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“Goddammit,” Cyrus gritted behind me as massive gold wings snapped around me in a feathered cocoon.

And then the world was dark…

Quicksilver eyes through a fog. “No, you don’t. Come on, kid…”

Wrong…

My neck didn’t want to move.

Air shouldn’t burn in my lungs. But damn, it did…

Blink.

Even blinking took more effort than it should have as my limp body dragged over gravel.

Brown eyes. Dark hair. Tight knots of black ink climbing like smoke up his neck.

Adrastos’ eyes.

Only… not. The face was too gentle. Too young. Teeth worrying a lip ring.

“He’s breathing.” English. Relief coated the words.

Stone crunched underfoot before I was dumped onto the ground with all the ceremony of a sack of grain.

Coughing—someone was coughing.

Wheezing, I fought to lift my head.

Two men. Or their outlines. One with an arm slung over the tattooed one’s shoulders.

A third—limp, coated in streams of black ichor—hung from someone’s grip by the collar.

“Mine,” I rattled, tagging Moros as the rag doll.

Which meant…

“Don’t die,” came the voice that haunted my nightmares. Weak. Like he’d been the one to go over the falls.

Thunder rumbled.

Blink.

They were gone.

Blink.

A groan and rustle of… wings.

Darkness took me… and I fucking welcomed it.

Freya

“CYRUS!”

It was the torment of the vault colliding with every nightmare since. Agony swallowing ecstasy. The death of every dream I hadn’t known I still carried in a world that promised not a single tomorrow.

And I was screaming.