal left her voice with my name, but she cleared her throat, trying to downplay her excitement. “Sorry…” she repeated, glancing at Dante, Hannes, and André with awe. “Do I need to bow? I don’t know the protocol.”
“Um…” Nope. No words.
“No need,” Hannes assured, sounding as confused as I was.
Her head snapped to the left; eyes glowing when they visibly zeroed in on a group of deformed creatures stalking a soldier who was already battling two others far away from us.
“Okay, gotta go. People to save, monsters kill...”
Glowing bright purple, the runes on her arms came to life, triggering a rotating ring of light to open next to us. It held the same runes. Another one opened a few steps across from the soldier the crawlers were about to attack on the other end of the dunes.
