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Ark caught Azrail before the older man could face-plant the bloody dirt between the stones of the saints' circle, but most of his focus was on the woman a few feet away. His mate hadn't paused her destructive fury, but there was no doubt she felt the violent ripple that shot through the circle, distorting the air until none of their senses couldn't be trusted.
Three figures hauled themselves out of the crack in the altar at the heart of the circle, the way Vawn had climbed into the world.
Vawn ... he and Jaromir still squared off, neither gaining, neither attacking. He wasn't the mindless beast the others had become, but he was definitelynotnormal. Ark wanted Jaro away from the man, but that would mean crossing the circle, and he wasn't prepared to walk away from Maia or leave Azrail defenceless.
"Bryon," Ark growled as the gruff soldier looked ready to engage the three new figures in battle. The threesaints—they could be nothing else, nothing less. Their appearance made Ark’s teeth rattle, his bones aching as if an unbearable weight pressed on them. Like he was trapped in a vice, the pressure wrenched tighter with every second.
He watched the final saint climb out of the cracked stone, and didn't know what to do. Ark had only felt this helpless once before; with Maia crucified and in agony, his desire to help her clipped by orders from high above him.
"Don't even think about it," he hissed at Bryon, laying Azrail in the muck as he got slowly, carefully to his feet. He made a quick mental inventory of his weapons, but could he act faster than a saint? Unlikely.
All his wisdom and strategy told him this was a doomed battle. But it was too late to run; they were enclosed in the stone circle, only a few metres between them and the saints.
Two were men, one tall and wraith-looking with grey hair, and the other stout and hunched over, muddy brown hair falling into his eyes. The Hunchback Saint. The saint of knowledge. But who was the first man, the smoke-haired one? The physical descriptions in saints tales had been far too vague.
The third figure, the last to haul themself out of the stone, was a woman almost too beautiful to look at. Her deep copper skin was free of any mark of blemish, most of it bared by a deep blue dress slitted up to her waist on either side of the skirt. Long black hair rippled down her back as she assessed her surroundings, noting every person within the circle, seeing the way they froze and avoided her gaze. Her eyes were darkest black, flickering with a power Ark had never once seen.
If he hadn't known Maia was the Iron Dove, he'd have assumed this terrifying saint was her. Would have known death had come to claim his soul. He couldn't move a muscle, not even as Jaro crept towards Maia, as lithe as a jaguar.
Maia had stopped her rampage, sensing the bigger predator, but Ark couldn't even feel relief at her self-preservation instincts. They were saints reborn in new bodies, all of them, but these weretruesaints—unburdened by mortal bodies, unrestrained by trivial things like morals and conscience. These were the beings that had shattered the world before and built the Saintlands from its carcass.
"Hello again," the woman said, pushing the grey-haired saint out of the way to smile at Maia. It wasn't a natural smile, didn't have even a shred of humanity. Ark's blood ran cold.
Fuck staying still. He strode across the space between him and Maia, keeping his hands within easy reach of his weapons, surprised to find that Bryon had mirrored his movements and now stood on Maia's other side. Ark was glad they were on the same side even if just for the moment, even if they wouldn't survive the night.
"You," Maia replied to the saint, matching the woman's coldness.
"You," the saint countered, and Ark went absolutely still as a certainty hit him like a bolt of lightning. The wasn't merely a saint, but the king of all saints—the Eversky. The saint every saint bowed to.
"Send my regards to my aunt," Maia said, a tiny smile curling the edge of her lips. She sounded nothing like herself. Darkness spilled from her voice, empty of everything except violence. "I do hope she didn't choke when I pushed her into the pool."
"Rest assured," the saint replied, looking over Ark, then Bryon, then Azrail on the ground a few feet away. Ark had never wished he had different magic as much as right now. His power was healing and wisdom, useless in an offensive battle. "She's sunning herself with half a dozen shirtless dancers right now."
"I'm delighted," Maia said flatly. "What have you done?"
"Maia," Ark breathed, his heart beating triple time. She was making demands of the king of saints—the saint who'd refused to take a mortal body, who'd shaped their existing power and immortality into a new form.
Not sacrificing even a drip of magic in the process. Kam might have been female now, but she was no less dangerous.
The Eversky took a teasing step forward, and Maia's wings snapped, betraying how threatened she felt even if her face was impassive stone. Ark let out a slow breath when the saint didn't go for the obvious weakness; Azrail unconscious in the dirt. He realised why a moment later; Kheir stood in front of him, his expression as unfriendly as he'd ever seen the man. Karmen gave him an uneasy look, as if she was wary of him. Or the saint who'd been reborn in him.
But why would the king of saints be afraid of the saint of love?
"Oh, that's unfortunate," the dark-haired man sighed, speaking for the first time as he walked confidently around the bloodied slab. He leant forward at an angle, but there was no concealing the canny, ruthless look in his brown eyes when they landed on Ark of all people. "Hello, sister."
Ark didn't move, but didn't dare look away.
"So this is your new body," the Hunchback Saint went on, his lip curled. "Pathetically weak. Breaking you will be my pleasure, and I knowjusthow to do it."
Ark swallowed, frozen. But Maia erupted like a supernova. Every inch of her wings crawled with black poison, and her moon-silver glow … Ark's heart skipped as he saw that Maia's body was covered in a dark corona, a shadow glow. Not moon-silver at all.
It made his head hurt to think about it, how it could even be possible, but there was no hiding that his mate glowed with pureblacklight.
"You touch him," she said, taking a threatening step in the mud and ignoring Bryon and Ark as they reached to pull her back, "and I will carve every bit of knowledge from your mind until you can't remember even your own name."
The Eversky snorted, but something rotten gleamed in the Hunchback Saint's gaze. Like he was picturing doing endless, agonising things to Ark's mate.
