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Omari ducked left, and before he could shift back, my right hand flew out, my fist connecting with his ribs as the magical blade protruding from between my knuckles sank into his flesh.
The god jerked, his entire body going rigid. His eyes, the most inhuman thing about him, opened wide as he sucked in a gasping breath.
“Your reign as leader of gods is done,” I whispered, my voice shaking. Our bodies were so close that I could feel the tremor that wracked him. “It’s time for a new generation.”
Then I kneed him hard in the stomach, pushing him off my blade. Before he even hit the rooftop, I was following him down, and as we landed, my second blade pierced his chest.
This time, the sound he made wasn’t a gasp at all.
It was barely more than a sigh.
Then nothing.
The glow around his body faded, and it was almost like his form shrank in on itself, seeming to grow smaller as the power that had raised him to the level of a god slipped away.
I crouched over his body, breathing heavily as I stared at him in shock for a few heartbeats.
Maybe the legends were right. Maybe the gods really were nothing but ancient magic users who had spontaneously developed powers just like all the students at Magic Blessed Academy had.
His face looked waxen and slack in death, and I stood up quickly, stepping away from the body. Then I turned, my hands curling into fists again as I searched for the other two gods who had been fighting Trace and Lachlan. But the redheaded woman and the tall, lanky man were nowhere to be found.
What the hell?
“Aria!” Trace called, drawing my attention. He and Lach were still standing near Merrick’s body, and before I knew what I was doing, my feet were moving, racing across the slick tiles until I reached their side.
I threw myself down next to Merrick’s still form, panic reigniting in my chest. “Where did the other gods go?”
“They fuckin’ bailed,” Trace bit out. He looked bruised and battered, but at least he and Lachlan were still on their feet. “As soon as they saw you kill their leader. Cowards.”
Anger flared inside me. They were cowards. I wasn’t sorry the fight had ended, but I hated that those fuckers had only been following a leader—they hadn’t even believed in Omari’s mad vision enough to keep fighting for it after he’d been killed. Instead, they had fled.
Even as that thought ran through my mind, I realized that the sound of fighting below had died away too. Either those gods had left with their brethren, or they’d been defeated by the students who’d been fighting them.
I didn’t know which it was. And at the moment, I didn’t care.
All I cared about was the man lying motionless on the roof beside me, his eyes closed and his face pale. The ugly burns still glowed on his ravaged skin, red and orange and black. He was breathing shallowly, and the small movements of his chest were the only thing that kept my heart beating.
“I don’t have a healing potion,” Trace said. He crouched next to me as Lachlan kneeled by Merrick’s other side. “Fuck. Let me go try to get one. I’ll hurry. In the med ward, there’s gotta be—”
“Wait.”
My voice was soft, choked with fear. But when I hovered my hand above Merrick’s chest, my fingers didn’t shake.
If there was ever a time that I needed the magic inside me, it was now. I needed it more in this moment than I’d needed it during my fight with Omari. I needed it to bring the man I loved back from the brink of death.
Fear tried to invade my mind as I narrowed my focus. It tried to set up camp in my heart, promising me that I was too late, that I could never do this. But I shoved it aside and focused instead on hope.
On love.
On the certainty that even if he wasn’t conscious, even if he was slipping away from me, Merrick was doing everything he could to fight his way back.
And he needed help.
Warm golden light began to gather around my hand, pouring into Merrick’s body like rays of sunshine. It was blinding to look at, but I forced myself to keep staring at the place where his skin had been burned away almost to the bone.
Come back to me, Merrick. Come back to all of us.
As my muscles strained and my breathing grew ragged from the effort, I felt Trace’s arm move around my waist, supporting me. Comforting me. Lachlan’s big hand came to rest atop my smaller one, and the contact between us felt like a jolt of pure power.
