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Not for the suit, whose blasts of power sent Hunt careening toward Bryce and Rigelus, but for the oxygen systems. They screamed at him on the screens, flashing red. Air became thin; his lungs ached—
Hunt did the only thing he could think to do. He slid the Mask onto his face.
To escape death, he’d don its trappings. The Umbra Mortis in truth.
The Mask ripped apart his soul.
Life and death—that was all that space, the universe, really was. But that chasm yawning wide, so close to Bryce and Rigelus … that was death incarnate.
They were struggling. He could see that now. Light flaring between them, rippling into nothing, both trying to get away from the other, to blast away—
There was only one brimstone missile left in the suit. Hunt took aim toward his mate and Rigelus. They were moving too swiftly, too closely. To shoot one would be to shoot the other.
He could have sworn a light, ghostly hand guided his to the release button.
“She’ll get thrown in, too,” Hunt whispered to Shahar.
That ghostly hand pressed—lightly, as if it was all she could manage—on his hand. On the button.
As if to say, Fire.
And the gods had never done him any favors, Urd had certainly never helped him, yet …
Maybe they had.
Maybe that day he’d first met Bryce, the gods had sent him there. Not to be some instrument of Hel, but because Urd knew that there would be a female who would be kind and selfless and brave, who would give everything for her city, for her planet. And that she would need someone to give everything back to her.
Bryce had given him a life, and a beautiful one. He didn’t need all the photo evidence that had streamed in front of his face when he’d been in the Comitium’s holding cell to realize it. She had brought joy, and laughter, and love, had pried him free of that cold, dark existence and pulled him into the light. Her light.
He wouldn’t let it be extinguished.
So Hunt pushed the missile-launch button. One push, and it blasted from the shoulder panel on the mech-suit.
And as it left the suit, spiraling through space, golden with all that angelic wrath …
He felt Shahar leave with it.
Could have sworn he saw great, shining wings wrap around that missile as it spiraled through space, straight for Bryce and Rigelus.
The Fallen’s cause, ended at last with this final blow.
Bryce and Rigelus halted their struggle at the glowing missile’s approach.
And Hunt knew it was Shahar, it was every one of the Fallen, it was all who’d stood against the Asteri, who guided that missile for a direct hit into Rigelus’s face.
It didn’t explode. It launched him away from Bryce, the Bright Hand now tumbling for the event horizon, the missile with him—
And Bryce was free. Drifting.
But still too close to the edge.
Using the suit’s precious cache of firepower for momentum, Hunt propelled himself forward, racing through space for his mate, his wife, his love—
The missile and Rigelus crossed the event horizon.
Time slowed.
It stretched and rippled as a flare of light plumed, either Rigelus or the erupting missile, Shahar and the Fallen’s cause vanishing with it into darkness.
