Xenia glanced over his shoulder to see Alexei and the other Deathstalker guards rushing to help their master.
Before they could reach them, a seed of rainbow light bloomed behind Maksym, then expanded into a shimmering circle.
Relief, swift and euphoric, trembled through her as a single, storm-cloud wing angled through the portal.
Cael surged in like an avenging demon, risen from the fiery depths of Stygios’s realm, wielding a Typhon-steel broadsword with a hammer-shaped pommel.
“Get your sparkly fucking handsOFFmy human.”
Maksym dropped Xenia and made to pivot, but Cael was too fast. The steel cut through Maksym’s right wing like a hot knife through butter and the appendage crashed to the stone floor, matte-green feathers floating down upon it like a gruesome snowfall.
Maksym howled, falling face-first into the wall as Xenia darted beneath the table.
The world-ending rage twisting Cael’s features rendered him barely Fae. A crazed, feral beast with only one goal in mind.
Kill.
Cael left Maksym writhing against the wall, then turned to Alexei and the Deathstalkers, curling his fingers and stealing the breath from their lungs. They collapsed to their knees, clutching at their throats, faces purpling.
Xenia had never seen Cael use such a massive amount of his power. As if it had been building while Maksym had been suppressing it.
His wind abruptly ceased, and Alexei and the guards sucked in gasping breaths, barely able to rise before Cael tore through them.
He whirled through the hall, piercing hearts and removing heads with meticulous precision—a breathtaking ballet of brutality that poured heat through Xenia’s veins.
Cael returned his attention to Maksym, pulled the male up by the back of his blood-soaked jacket and slammed his face against the wall.
He snarled into Maksym’s ear as the male groaned and grunted in pain, Xenia’s stone shard still stuck in his neck.
“You arefinished, Rosopa,” Cael seethed. “Did you really think I wouldn’t return for her?” His gray eyes darted towards her, and beneath the thundering fury, she swore she saw flashes of the deepest regret.
“Please,please,” Maksym sniveled, his smug savagery and cool arrogance slithering away with the rivulets of green blood streaming down his neck and back.
Cael lifted the sword again and chopped off Maksym’s other wing. A scream of utter agony and desperation escaped the male, and Xenia almost felt sorry for him.
She tucked her knees against her chest and laid her head between them, covering her ears to dampen the sounds of Maksym’s messy, though deserved, end.
After several minutes, she slowly lowered her hands and raised her head. The only sound in the hall besides the rustling of her silk dress as she crawled from underneath the table was a faint panting noise.
Cael was slumped against the wall, the sword and Cassandra’s dagger lying by his side, his face crumpled in tear-soaked anguish.
The desiccated Deathstalkers, Alexei included, lay surrounded by pools of green. Ended permanently.
Maksym, or what was left of him, was a limbless torso, his arms, legs, and wings scattered across the floor.
She approached Cael carefully, stepping over the oozing detritus of his wrath, and crouched down in front of him.
As soon as she touched his cheek, his eyes popped open, glistening with unshed tears.
“It’s not enough,” he whispered. “It wasn’t enough.”
She knew he was talking about his wing, about what Maksym had taken from him. No amount of violence or vengeance would bring it back.
She settled into his lap and he wrapped his arms around her, burying his wet face in the crook of her neck. “You came back for me.”
He trailed a cool hand down her spine and she shivered at his touch.
He lifted his chin, bringing his lips to the shell of her ear as his arms tightened around her.
