“I’m still recovering from burnout. I should have waited longer, but the outside world wants the skull as a weapon, and that can’t happen,” he said, hands aching from holding the skull, soaked through by the melting snow. “My reserves are too low, I don’t have the power to heal her.”
She tsked at him. “You may not, but I do.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
EZRA
Hecate reached out again, and cradled his chin in her hand. Her skin was warm, and smelled of rich earth after a rain, and a fire burning in a stone hearth. Her fingers were strong, impossibly so, yet gentle with his frail human body.
Lilith meowed from where she huddled beneath Ezra, a tiny cry that went no further than Ezra’s shadow in the massive hangar. Hecate gently squeezed his chin, making him focus on her.
“Let down your walls, Ezra Redmayne,” She ordered him. “You know what needs to be done—let me give you the strength to do it.”
He shuddered from cold and discomfort, body aching, his mind a mess from stress and fear—but he listened. All practitioners had mental walls, born from childhood lessons on how to shield themselves from others and contain their own magic, and letting down those walls had him freaking out momentarily. Morana’s assault on his mind was fresh and his instincts screamed at him to keep those walls up.
It took a moment or three but he managed, closing his eyes and lowering his mental walls.
Hecate was powerful—She had stopped time, and with it Morana’s magic and powers, and while Morana was a goddess herself, Hecate was not dying. Her magic was fathomless, unending, or so it felt—it was not chaotic like the veil, nor wild like the tempest that raged around them—but a calm, unending expanse that was dark, peaceful, encompassing.
Her power flowed through his mind, soothing his exhaustion, refilling his reserves, until he was overflowing with power. There was no end to the strength She lent him, no boundaries that his mind could sense or feel.
“Wield your grave sight and do what must be done,” She said, the words echoing through his mind and body. “You know what to do.”
“Yes,” he agreed, breathing slow and measured. He did know what to do.
The residue from the Dainsleif glittered metallic gold, and he sharpened his focus and slid the merest thought beneath the far edge of the ancient wound, lifting the curse away from the divine relic. It came away with ease, fluttering in the air above the wound, and Ezra sent a thin torrent of flame out across the curse, consuming it, eradicating it from existence.
Nothing remained, not even ash.
“Well done,” Hecate whispered. “The paradox is no more.”
He was about to heal the wound when time lurched and sprang ahead, a cacophony of sound rushing in to fill the place silence once reigned.
He cringed as the wind returned, ice and snow pelting him, puddles growing on the floor, the hangar walls groaning under the strength of the growing storm.
He ignored the storm as best he could, and reached out again with his mind, grabbing the ouroboros of life and death, his mental hands grasping and holding tight.
The cycle stopped.
The wind died immediately.
He gasped and twitched, sweat pouring from his temples, but he took the power borrowed from one goddess and used it to shatter the ouroboros of another—the death magics poured into the mortal wound, and he forced the great wave of magic to obey his will.
The death magics heeded his command and with his inner vision overlaying his physical sight, he watched as the edges of the bone grew together, fusing, flowing like water before smoothing out.
In a heartbeat, the sword wound was gone.
The skull shook violently and cobalt flames erupted from it in a spray of magic. Ezra dropped the skull to the floor. He grabbed Lilith into his arms and scrambled back a few feet as the cobalt flames grew in intensity, so bright to his eyes that he could not see through the inferno.
A voice rose from the flames, a fierce cry of triumph.
Hecate stood unbothered, a pillar of darkness against the baleful light. The wind scoured around Her, Her countenance untouched, and Her shadow reached Ezra, making the painful bite of the wind cease attacking him. He sat in Her shadow and squinted through the blue light as it grew in size.
His inner vision was near to useless, blinded by the power of Morana, and his physical eyes watered as he tried to discern what was happening.
The snow stopped falling, water dripped down the walls and the ceiling. Metal creaked and groaned, and in the sudden quiet his ears popped and he wiped at his face, pushing back wet hair from his eyes. He heard behind him the sounds of people shouting, engines revving, people running, but no one approached.
Lilith began to purr in his arms, kneading her paws on his wrist.
