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A cold chill shot down Sienna’s spine and she turned, intending to call out a warning she couldn’t fully articulate. “Fenn—” His name was barely past her lips before everything seemed to explode.
Pain.
Blood.
Searing heat.
Nothing made sense.
Whatever power Florence’s ally wielded, it enabled the man to move despite being held at blade-point by Death’s scythe. The demi-god had been stock-still, mocking Cassian, and then he’d vanished from sight. In Fenn’s mind’s eye he could sense a backward leaning motion that had to have happened in a split-second. When he’d reappeared in Fenn’s line of sight a wild grin had split his face and he plunged one hand into Sienna’s torso.
Blood spurted everywhere and her eyes went wide. There was no way she’d seen it coming. She didn’t even scream.
“Youidiot!” Florence shrieked. “I need her alive!”
Fenn barely heard the words, his gaze transfixed as the demi-god stepped back and Sienna hit her knees before toppling to the side. Fenn moved without thought, catching her in his arms. One hand landed on her abdomen, below her chest, and even through his glove he felt the heat of her blood.
A roar ripped up from somewhere deep inside him as he felt her time rapidly running to a close.
Behind him, his enemy let out a laugh.
“Hey—what—” Florence grumbled, suddenly shoved to her knees across from Fenn. Sienna’s limp body between them.
Cassian kept a firm grip on her shoulder. “It’s not too late. You can’t get what you want from her if she’s dead, and even you know you won’t survive tonight if you let her die. So this is your chance, princess. Do somethingselflessfor once.” He spoke with a sneer, but every word he spoke was true.
Florence’s eyes widened and she looked at Sienna in disgust, but then her gaze flicked up to Fenn and she dragged in a ragged breath. “Fine. Sure.” She attempted a smile, but it fell far short of sweet before she reached out and folded her palms over Sienna’s chest. Above the worst of the blood.
Fenn looked past her and met Cassian’s stare. For maybe the first time, he felt truly united with the other man.
“Revive her,” the demi-god said from somewhere behind Fenn, “and I’ll just have more opportunities to torture her. And her sisters.”
Fenn stood, knowing Florence wouldn’t be done so soon, and turned in place. He felt the anger contorting his face, but he didn’t care. He didn’t care if his emotions were plain for everyone in the room to read. Seeing him coming changed nothing.
The demi-god with Sienna’s blood on his hands smirked cruelly. “Got something you’d like to say to me,Death?”
Fenn glanced down at the blood staining his gloves and a harsh reality slammed into him.
Sienna’s vision. The one she’d had of him for so many years. The one she’d described as him with bloodstained hands and an agonized expression, surrounded by darkness. This was it.
She’d seen his reaction to what might still prove to be her own last moments.
The void churned inside him, responding to his turmoil, and Fenn clenched his fists. He met the male’s smug gaze and let the magic settle over his eyes, illuminating everything he could need to see. Every way to kill the overconfident fool. Every way to break him.
All of it was tempting. He wanted to make the man hurt. Suffer, the way Fenn knew he would if Sienna was lost.WhenSienna was lost.
Allowing this demi-god to live was unacceptable. Fenn could see now that the man had caused his fair share of death—not something Fenn was hypocrite enough to hold against a person on its own.
His voice whispered around the room like an unnatural breeze when Fenn finally spoke. “Good riddance … son of Mercury.”
The demi-god who’d never introduced himself finally realized the threat facing him and made to run again, but it was too little, too late. Six scythes swooped in on him, all from different angles, swinging in ruthless arcs. There was no direction for the divine speedster to flee in.
Fenn watched, unblinking, as each blade sliced through its target. Extinguishing the life and the magic—everything but the basest components of the target’s soul—in the space of a heartbeat. But he didn’t have it in him this time to offer personal guidance to the deceased, so instead he gave the lingering, shapeless soul a push with his own magic, making sure it passed into the beyond and re-entered the cycle.
Then he turned his back on the scene, his scythes dismissed again, and found himself staring into Florence’s horrified eyes.
She still had her hands pressed over Sienna’s chest and Sienna had stopped bleeding. But where Cassian’s expression was approving, Florence’s was the opposite. “What did you justdo?” Her question came out in a breathless screech that was almost shockingly unlike her usual saccharine voice.
Fenn scowled. “Exactly what I said I would. Focus on your job.”
