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Well done, Gwen.

Orpheus turned back to the Prometheus and loaded his spell. Along his fingertips, fire danced, the sigil he traced in the air igniting the mist into a crystalized shape he flung at the slow-moving hand. It hit its wrist at the exact moment they landed on the Prometheus’ shoulder, icy chains erupting from the sigil to snake around the hand and the Prometheus’ throat. One yank, then another, and the chains continued to tighten, the creaky sound of straining metal a figment of the bonds that held the Prometheus in place, born of Orpheus’ intention for their behavior instead of the actual molecules that formed their mass.

The effect, in the end, was the same. Wrist bound, throat choked, the Prometheus unlatched its jaw and roared.

What should have been a skull-popping rupture was no more than a tickle in his bones.

“That’s right!” Fenrir shouted. “How does it feel to be collared like a beast?”

Fenrir didn’t linger on the Prometheus’ opposite shoulder. He sliced a line of hot black ichor through the pulsing artery at its neck, then flung them towards the rooftops edging the square. Again, the Prometheus came for them, and again, Fenrir attacked. His sword tip speared deep into the canal of its ear, the meat of its cheek, the spongey place where chin met tongue. Wound after wound he inflicted upon flesh that took bare moments to heal but kept the Prometheus’ attention on them rather than the people scattering at its feet, until it was the open expanse of the square that spread beneath them—the chasm into Hell a mere hundred yards away.

“We’re nearly there!” Orpheus shouted into the rushing wind. Fenrir arced towards the top of the Prometheus’ sparsely-haired head.

They landed with a shared grunt. All around, the city sprawled, smoke rising through Hell’s shimmering mist, violet unlight throwing the black obsidian into stark relief. If the destruction had looked bad before, from this vantage it looked catastrophic, a city in ruins, rocks tumbling from half-collapsed towers, fires burned in buildings where oil or fuel must have been kept. Netherflame lamps winked through the billowing smoke from what few structures remained intact, the technology he and Gwen had worked so hard to restore sacrificed to a ruin that served no other purpose than his revenge.

I did this. As if the gravity hadn’t already had a chance to sink in, now Orpheus’s knees shook with its weight. Power, unlike that he’d ever tasted before—that Lore, of all people, had known was possible—wielded without care. Without thought. Without responsibility. Like Atticus had been onto something when he’d locked that collar around his throat all those weeks ago.

Orpheus’ hand met his throat, fingernails sinking in, staggering back from Fenrir, the world beginning to spin.

Fenrir reached for him. “Hey, hey, you okay?”

Orpheus could barely shake his head let alone answer. Not when he had no answers to give even if he managed to find his voice. He took a step back, and the Prometheus chose that moment to swing at them.

“Orpheus, look out!” Fenrir roared.

He didn’t think. He didn’t plot. Orpheus jumped.

Air greeted him, open and clear, his momentum slowing to a split-second of impotent motion before gravity snatched him up and Orpheus began to fall.

“Orpheus!” Fenrir screamed, leaping after him and straight into the Prometheus’ oncoming hand.

“Fenrir!” Orpheus twisted, unable to see—to tell. Glimpses broke through his tumbling fall: bony fingers flexing, black ichor spraying but, all hells, there was red, too. The Prometheus struggled to clench its fist, knuckles bulging with a strength no one man should be able to match. But before his eyes, Fenrir did. A finger rose, then another, peeling back from the fist like two hinges to reveal a sword, space made in a place where none should exist, the impossible redefined in the way only Fenrir Rawkner could do, and when their eyes met through the billowing smoke of a ruined city, Orpheus thought that maybe they could come back from this. That there was hope for them yet, to repair the damage they’d done: to the world, to this city, to people who never should have been their enemy at all, and to each other, too.

Metal strained against the fingers, catching, bending—shattering.

Fenrir’s sword snapped into shards, and from within the closing fist, Fenrir screamed.

“Fenrir!”

The Prometheus roared again, fingers baring down, but all Orpheus could hear was Fenrir, his scream choking off into something small, something painful, while the ground rushed towards him with the speed of a gasp.

No. No. This wouldn’t be how it ended. For either of them.

Deep in the core of him, power beckoned, fire within a wound that had caused immeasurable destruction, but a fire Gwen had restored when she’d torn the crack inside him wide open. A source of power the world had only known once before when the city that shattered the world had begun an age of devastation so great the Earth would never be the same again. It was that power which was his to wield.

Orpheus closed his eyes, and the whole world lurched to a stop.

Well, him—and the Prometheus.

From where he hovered, wind whipping at his robes, hair lifting with the kinetic force of his own internal power, Orpheus sucked in a breath and met the Prometheus’ eyes. Like the city he’d breathed Netherflame into, and then torn apart, Orpheus reached for the cold fire in the Prometheus’ veins and took.

Fire. Power. Once singular charge of intent. Frost thickened his breath, beaded his fingertips, and when he met the Prometheus’ eyes, it wasn’t a rageful hunger he saw.

It was terror.

“Let him go,” he breathed, and the Prometheus didn’t obey. It didn’t submit.

The Prometheus bent.