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“You’re done,” Darwin growls at her. “Father will never forgive this betrayal.”
She shakes her head, silvery hair swishing around and through her extended tentacles. “He’ll see this was the only way. You’ve both fallen under her spell. He’ll thank me for freeing him. You will too, someday.”
“Way to pick the wrong side,” I sneer at her. “Did Callan ever tell you that I’m a Time-Walker? I’ve been to the future, Tyr. And funny thing? You’re not in it.”
I didn’t realize it until I saw Callan ensnared, but I’ve never met Tyr. Now I know why.
“Liar,” she screams at me. “Uncle!”
Her scream’s echoed to my right as Charlie breaks through Da’s flame shield.
Charlie’s mid-leap when the shield falls. He comes down with a flying knee into Da’s thigh. There’s a snapping crunch like a tree-branch breaking. Da collapses to the cobbles, clutching his leg.
“Falconer, summon her!” Da roars.
I don’t have to ask whoheris. As soon as DeWinter named Dean Gravka, I should have made the connection. Even before mum left, my father and his brothers never had a good thing to say about the fae. Da may have seen short-term political currency in an alliance with Thistlemist—and offering up his worthless daughter cost him nothing—but that wasn’t his long game. The fae always were the competition.
And Da has never abided competition.
Falconer steps back in a shower of sparks and begins to chant.
I grab Gabe’s and Darwin’s hands, pulling in the power of our quaternion, and pour it into my own counter-chant. I don’t know what Falconer’s spell is going to do, but if we have to face Klotho now, I’m doing it on my terms.
With my allies.
The ring on my finger melts with enough of a burn to make me wince. My chant doesn’t falter, though. I claw away the Veil and hear the slither of scales over cobbles behind me. Hissing, the two cloud-serpents fill the dome with mist.
I don’t need their mist to see the huge, hairy leg that spears Falconer through the chest.
“You dare summon me without a proper sacrifice, mortal?” Klotho snarls.
Fuck, that’s why you don’t hang with monsters.
Whatever protest Falconer opens his mouth to make drowns in a gout of blood that pours out of his mouth and down his chest.
The spider-woman shakes off the dying fae and stalks forward, her eight legs clacking across the cobblestones. Tyr screams as Klotho moves toward her.
Klotho’s flat face splits into a hideous parody of a grin. “Yes, you’re with child. A fitting sacrifice.”
Klotho slashes two legs across Tyr’s belly.
Before I can see what spills out of Tyr in a red gush, warm hands clap over my eyes.
“Enough,” Charlie growls, dragging me backwards against his body. I pull Gabe and Darwin with me. “There’re things none of us need to see.”
“Charlie, my father,” Darwin pleads.
“Get down,” Lords bellows.
Even without hisThe Mr. Blackcompulsion, we all drop to our knees. Charlie’s hands slide away from my eyes and through the mist and smoke, I see Lords and the two snakes charge Klotho, where she’s crouched over Tyr, doing something out of my worst nightmares, her mouth and human-torso spattered with blood.
Klotho lifts her head, gathers all eight feet under her, and leaps lightly into the air, like she weighs nothing more than a house spider.
The two Naga and Lords disappear in a swirl of mist.
Klotho settles back over Tyr’s corpse with a bloody grin. “Pesky Naga. She may walk Time confidently but it will take her longer to walk the Planes. Much longer than you have, flea.”
I’ve been called worse, by my own father. Ex-father.
