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“What the fuck is that?” Lana gasped beside me.
All I could do was breathe a sigh of relief. Because there was no such thing as coincidence.
“Atreus is a ferro,” I explained. Metal magic—the tremble of the chandelier in his panic, the omnipresent hum of his jewelry, the sudden immovable weight of my sword when he needed me still. Little tells, but tells nonetheless.
Had it been a gamble? Yeah. But I’d rather have a right-hand man without a hand than a world without Carr beside his cousin. Atreus was just a bonus.
“Ferrokinesis is a myth,” she spat, wiping her blade off on the hairless corpse of a blood wolf.
“Yeah, well, so was I,” I panted.
Carrson groaned in agony, Cali bearing his weight, keeping him upright on his knees as my boots scuffed over the asphalt. For a few deep breaths, I watched as all that metal warped. Atreus snarled in unseen pain, his hands twisting and melding the metal—Cyrus’ imploring gaze flicking to mine and back—as the beginnings of a hand, an arm, took shape.
“Un-fucking-real,” Lana breathed.
Carr spit the scrap of leather—a sheath with the Northern Paladin crest—and barked, “I had it.”
“Sure, you did,” Atreus gritted between his teeth, groaning with the effort he poured into the steel between them.
“Guys!” Fae screeched behind us, cutting off my relieved huff of breath. Her pale hands trembled where she held them over the scar in the city—the rapidly dissolving hole devouring the surrounding earth. Lana jumped to her side, planting her hands on the ground as Jo hesitantly left her post beside Carr.
Still, the blight spread.
Evac now, evac now! August’s order slammed down the line. I watched a curse tear from Lana as Fae cried out, and then they vanished. Whirling, I echoed the command—Cyrus’ shout of protest swallowed by the roar of an inferno.
Freya! August’s mental voice slammed down the line just in time for a wall of shadow fire to collide with my shield.
Oh, we were so fucking fucked.
I shifted into mist and shadow, sprinting through the other past demons and Renown alike, skirting the edge of Marlana’s blight and cursing its sentience even here. Whipping through the double doors, I found Adrastos and August locked in a standoff—flame against flame, shadow against lightning; the hallway illuminated in stark lines between bolts of light and swaths of darkness.
Both men were frozen in the other—faces mirror images of determination, but where August’s outrage emanated from every inch of him, I found a kind of… uncharacteristic resignation in our enemy.
Sucking down a steadying breath, I braced for the wicked oil of a horseman’s power, slamming my hands into Adrastos’ back as time rushed into existence.
He roared, back arching, arms spreading wide as his head tipped up to the sky. A sacrificial lamb pleading to a god who’d abandoned him lifetimes ago.
Power flooded my senses, my veins, every cell in my body.
Seven distinct elements—water, earth, fire, air, shadow, mind, and… time?
Three startling sensations—like a sentient snake climbing up my arm, a rush of relief colliding with… terror.
One horrifying realization—too much. This motherfucker contained far too much power for one being. This was a god. A god trapped in human form. A god… tethered to a demon. And their power was agony.
Not in the oily bitterness Marlana had assaulted me with.
In the overwhelming pressure of a box containing a sun.
Too much.
Too much.
I couldn’t—
Couldn’t…
How was he…
