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Elyon threw her off him and got to his feet. He glared at her as she tried to shake off her pained daze, his wounds already starting to heal.
“You stupid Breed bitch,” he seethed at her. “Now, you die too.”
He raised his hand, a fireball of energy swirling in its center. Just when he would have unleashed it, Zael came up on one knee on the other side of the room. He had something grasped in his closed fist. His other hand was engulfed in light—light he now blasted on Elyon.
Instead of going after Brynne, the sentry swung the full breadth of his power on Zael in defense. Their light clashed and held, its colliding force illuminating the chamber with the heat and brightness of ten suns.
Brynne saw her chance to act. A long blade of blood-stained steel lay just out of her grasp. She lunged for it, then came up swinging.
The sword connected at the base of Elyon’s skull. The Atlantean’s head went flying.
More energy poured out of him now, bursting from his flailing hands and his severed neck. The body crumpled to the floor, Elyon’s immortal life—and his destructive light—extinguished forever.
“Brynne.” Zael was at her side in that next instant.
She could still feel his physical pain—broken bones and light-seared organs that were slowly healing, thanks to his Atlantean genetics. She could also feel his relief as he wrapped one hand around her nape and pulling her against him as he brushed his mouth over hers in a fierce kiss.
Part of her wanted to resist his nearness—if only because she wasn’t sure she could trust herself under the yoke of her transformation. Although she didn’t feel her sanity slip as it did all the other times she succumbed to blood thirst or fury, she recognized the beast within her.
Her blood pounded ferociously in her temples, her vision swamped with amber and still thrumming with the power of her rage. She was Ancient now. Still seething and unearthly.
Hideous.
Yet Zael had looked at her with pure affection. With love.
She tasted no fear in his kiss—not for what she was, anyway. Only the fear that they might have lost each other today.
And the soul-deep relief that they had both come through the fight intact.
Together.
“Oh, Zael,” she gasped against his parted lips. “I was so scared.”
“I know, love.” He kissed her again and again, as if he couldn’t bear to stop. “It’s okay now. It’s all over.”
Brynne’s relief was so overwhelming, she didn’t realize they were no longer alone in the chamber.
Not until she felt Zael’s pulse spike with renewed alarm.
They broke their kiss, both of them glancing toward the smashed, open door of the room where several Atlantean elders and a dozen or more colony inhabitants now stood.
At the front of the group were Elyon’s sentry comrades. No longer unarmed as they had been when Brynne and Zael first arrived at the island, but each holding a long blade like the gore-streaked one that Brynne still grasped absently at her side.
Every person standing there looked at Brynne and Zael in accusation.
In silent, horrified condemnation.
~ ~ ~
“Put the crystal down, Zael.” Baramael’s dual-colored eyes were narrowed on him in a lethal glower as he ground out the command. “Tell your woman to drop the blade.”
“It’s not what you think.”
He knew what it looked like—the most respected of the elders and one of the colony’s trusted sentries, both beheaded and lying in growing pools of blood. Him standing there, holding the crystal in one hand while his other hand held tenderly onto Brynne, whose own fingers were wrapped around the grip of a gore-streaked Atlantean sword.
