Page 121 of Vengeance of the Gods

“Where would you go anyway?” Marlena asked, appearing out of thin air. It was likely she’d been standing there the whole time. Blood ran down her face, smearing from the rain.

She looked every bit of the villain she’d made herself.

“The caves?” Marlena asked, eyes sharp as glass. “What makes you think they’ll be safe for much longer?”

No, no, no.

“Halo took Octavia’s sister back to the caves,” Bridger said with worry evident in his tone.

Vega was so sick of being easy fucking pickings, feeling like she was always one step behind whatever Marlena was doing no matter how far ahead she might actually be. “What more do you want, Marlena?” she asked, hoping to get a real answer out of her for once. “What more could you possibly want?”

Marlena pulled a couple daggers out of their sheaths across her chest, twirling them through her fingers. “I want what I have since the very beginning. To be the only god our world has to worship. I want the bonded”—she sneered at their donned title—“dead.”

How ironic they wanted the same thing.

Vega let Death creep up her arms, leaving the cavern of her mind and releasing itself into her bloodstream. It pumped through her heart with an out of time beat, catching Vega off guard when it stopped beating altogether.

An explosion of undiluted death ruptured in her chest, resetting her heart and putting what felt like blinders on Vega’s focus.

One goal. She had one goal.

“Then kill me,” Vega challenged, letting her wind reach out like an extension of her hand, snatching one of Marlena’s daggers from her. It snapped back to Vega’s open palm.

She could feel Bridger’s slow inhales, could sense his eyes on her arms littered with what looked like black lightning tattooed on her skin. He took a shaky breath when Vega took a step closer to Marlena.

Her sister didn’t budge as Vega reached out with the tip of the dagger, but the snarl on her lips grew when she trailed the knife featherlightly down Marlena’s face where Vega’s scar was.

She didn’t press hard enough to break skin, only traced the exact lines Marlena had marked across her own eye and upper cheek. “Want to know a little secret, sister?” Vega palmed the dagger, quickly striking Marlena in the side. Taking her by surprise, she leaned in to where only Marlena would hear her over the roaring storm Vega kept alive above.

Marlena’s face distorted in pain, but she didn’t scream.

“You can’t kill what’s already dead.” Vega pulled the dagger from Marlena’s side, blood dripping out slowly as the wound already began to heal itself.

It wasn’t the knife wound that made Marlena lose a breath.

Without any more of a warning than her words, Vega dropped a cyclone from the sky.

It tore through the clearing, staying within the marked ground Vega had planned out before she’d realized why. It sucked up the wolves threatening to tear into Leo’s throat, freeing him up for the next beast on his heels.

Khort and Delori flew overhead. Delori’s jaws snapped around Khort’s tail, spraying the field with fresh blood and a chest-rattling bellow of pain.

Green flames erupted from Marlena’s palms. “What did you do?” Vega had expected Marlena to call her a liar, not question the reason behind her admission.

“Go. Get everyone out of here,” Vega told Bridger, never taking her eyes off Marlena.

“I’m not leaving you.” The strike of his sword through another shifter’s chest was the period to his sentence.

“Bridger, I can handle this! I can’t handle losing another person I care about. Get Leo, get your guards, and get back to the caves.” Vega left no room for arguing, shutting their door to get her point across.

Vega snatched her tornado back inside the swirling clouds above to give Bridger a clear shot to Leo and his soldiers.

He hesitated, visibly fighting against what he wanted and what he knew he needed to do. Vega knew where Bridger needed to be right now. He seemed to understand she was exactly where she needed to be too. “Be careful,” he begged before sprinting across the wet battlefield, leaving the Caelum sisters by themselves.

Vega continued their conversation smoothly, never missing a beat between the one happening inside her head with Bridger.

“I made a deal, and all it cost me was your soul and the gods inside you.” Vega wasn’t going to give Marlena any details worth knowing. What she planned to do with her wasn’t one of the details she planned to keep secret. Vega wanted Marlena to know exactly what was in store for her. “I wasn’t going to let the curse take one more fucking thing from me. No matter the cost.” Lightning struck behind Vega, the electrical buzz fizzling out along the wet grass. “I wanted what I bartered for the night of my own summoning.” Vega’s smile was saccharine. “To avenge our people. To kill my sister.”

“You don’t have what it takes.” Marlena laughed.