He didn't turn to look at me, his dark eyes fixed on the scene before us. He simply gestured with his hand, the movement slow and reverent. "Look."
I followed his gaze, and the world tilted. The white aura wasn't coming from some divine weapon or magical artifact—it was radiating from Serenity herself. She knelt on the soggy ground, her white shirt and jeans somehow still pristine despite the chaos around us, her golden hair falling like a curtain around her face.
Gunnar's head rested in her lap, his massive frame looking almost vulnerable in her gentle care. Where his eyes had been burning red with demonic fury just moments before, now they were his normal clear blue—confused, but undeniably his own again. The transformation was so complete it was almost hard to believe this was the same creature who'd been tearing through the battlefield like a force of nature.
He slowly sat up, his movements careful and disoriented, like someone waking from a long, terrible dream. His hands shook as he shoved his fingers through his disheveled hair, the gesture achingly human after seeing him as a monster. "What happened?"
Serenity's hands glowed with that pure white light as she reached out to steady him, her touch infinitely gentle. "You were under a dark spell," she said, her voice soft but steady. "I healed you."
The words struck me like a prayer, and for the first time since this nightmare began, the suffocating dread lifted just enough to breathe. We had a shot. A slim one, but a shot.
“You did?” He dropped his arm.
A dark shape landed a few feet away with a deafening crash that sent tremors through my boots.
A low, menacing growl rumbled like a revving Mack truck. The sound locked my muscles tight and set every hair on my arms standing on end. My body went rigid with instinctive terror, recognizing the predator even before my mind could process what I was seeing.
Shit, it was Hades.
