You’re not taking the life of an innocent person. He did something heinous enough to land himself here and you’re taking away his opportunity to be free and do it again.
I take a millisecond to pay attention to the five or so feet between Yemi and me. Sevryn has her tucked as close to him as possible. His eyes bounce in every direction, and his hands are stretched out.
He doesn’t drag out his kills. They’re quick. Merciful.
I shut everything down as chaos truly breaks free.
What seemed to be the initial plan of taking down ours and Dimitri’s team first has quickly shifted.
There are no longer teams as far as I can tell, aside from the three of us.
Everyone is after everyone.
Powers blast near me as I move around Yemi and Sevryn on light feet. Anyone who slips through whatever it is he’s doing, I cut down, but the circle continues to grow tighter.
“Thayla!”
A whip latches around my ankle, snatching me off my feet before I can blink. My back slams into the ground and the air in my lungs gets stuck. A foot stomps on my stomach as soon as the person with the rope drags me closer to them and Yemi continues to shriek my name.
A feral scream tears from my throat as I force myself to breathe. I wrap my arm around the calf of the massive-ass man standing on me and use his weight to pull myself into a sitting position.
One sword slices through the rope and in the same fluid motion, the other glides across the back of his ankle.
His bellow has my teeth rattling. I don’t have time to do anything other than turn my face away from his incoming fist. My cheek instantly splits on impact and my head smashes back into the ground.
He straddles my waist and my eyes widen through the black spots at the manic look in his. I cross my two swords over my face as soon as his fist comes down once again. The touch of his knuckle grazes the tip of my nose, and I jerk my arms apart.
Disgust, panic, a fucking tsunami of emotions rushes me when his severed hand drops to my chest and he falls to the side, screaming his head off. My chest heaves and torturous gags choke me up as I roll myself over, tripping numerous times until I finally stumble to my feet.
The bellowing stops as I stand and whip around, only to witness another god retracting his sword from the man’s back.
Fuck.
“V, how much longer?”
“Not long, Thayla. I swear not long.”
Guys, hurry the fuck up.
Now would be a great time to make your appearances.
A piercing wail has me spinning around on my heels and freezing in the same second. I got dragged so much farther than I thought.
Yemi’s on her knees with her hands held up over her head as if she’s holding up a falling ceiling. Sevryn is nowhere to be seen, but she keeps screaming, jerking her head over to the pile of gods fighting beside her.
Fuck.
“Yemi!”
I race toward her, and her eyes shoot up to mine. The desperation in them is the strongest I’ve ever seen.
My sword swings out wildly as beings continue to run by me, trying to get to whoever they plan to cut down next.
The shrill that continues to pour from her grows more urgent as if she’s holding on with everything she’s got. I count the feet I am away from her, but the pile of gods beside her grows faster than my legs move.
I suck in a massive gulp of air when the bubble she placed around herself explodes.
Everything stops as my vision doubles.
