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"It's an oversight I'll correct as soon as we kill the threat at the front door," Wynvail assured me calmly, standing straight-backed at my side with moonlight pooled in his hand.
Kai and Em were a solid wall of protective menace at my back, and Harvey shielded behind them with Verena who refused to stay behind. Wane had thrown up a wall of shadows in front of me, his whole body trembling. I reached out to his soul, hating the way he rebuilt his walls higher every day. I was glad he was healing from his ordeal, but I worried he was trying to hide his suffering from me. Visions flashed behind my eyes of Andryas Revairs hacking off his wings, and the anger that rose gave me the last oomph to reach for the door.
I threw it open, Wane's shadows snapping through the gap and grabbing the hooded figure standing on the doorstep. They were barely visible in the pitch blackness, just a shape of a person.
"Wait!" I gasped when I glimpsed a purple hand as she struggled against his shadows, sharp black hair flicking out from within the hood. "Stop! It's my friend. It's Renna!"
A quiet voice in my head breathed, thank fuck.
I'd missed my friends. I needed someone to talk to, to blurt all my emotions out to, to listen and judge and then advise me. I'd always honour my promise to Harvey to stay away from anything that would put us at risk, but when Renna literally landed on our doorstep … I could hardly turn her away. That was just bad hospitality.
"How the fuck did you find me?" I demanded, grabbing her arm. "We're supposed to be hidden."
And that was worrying as fuck. If Renna could track us down, Cronus would have no trouble doing the same. Or would he send his cronies instead? Even now I couldn't get Iapetus's threats out of my head, his horrible, oozing suggestions. That voice had sunk into my head and even death wouldn't dislodge it.
"Did you use the tracking stone?" Kai asked, less hostile than he'd been seconds ago. Huh. I guess he and Renna were more frenemies than enemies after Olympus.
"Yes," Renna agreed, lowering her hood. "It led me here."
"It led me here," I parroted in the same robotic voice. "What are you being so serious for?"
She hadn't sworn or insulted me yet, hadn't threatened me or whipped out a weapon.1
"You snake cocksucking bitch!" a high, raspy voice yelled, so loud it filled the whole street.
Wane darted past me, staring up the road. "I don't know who that is."
"That's not Renna!" the woman screamed, and I was so paranoid I didn't even question it. When Renna backed up a step, I lashed my hand out and snatched her wrist, yanking her back up.
"Wane, bind her," I growled, my heartbeats coming faster, rage pumping through me with each one.
"She's lying," Renna argued, looking me right in the eye. "Why are you doing this?"
"Not a single curse spat at me?" I scoffed. "As if you're Renna."
The seething, spitting-mad woman racing down the street was Asta, her grey hair unbraided and loose, a wild halo around her aged face. Rage was emblazoned on every one of her features, her sharp teeth bared, and the air crackled with danger around her—and extremely powerful magic.
My own power responded, blood magic leaping to life for the first time since I died. The rapid thumps of my family’s hearts filled my ears, Verena's a frantic thud-thud, standing out among them all. Asta's heart beat erratically, drawing my attention and making Renna's slow, even thump even more obvious.
"You’re fucking dead!" Asta screamed, reaching the house and practically vaulting the gate, her grey lips pulled back from her teeth and her nostrils flaring. "Where's my wife?"
I sucked in a sharp breath. "Wait. She took Renna?"
"He took Renna," Asta growled, her voice deeper, richer. "Cronus." She spat on the path.2
"Shit," I breathed, my stomach twisting up tight. Cronus had Renna.
"And he replaced her with this fake fucking clone, like I wouldn't recognise my own wife was missing," Asta went on, her face a grotesque mask of fury.
"She's a made thing, like me," Wynvail said, his irritation about the path vanishing. I reached behind myself and grabbed his hand, squeezing tight.
"You're not a thing," Harvey argued before I could, and I fell even deeper in love with him for his protectiveness.
"Tell me where she is," Asta growled, spinning the fake Renna around and ripping her hood off her face. She was still bound in Wane's shadows; she couldn't go anywhere to escape Asta's wrath. "Where is my wife?"
Sympathy bled through my soul, my mates recognising her panic, knowing it intimately. I knew it, too, and wished I didn't.
We were supposed to be staying safe, staying out of trouble. But fuck, when it turned up on the doorstep what were we supposed to do?
