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When it was done, Soraya dropped like a broken doll to the cold stone floor. She wrapped her arms around herself, heart completely shattered. She started to shake, sobbing as a tidal wave of grief crashed over her.

Ikarus was right. She could hide behind the distorted illusions of morality and “well, they attacked us first,” but how could she deny what he’d just shown her? Ikarus might’ve been a monster, but so was she.

This was it. The end of the war was finally here—and she was going to be the cause of it.

Ikarus knelt in front of her, and though she could barely breathe through this hole in her chest, a hole she’d dug herself through every act of brutality since the start of this war, she found the strength to glare up at him, and hissed in a voice so broken and full of rage she barely recognized it as her own, “I should have killed you on Invasion Day.”

“Yes,” Ikarus whispered back, his face a cold, unfeeling mask. “You should have.”

46

Malakai slowed his skipping to fall into step beside Ikarus, ducking his head to see the human’s face more clearly. “Is she all right? She doesn’t look so good.”

Rather than answer, Ikarus tightened his grip on the back of the human’s neck, dragging her a little closer to him and away from the pyromancer’s prying gaze.

He could feel Malakai frowning at him from beneath his helmet. He hardly cared.

The Demon Hex truly had lived up to its name. It was a parasite draining the life out of her right in front of his eyes. It’d taken the rosy tint to her cheeks first, then smoothed that scowl and pinch between her brows that always seemed to be plastered to her face whenever she was looking at him.

It’d taken her eyes too. There was no green as he looked down at her now, no fire or burning need to end him or any of the Crimsons accompanying them on this test mission through the destroyed streets of Lumirel, just depthless pits—black as his own heart. He hadn’t expected that, or the tightening in his stomach he felt each time he looked at her, like being punched.

She’d put up a good fight when he’d dropped her off in her cell last night, then again when he’d returned this morning to pick her up for this assignment. All that had vanished though, the moment he put her under the Hex.

Take us to where the palace used to stand. Those were the only words he’d said to her since he’d put her under, and they were all she needed, given that she’d started walking away the moment he’d phased them up here to meet the team already in place on the other side of Ensura.

The ruins of her old life were all around like scattered parts of a dead animal. He’d never thought of it like that before, but after seeing it so many times in her memories, it was impossible not to.

Not to look at the monorail track above their heads, split and collapsed, and see a broken spine. To step over the shards of broken glass on the floor, littered among the weeds and overgrowth, and not hear bones cracking.

Everywhere now, rust and rot and death.

She should care. She was leading them through a corpse. She should be screaming at him. Should be rubbing his face in all of this.

Not right.

Not fucking right.

He wished she’d do something. Slap him. Punch him. Kick him in the balls. Anything. It was stifling to see her this docile.

It’s just another mission. He’d repeated those words so many times since he’d put her under. Chanted them like a prayer over and over as though he might will it into existence if he just said it enough times.

She meant nothing.

She was a means to an end. A tool for the Ancient One to use.

Ikarus had done what he had to do. Emelda was dying. Who knew how long it would be before the Bane sunk its claws into Malakai or Aeris too. They desperately needed to be free of Belvador and the human was the key to that.

She. Meant. Nothing.

“Soooooo, what’s the point of this Hex thing again?” Malakai mused from his other side. He was supposed to be in line with the rest of the team, but Ikarus didn’t have the will to scold right now. “We know where the palace used to stand—we’re the ones who sunk it.” He paused. “Sank it? No—sunk? You know what I mean. Why do we need her to take us to it?”

Ikarus’s eyes swept to the broken shop windows all around, scanning for any sign of movement. “It’s not the location the Ancient One is interested in. He wants to be sure that the Hex works. That she’ll take us to whatever I instruct her to.”

At these words, the human twitched beneath his hand. A small movement he might have missed if he wasn’t holding on to her so tightly.

“Providing she knows where it is?” Malakai guessed.

“Yes.”