Page 310 of Commanding Scythe and Sky

“And Freya?”

“They call her the butcher queen.”

“I was there for that part,” he chuckled. “Redistributing the hoard was iconic.”

“Very rob the rich and gift the poor.”

“There are no rich where survival is concerned. Simply the moral and immoral. War has always reduced humanity to animals.”

I nodded, not that he could see it. It hadn’t even taken weeks for the mortals to turn on each other—killing over basic supplies, rioting against leaders helpless against the invasion, looting what little remained. They burned their own cities from within, as though the destruction could somehow drive the demons out. Instead, they were left with the barren bones of what had once been shelter and food. The demons were all the merrier as they feasted on chaos and carnage.

Others fled for rural towns in hopes of avoiding attention. Sometimes it worked. Often it didn’t.

They lost themselves. Lost their very humanity, save for a handful of steadfast believers who held to their morality no matter who benefited or suffered for it.

A sharp sting made me flinch. Most of the flora along the ground had withered, leaving emaciated, thorny branches in its wake. When I glanced up, I found leaves riddled with holes and blackened edges, like disease had crept into the roots and sucked them dry.

“How was the base?”

“Still smooth if you don’t think too hard about the politics.”

“Reyna still being a shit?”

I choked on my laugh but couldn’t help the smile on my face as I rushed to keep up with him. “She’s certainly got a taste for control.”

“August will handle her.”

“You sound certain.”

“He will. The constant with the power-hungry is the illusion that everyone around them also views the world through a lens of control and obedience. It makes them easier to manipulate.”

“Alec doesn’t seem to see eye to eye with his plans.”

“Doesn’t he?” I was almost certain there was a smile in his voice, but his shoulders stiffened, and I jerked my head up, peering between the tight branches and finding nothing but warped, charred shadows. “Jason says there’s a clearing ahead.”

We didn’t speak until the withering jungle dumped us into… an opening. Not a clearing, exactly, but a warrior-sized gap cut with unnatural precision between Rhiannon’s enchantments and a twisting mass of brambles that reached at least as tall as a house.

“Now that is a thicket,” Brody noted as he and Rika sidled up to my left.

“Fuck,” Aren rumbled, and we all looked from one side to the other—the wards extending as far as the eye could see. As if to emphasize there was no turning back, Rhiannon’s jungle devoured the hole we’d just poured out of, leaving us gaping at the looming wall of thorns.

Aren raised his hands, and as I strode in front of him, I found his eyes closed and chin lifted, expression soft—somehow at peace even as my heart hammered at being trapped within the ruthless wards.

Magic glittered like gold sand along his fingers, and then he turned left, as though guided in that direction. I sent my shadows writhing through the brambles to do the same just as a sleek black jaguar appeared ahead of us, our footsteps slowing as Jason made his way back.

“He says it’s unending, and he had a sense he wouldn’t find us if he didn’t turn back now,” Aren explained. “We need to head northwest. The storm pushed us too far south, so we need to compensate along the path before we cut through the thicket.”

“We have to go through it?”

“Rumor says this is the most treacherous stretch.”

“What lies beyond it?”

“We don’t know.”

“What do you mean you don’t know?”

“No one’s ever made it back, little dove… That’s why I left you.”