Rising slowly upward, I’m astonished to discover that I’ve landed without injury, not a single bone broken.
I sense my attacker soaring down to meet me, but I don’t look up yet, instead taking a moment to process my choices, feeling a new wave of acceptance.
First, I acknowledge the power I shouldn’t have.
I wasn’t aware of it until I stepped out of the tunnel to face the field of carnivorous roses that had sprouted from the blood and bones of monsters. I sensed their eagerness to obey me.
Then, within the final realm, the ancient magic trying to stop us from entering and exiting didn’t work so acutely on me.
I guess that’s what happens when the bone of a primordial deity, the so-called father of monsters, is lodged in the surface of your heart and nestling happily across your rib cage.
All this time, I was convinced I’d destroyed it, not assimilated with it.
I forgive myself for that assumption.
I had no reason to suspect it was still intact. I felt no repercussions after I took it from Peyton. It certainly didn’t control me or affect me in any discernible way. I woke up after that battle just as angry as I was before. I was no more or less prone to fury. It took me eight months to take control of my life, but there was no hint that the bone hampered or quickened my progress.
Even when it was outside of my body, this bone—the White Wand—never controlled me.
It was only when it had an impact on things external to me that I was aware of its immense power.
Right now, it may as well be any other part of my body.
But to the beast descending toward me, this bone and the bones within the box I’m carrying, it must be everything.
If they weren’t, he wouldn’t have come back for them.
My attacker lands on the grass ten paces away, his brown leather wings allowing him to control his descent and alight without cracking the earth like I did.
When he retracts his wings, his appearance is as ordinary as the first time I saw him in the boardroom back at Draven Industries. Average height, average build, medium-brown hair, pale-brown eyes, skin slightly tan. He has no aura, and his posture is completely relaxed.
I’m not surprised to see that he’s still wearing glasses, given that Rebella’s snakes poisoned his eyes.
“I’m disappointed, Striker,” Abel says, beginning to pace around me, keeping a wide distance between him and me. “I was hoping you would have opened that box by now.”
“You can’t open it yourself,” I say, drawing a conclusion from the fact that Abel bided his time for what must have been months instead of coming straight for me. The way he has moved through the maze tells me he could have defeated the protective mechanisms of the Legion’s Realm. He could have come after me much sooner. Something has to have held him back. “I’m curious. Why not?”
His lips rise into a snarl. “Because you control my heart bone.”
“Heart bone?” I narrow my eyes at him. “There are no bones in a heart.”
“The forefinger of my left hand,” he says, holding up that hand, the fingers of which look to have been cut off at an angle. “The hand of my power.”
“If your forefinger contains the heart of your power, why would you voluntarily cut it off?”
Assuming it’s true that Typhon shaved off his bones himself.
Abel—or rather, Typhon—gives me a sudden grin. “So that my enemies could never defeat me,” he says. “I sent my finger bones out into the world so that through them, I would have a way to escape. I primed the bones to seek out a beast with the darkest heart, a creature within whose body they could incubate, revive, and grow in strength.”
Incubate? Fucking awesome.
I focus back on the things I need to know. Given that he’s confirmed he can’t open the box on his own, I have some small level of control in this situation, and I intend to make the most of it.
“You escaped eight months ago,” I say, taking even more of a guess this time.
He inclines his head in the affirmative. “The moment you assimilated my heart bone into your body, you gave me the power to escape.”
“What about these other bones?” I ask, tapping the box.
