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Arran was deathly pale, with stitching around the joints of his limbs like a puppet. She took in the depthless waters of his eyes. Those once rich and vibrant gems were now opaque and muddied by the afterlife.
Before Malik could defend himself, Finnian fisted the back of his hair and smashed his face into the half-eaten soup on the table. The porcelain bowl shattered. Pieces of soggy vegetables flew about. A pool of Malik’s blood mixed with the broth and dripped onto the crystal floor.
Vex and Astrid scraped back out of their chairs, gawking in dumb shock at the undead Arran.
Mages petrified the gods. But gods who had the gift of magic? Horrifying.
Finnian bent down next to Malik’s ear. “You cannot kill what belongs to me, Brother.”
Naia felt the familiar prickle of Mira’s chilling power circulate the hall. Instinct took over and Naia went to jump over the table to shield Finnian, but Arran twisted her arm behind her back and drove her hips against the edge of the table.
Naia hissed through her teeth.
Out of the corner of her eye, the bone-white tusks of Mira’s whip flitted across the air.
Finnian stabbed the butcher knife into Malik’s skull with one arm, and threw out his other arm, catching the tail end of Mira’s whip. He allowed its oil-slick body to coil around his forearm like a sea snake.
The jagged teeth tore into his flesh, and he turned from Malik and peered across the hall to Mira. “Come,” he commanded.
Arms burst through the windows of the hall. Shards of the stained glass exploded everywhere, peppered pieces nicking Naia’s arms. Hands punctured through the crystal floor. Jungle cats and decayed birds. Bodies of humans covered in seashells and algae, as if they’d decomposed on the seafloor.
The hall erupted into screams as the servants scurried to flee.
One undead human tore into the neck of a guard.
A jaguar, half its bones exposed on the side of its skull, pounced on Vex.
Astrid shrieked.
Mira reared her arm back, freeing the end of her whip, and lashed it through the flailing undead creatures coming at her left and right. It was the subtle pinch in her brow, her eyes betraying a swirling fury, that slashed a white-hot bolt of lightning straight down Naia’s middle.
“Arran, let me go!” Naia begged. “She is going to hurt him!”
He pressed himself into her waist in response, biting her hip bones deeper into the edge of the table.
Naia reared up and threw her head back, her skull colliding with Arran’s forehead. He let out a grunt, steadying his balance and tightening his grip around her wrists. She squirmed and wiggled in his grasp, gritting her teeth.
Mira launched her whip with a velocity too fast for Naia to follow. One strike after another, punctuated by a violent hissing, it moved with a viper’s reflexes.
“Finny!” Naia shouted over the commotion. “Stop this?—”
Mira’s whip connected with Finnian’s face. The clash sent shockwaves through the air, the sound like thunder slashing across the seabed sky. Naia felt the vibration of it in her bones.
Naia screamed out her brother’s name. They were deities, but some wounds inflicted by the most powerful of them could not be healed.
Finnian staggered.
His palm slapped over the right side of his head and his body folded forward. Blood gushed between his fingers as he whimpered.
“Finny!” Naia cried out.
To her surprise, Raksa appeared and ripped Arran off her. She shot around the table for Finnian, not wasting a single moment.
Another caught her by the arm.
She whirled around, snarling, “Let go!”
Malik’s fingertips bit into her bone and the steel tip of his knife softly met the small of her back.
