Page 48

Without hesitation, she spoke the line. The pain that followed doubled her over. It was a hot wire dragged through the center of her chest. She heard the fighting around her as the potion and the binding fought for the same real estate inside her. Blood spilled from her nose onto the cobblestones between her hands. Regardless, the fourth arc of the circle blazed to life around Abraxos's boots.

The Titan surged forward, and three sets of jaws snapped at them. Sarah’s hands flew into the air at the same time Camael dropped from the rooftop. His blade began carving a line across the nearest head before he'd fully landed. He fought the way Sarah imagined a general fought. Every strike was placed to open the widest wound with the least wasted motion. When the second head snapped toward him, he was already airborne again, circling for another pass instead of standing his ground and trading blows.

"Do the fifth line!" Amelia's shout carried over the chaos. "Sarah, you're losing the thread, I can feel it slipping!"

Sarah's hands shook as she continued to draw. The fifth line wasn’t the best, but the syllables flowed from her lips smoothly. Pain seared her side where the Tellstone was hidden in her pocket. It hurt so badly she thought it had burned its way to her bones.

The light along the circle's edge began to gutter instead of grow. Panic closed around her throat tighter than the potion had. If she failed, the whole seal would collapse. And everything would come apart.

Heat flooded through the bond. It was sudden and vast, and it poured from Abraxos’s side of their connection into her as if a dam had opened somewhere behind her ribs. His grace met her stumbling magic and steadied it. The two currents braided together into something neither of them could have managed alone.

"I'm with you." Abraxos's voice cut through her panic. It was rough with the effort of standing there while three sets of jaws and a courtyard full of demons tried to close in around them. "Finish it, Sarah. I'm not going anywhere."

She drew the line again and continued drawing the circle. The arc around Abraxos's boots brightened. One of the Titan's three heads locked mid-lunge, and stone crawled up its throat in a lattice of light that spread faster than the creature could scream.

"That's the bond," Amelia blurted, awe evident in her voice.

A charge in the air startled Sarah before she could continue. Something powerful was coming. Her heart began pounding in her chest. At the same time, the fighting around her stuttered. Every warrior in the alley turned toward the same patch of darkness at the courtyard's edge. Something unfolded out of it, wings first. They were vast, black, and ragged at the edges like they'd been burned and never fully healed.

"Well." The voice that came out of the dark was low and rich, amused in a way that made Sarah's skin crawl. "Isn't this a perfect little party?"

Lucifer stepped into the moonlight as if he owned it. In a way, Sarah supposed he did. He was beautiful in the way a blade was. His smile showed teeth, but never touched the ice in his eyes. His wings dragged furrows in the dust with every step. The demons still fighting in the alley went utterly silent. They reminded her of dogs recognizing the hand that fed them.

"Little Scribe," Lucifer cooed as his cruel gaze found Sarah's. The black mark on her palm answered with a fresh wave of pain lancing up her arm. "You've made me wait for an answer. I thought I'd come and collect it myself."

"Continue the chant, Sarah!" Amelia's voice cracked through the cold like a whip. "Don't stop no matter what he says."

Sarah's hand shook so hard the stylus nearly slipped from her fingers. She nearly surged to her feet when Lucifer moved on to Abraxos. Something ancient and furious moved behind his eyes.

"Your angel's clever, hiding himself in a cage of his own making." Lucifer rolled one shoulder, and his wings snapped wide enough to throw wind through the whole courtyard. "Let's see how well he fights from inside it."

He covered the distance in a single stride that Sarah had difficulty keeping up with. Abraxos met him without so much as a step out of line. He conjured his flaming sword, and their weapons crashed together hard enough to sound like boulders crashing together. Sarah wanted to help her mate. She could throw spells at Lucifer and distract him. But the binding would fail, and the Titans would continue to feed Lucifer.

She opened her mouth to say the sixth line and closed it when Lucifer drove a strike toward Abraxos's ribs. Sarah thought she was going to throw up, but Abraxos twisted to take the blow across his forearm instead. The impact spun him half a step before he caught his balance and answered with a cut that opened a shallow line across Lucifer's cheek. Blood welled there, dark and slow. Lucifer touched two fingers to it as if he were more insulted than hurt.

"You bleed." Abraxos's voice was laced with satisfaction. "I'd started to wonder."

"Careful, warrior." Lucifer's cold smile didn't waver. "You're standing in a box you can't leave, fighting a war you can't win, and your mate is bleeding from the nose two feet behind you. You’ve already lost." No, they hadn’t.

Sarah did the one thing she could to help tip the scales in their favor. She began the sixth line at the same time Lucifer came in low this time, sweeping Abraxos's legs. His wing strike caught her mate across the knee, and Abraxos went down hard enough that Sarah's chant faltered. Her whole body flinched. She lurched toward him before she forced her eyes back to the circle.

"You can help him by finishing the chant." Amelia's hand closed around Sarah's wrist, grounding her before the panic could pull her fully off the line. "He needs you finishing this more than he needs you to fight Lucifer. Trust the bond to hold him. Continue."

Sarah said the sixth line through a throat that had gone tight with fear. The light surged higher, climbing past Abraxos's knees even as he hauled himself upright before Lucifer's next blow. The circle sealed him in so completely that the air around him shimmered. Lucifer's expression flickered. It was just for a heartbeat, but she’d seen the fear.

"Say the final line, Sarah!" Amelia's scream cut through the ringing in Sarah's ears. "It's now or never!"

Sarah forced the last words out through blood, tears, and a pain that felt like her whole skeleton had caught fire. There was a column of violet-green-gold light so bright it turned the alley white, surrounding Abraxos now. The last of the Titan's three heads turned to stone. Its glowing seams cooled to black under a lattice of light that spread faster than the creature could scream. Before Sarah could stand, the earth swallowed the creature whole.

Lucifer staggered back from the light as if something had physically struck him. Sarah felt it distantly, through whatever thread was connected through her mark. The tether that had been feeding him through the tear went taut and then snapped shut. His roar of fury rattled the windows in the buildings surrounding them.

"You'll regret this, little Scribe." His voice had lost its rich amusement. He was furious, but didn’t stick around to make her pay. "This isn't finished. Not by a long shot."

He was gone before Camael could reach him. He'd folded back into the shadow he'd come from as if he'd never been there at all. He left nothing behind but the smell of scorched feathers.

The light of the circle collapsed inward a heartbeat later, and Sarah's whole body went with it. She hit the cobblestones hard. Her vision narrowed to a pinprick. The last thing she registered before the dark took her was Abraxos's arms closing around her back. His voice was wrecked and desperate, but they were alive. The last thing she heard was him telling her to stay with him.

CHAPTER 20