“To the stars,” I told her.
She nodded.
I took her gloved hand in mine, and we ran to where Toryn was herding the last remaining fae out of the Great Hall. After he helped a woman and her crying child pass across the shaking floor, he turned to us with tired eyes. “It’s done. They’re all out of this hall. But we should check the bedrooms and make certain no one in the court has been left behind.” His voice was weary, and his crumpled face displayed the truth of his thoughts now that he no longer had to put on a brave and powerful show.
Tankards clattered off a nearby table and onto the floor as the rumbles transformed the entire room into an avalanche of destruction. A chunk of rock slammed down beside us, and I looked up at the ceiling to see a jagged crack in the stone high above. On the wall to our right, a storm fae tapestry ripped in two as the walls began to separate.
I pushed Tessa through the door first, and then shoved Toryn just behind her. We made it into the corridor just as hundreds of rocks rained down from above. The entire Great Hall collapsed.
“Go!” Toryn shouted, motioning us in front of him. “We’ll check the rooms on our way out.”
Hand in hand, Tessa and I ran through the corridors, stumbling when the ground lurched beneath us. We traced the path from the Great Hall toward the front of the castle, where we’d find safety—for a little while at least—and checked the rooms along the way.
But when we reached the main corridor, a strange sensation prickled the back of my neck. Tessa sucked in a sharp gasp and yanked on my hand. She’d felt something behind us.
“Sun above,” she muttered, and her fear punched into me through our bond. “It’s Sirius. He’s found us.”
Tension pounded in my skull as I slowly turned to face the enemy. Darkness engulfed the other end of the hallway, pitch black and gleaming like the onyx gemstones that were scattered throughout the castle. A deep, dark dread pulsed toward us, as if pushed forward on the wind by invisible wings.
And then the shadows shifted. A large form strode from the darkness with a pair of eyes that glowed red.
For a moment, all I could do was stare. He was broader than I’d imagined, and at least half a foot taller than even the largest of the fae. Short crimson hair curled around his pointed ears, both of which had been pierced with an onyx gemstone earring. Shooting us a wicked smile that displayed his sharp, protruding canines, he reached up to his ear, yanked out the stone, and tossed it across the floor. It clattered as it scuttled toward us.
From beside me, Tessa shuddered.
The god seemed to sense her slight movement, just in tune with her every breath as I was. A possessiveness I’d never felt rose inside me as Sirius turned his flaming eyes on my wife, the other half of my soul. He cocked his head and sniffed.
His smile stretched wide. “Such an interesting little creature.”
Rage surged through me, and I drew my sword. “You touch one hair on her head, and I will relish tearing you apart again and again until all you know is pain.”
He chuckled, a rotten, hollow sound, and then he sniffed again. “Ah, fae. So easily corruptible. You live such long lives, it doesn’t take much to make you forget what you once were when there’s so much more that you can be. I can give you that—the power you crave.”
I tightened my grip on my sword and sneered. “I crave nothing you can give me.”
“Ah, ah.” With flashing eyes, he took a step closer and drew a sword from the scabbard at his side. “I can sense it in you. You’re a king, a proud one at that. Your reign…it’s a burden. But it’s one you enjoy. You bask in the adoration of your subjects.” And then his smile dropped. “Give us the girl, and you can have all of Aesir. We don’t want these wretched fae lands. All we care about is Talaven.”
Heart clenching, I angled my body in front of Tessa’s. “I will never let you touch her.”
“Oh, no?” The god laughed. “And how do you plan to stop me?”
My power might not harm the gods, but it could still stun them. It could shake through the very foundations of this castle and bury them beneath a pile of rubble. And that would give us time—time enough to get everyone out of the city. The gods would have to crawl through the rubble, pushing aside rock after rock…
It wouldn’t be our victory, but it would be enough for now. Enough for us to survive until we heard from Niamh and Val. If they didn’t already, they would soon have an audience with the mortals. They would find the answers to defeating the gods. For now, we just needed to slow the enemy down.
“Toryn, Tessa, get behind me.”
Sirius let out a delighted laugh. “What’s this, now? You’re actually going to attempt to fight me? Well, this is a first. The last time we were awake in these lands, everyone fled when they laid eyes on us. But I see time has eroded your brains just as much as it has eroded your magic.”
Eroded our magic?
I didn’t take the bait. Clearly, the god wanted to keep me talking as he slowly stalked down the corridor, carefully stepping around the cracks in the stone. The other gods must still be trapped in that cave, perhaps fighting Queen Tatiana. And Sirius was stalling for time.
I would not give it to him.
Tessa grabbed Toryn’s arm and tugged him to the floor. I called upon the dark power inside me, that magic I’d always hated and feared. Every time I’d used it, I’d only done so because I’d had no other choice—or the power had been forced out of me. This time, though, I relished what I could do. There was nothing human about the creature who stood before me with his red, gleaming eyes and a voice that sounded like shards of glass.
I called upon that power, and I launched it at the towering god.
