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The Six were on bended knee, their wings spilling like knightly capes behind them. But they weren’t bowing. They panted and wheezed.
Another agonized scream reached them. This time, it sounded mournful. Bereft. The Sluagh lifted their heavy heads, crestfallen and heartsick. Maebh glared across the battlefield and took a breath—the kind one took before striking. A silken shadow clashed with white before her, knocking her backward. Leaf blinked, and the silken shadow took the shape of Legion with his fist buried inside Aleksandra’s chest. The Prime had stepped in the way, shielding her ex-lover and torturer. Blood bubbled from her mouth.
“No!” Maebh shrieked, dropping to her knees as the Prime collapsed, desperately trying to hold her upright through thick feathered wings. “Sandy! What have you done?”
With her attention diverted, the Wild Hunt released a roar that rattled the sky. Like an unwatched naughty child, it flew into the battle, swooping and snapping up anything in its path.
Legion yanked his bloody fist from Aleksandra’s chest, then all Six Sluagh flickered away. One moment they were there, the next gone.
Shrieks and cries echoed around him. Ringing in his ears intensified.
He didn’t know what to do.
Healwaysknew what to do.
But why?
Why bother?
Why keep fighting?
Crimson’s despairing journal entries circled Leaf’s mind like water down a drain.
Life on this planet seems doomed to repeat until there is nothing left.
“Papi.” Nova shook him by the collar.
But his mind was trapped in the past, in the cold hopelessness of time.
We are born. Our flaws pass from generation to generation. We ignore warnings from the planet that feeds us. We refuse to change our destructive and selfish ways. We become extinct.
“What’s the fucking point?” he mumbled, dazed. He had almost nothing in his reserves. No mana to stop this madness from spreading. He’d spent too much time running from his fate and hiding beneath duty that he’d ruined everything. It was too late.
“Hoja de los Guardianes. Pues escúchame bien.” Nova slapped him across the jaw.Hard. Blinking, he looked down at her and found her gaze fierce, alive. She gripped his collar and shook him. “Don’t think like that!”
He blinked rapidly against the burn. But this felt like another failure—the worst.
“It’s true,” he confessed. “Your brother won. Even the Sluagh—” He frowned, unsure what to think of them. Were they any worse than the Prime, Maebh, or… him? What lengths would he go to if his happy ending was threatened?
ChapterFifty
The ringing in Leaf’s ears grew louder in the unfolding destruction.
The Wild Hunt fed on anything and everything. From frenzied to fae to humans plucked from decks. One by one, the airships started to retreat. At least the chaos gave them that.
Over the battlefield, Rory tugged Willow up the dangling rope ladder, desperately trying to save her from the clawing undead. The airship above rocked and swayed as they tried to recover from the Hunt’s latest pass. But the Six were nowhere in sight.
“I don’t know what to do,” Leaf mumbled, disorientated.
“Start with her.” Nova dragged him to where Maebh shrieked over Aleksandra’s bleeding body. “You healed me in the garden, right? What about her?”
Dawn’s first rays had breached the horizon, brightening the red-stained feathers. Leaf scrubbed his face and glanced around to check if they were under immediate threat, but it seemed the demogorgon still worked to keep the worst from their perimeter. The ringing in his ears stopped.
He nodded.
“Good,” she said, tone gentling. “This is the point,mi alma. This is what separates us from them. This is why we keep fighting.”
Mi alma—my soul. That he understood her meant everything.
