I strode toward where Rune had flung my swords. Or where I thought she had tossed them. I searched the glowing trunks, expecting to find them at the base of one. Frustration poked at my lingering rage. It shouldn’t be this hard to find my damned swords.
Rune’s wicked delight answered me. I threw up a wall between us.She still felt everything—a safety mechanism in our connection. If anything happened to me, she’d die. That didn’t mean I couldn’t keep her smug satisfaction from drilling into my skull.
I whipped around. Had I misjudged where she tossed them? Then I stilled.
My swords hid in the darkness of alightlesstree.
The sight shook me to my core. The Eternal Forest was named for its never-ending nightly light. Every angelic soul forever lived on through the luminance and warmth they gave this land. Their memory remained unending, unquestionable, everlasting. Nothing could, would, or should ever alter that fact. So staring at the brown trunk, black creeping through the veins that should’ve been glowing blue, plunged me into a deep, foreboding horror.
Searching for the cause, I noted the boot prints and the dark substance coating the dead grass—the infected’s blood. It still painted the ground from when we fought the infected Damned during Saraqael’s funeral. From the path of rot spreading from the fight zone to the trunk, it looked as if the blood had eaten away the soul light and infected it all at once.
Alexei was right. Their infected blood was poisoning the land. But I still didn’t think this was enough to cause the weather changes.
Rune slammed against my wall. I dropped it immediately. Desperation and a cry for help crashed through our connection, carrying her location with it. I cloaked myself in shadows and luscelered to them.
Chapter
Thirty-Two
Ronen
Demons surrounded them—fully transitioned infected Damned.
Horns jutted from half their skulls. Gray skin peeled from their grotesque faces, the ebony veins shooting through their exposed muscle highlighted by the Eternal Forest. They tittered and hissed; some even tried to talk over Rune’s snarls. She whipped back and forth over the prone pet, trying to protect him and herself from the six advancing infected.
Don’t bite them or take in their blood. In fact, try not to let them touch you,I ordered.
Which made killing them even harder.
A vengeful part of me, still seeking the pet’s blood, wanted to tell Rune to run and let them have him. If only she’d listen, and we didn’t need to eradicate this filth. Or most of them.
Before I lost the element of surprise, I pulled in my shadows, then luscelered and attacked two demons approaching Rune’s back. My blades cleaved through their necks, fast and powerful. Their remains sifted into my blade, and any blood that might’ve fallen was absorbed.
Three of them moved back as one, as if all connected to the samecord. But the fourth stayed put, a familiar gray smoke swelling in his hand.
“Ridigar,” I seethed.
The evidence of his betrayal marked his flesh in a bright red line splitting his dark face. The crimson skin matched the red horns jutting from his white hair and bleeding into his eyes. He was the only infected who still had clarity in his gaze and skin that wasn’t molting.
“Hello, General,” he rasped with a toothy grin. “I knew it wouldn’t take you long to figure it out. But longer than I thought.”
“Where is Cecilee?”
“Dead. A necessary casualty. Couldn’t control her. We’re not keen on exposure.”
Damnit.
“Who iswe?” I demanded.
Ridigar shook his head. “You’ll never figure it out. But ask a different question. Maybe I’ll enlighten you.”
“Why betray us?”
“Oh.” He laughed, the sound grating on my ears. “This one’s fun. We’re going to be the next rulers of Hell.”
A sharp piece of ice formed in his smokeless hand.
My ears rang as I stared at Lucifer and Lucille’s power displayed in his palm.
