Page 148

He just needed to get Soraya away from that Demon when they arrived here—then they could take her home and reverse whatever had been done to her and everything would be fine.

Soraya would be whole again. He’d make sure of it.

Bringing his attention back to the present, Theron emptied all other thoughts from his head and waited.

All was silent for a long while.

Until his bracer buzzed with an incoming call.

He ignored it.

But then it rang again. Again.

Irritation prickling his every cell, Theron answered the latest call, ready to snarl at whoever was on the other end that now was absolutely not the time to test his patience, only to freeze at the sound that poured out of it.

He hadn’t heard screams like that in a long time, so agonized that even the metal hackles on Jinx’s back shot up.

“Theron, they’re here!” That was Raina screaming those words. “They know we moved the Arch here! They’re—”

The groan of crushed metal, a final scream, and the line went dead.

Theron was already running. Already roaring commands to every soldier and machine hiding in this base to take as many weapons as they could carry and get to the nearest jet now.

Because down to her core, Soraya was one of them. She knew their battle plans and strategies just as well as Noreen or any of the other commanders.

And she must’ve known the heads of the planet had skipped this secondary base as an extra precaution to throw the Dar’rak off just in case, and sent it to the third reserve base in the Fresurn Mountains instead. And she’d taken the Dar’rak right to it.

51

This was so wrong—what she was doing, the magic crackling through her veins, the crown atop her head. All of it. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.

She’d prayed there wouldn’t be so many people here, that she’d been wrong and Noreen had moved the piece of the Arch to any of the other reserve locations. Somewhere on the Anabarian coast. Hidden among the rotting remains of the Garden. Letting the bloody thing be swallowed by the Emerald Sea would’ve been better than this. Anywhere would’ve been better than here, in the remains of the Fresurn Mountains, where no one would think to hide it. Where no one would think to go.

Except Noreen.

Except her only daughter.

Soraya sprinted down the stretch of rusting hallway, stepping over and around all the abandoned mining equipment and both fleeing and advancing Vordellians and familiars. That was the one benefit of the Hex, the one silver lining in this monstrous nightmare that had become her life. Just as Ikarus said, the Hex did indeed make her a lethal bloodhound—but only to things that got in her way.

It was like wearing a mask that covered her face except for a narrow strip in front of her eyes, tunneling her field of vision toward the task she’d been assigned, securing the piece of the Arch.

Interfere with that task and she’d tear them to bloody ribbons.

She charged forward, the gears in her mind turning with every hurried step as she rushed over bodies and screaming civilians.

Out of each peak that made up the mountain range, the base in the middle summit, the largest of them all, was the most secure, which was why the Hex had pointed to it specifically on the map. The piece of the Arch would’ve been stored on one of the deeper levels here, but the second she and Ikarus had appeared, command would’ve ordered its immediate evacuation.

Because of the stalkers and Dar’rak horde they’d brought with them that were now tearing through each corner of this place, it was safe to assume the Vordellians wouldn’t risk moving it on the ground, meaning they had no choice but to take to the skies. Each of these peaks was fitted with a flight hangar, and this particular one was located …

Soraya tried to hide the information. Imagined a hallway filled with rusting steel doors and tossed the map of this place behind one of them. She stood in front of that door, blood sliding between her fingers from where she was gripping the metal tight in a desperate attempt to keep the Hex out.

It didn’t make a difference. She already knew where the hangar was, and because she did, the Hex knew it too.

When she came to the end of this hallway, she took an immediate left and quickly ascended the spiral staircase. Once at the top, the Hex dragged her down another corridor. She took a left, then another, scarcely aware of Ikarus running behind her, brushing away anyone who got too close with a wave of his hand.

Malakai and Aeris had been with them too, but they’d fallen away some time ago among the sea of bodies.

There was no room for any of them in her head. Ikarus had told her to take him to the piece of the Arch, and that was all there was. All she was. Her entire existence whittled down to that one task.