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Blood trickled down my arm to my hand. The adrenaline had numbed the sting from my wound, but the pain seared when it returned, confusing my body onto the ground. I could hardly breathe. “Get her out of here!” Raiden shouted, and someone dragged me to the tree. “Heal her,” he said, but Thalia’s voice broke.
“Lucius is here.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
Lucius was everything I had expected the father of the gods to be: unyielding and deadly fast, with deep intelligence behind his dark eyes. I fell between consciousness and fading blackness, peeling my eyes back to see glimpses of a worried Naomi and flashes of the full blue moon.
“Children,” he boomed with contempt stinging his tone. “I am so lucky to have found you all in one place, ready for death.”
I forced myself to sit up, pressing my back against the tree trunk.
“Careful,” Naomi whispered. She pressed her fingers against the fang marks in my skin. I blew out a long shaky exhale and tried to focus on the man who’d stopped three gods in their tracks.
Wielding a sword in skilled hands, he struck it through the air, slicing far too close to where Raiden stood. I yelped and covered my mouth. Lucius looked at us as if he could make us out perfectly despite the thick cover of night.
“You brought mortals to a fight between gods.” He spat in front of his feet. “Weak.”
Naomi’s eyes glossed with tears. “What an asshole,” she whispered, although I was sure he could hear us. Fortunately, we weren’t important enough for him to do anything about it.
Aziel’s deep voice was the first to shout a fuck you, right as a storm swirled out of nowhere. Inkblots of black covered the moon. Thunder shook the ground, and Aziel’s lightning gaze matched the green flash in the sky.
Snakes, spiders, and every other nightmarish bug crawled from the underbrush and toward Raiden, where he welcomed them with outstretched arms. He was communicating with them. It was incredible to watch. They rattled the trees and ground with a chorus of clacking, buzzing, and trilling.
Thalia disappeared into thin air, then emerged close to Lucius, sliding between shadows. Her eyes widened, and the same dream-like expression fell over her features as when she’d attempted to compel Aziel earlier, but it didn’t work on Lucius. He snapped his gaze away from Thalia, then pushed her back into a tree.
Blackness stole the next minutes of the fight, although I could hear the battle cries and screaming over the storm. Rain landed thick, heavy drops onto the mud, splashing brown onto our shoes and pants.
The hound’s venom coursed through my veins like lava. I screamed a breath through clenched teeth as the venom reached my heart.
I opened my eyes and watched the scene unfold. Lucius had his demons, shadow creatures that curled with hollow eyes, surround the gods.
Every move they threw his way, even with Thalia sliding between shadows, he blocked with unnerving ease. Aziel and Raiden ran at him, and I gasped when they shook the ground on impact. Demons rushed toward Aziel, tying him into the mossy mattress while Raiden fought against his father.
Thalia stepped out from behind the tree I was leaning against. She placed her finger against her lips to shush us, then placed her hands onto my arm. I felt the venom dissipate and wondered why she couldn’t do it to herself. The bite didn’t seem to be bothering her too much, but every so often, when she contorted to a certain position, I could see a pinch of pain flicker through her expression. The marks on my arm healed over, my sticky blood the only reminder of what had happened.
“Now you can run,” she said, as if the bite was the only thing holding me back.
Thalia ran back to the fight with her brothers, throwing the glowing dagger at one, which exploded on impact.
I looked at Naomi, who attempted to tuck her tight black curls behind her ears. She looked at me. “I can help.”
She twisted her fingers as if she were painting in thin air. My eyes widened as the forest morphed into an island of ice, where shards of blue icebergs broke off, threatening to pull Lucius into a freezing ocean that didn’t exist here. He stumbled back as he tried to steady himself.
I stood, using a stump of a tree trunk to pull myself to my feet. “You’re amazing.” I gasped as I watched Naomi contort reality with her magic. The scene dissolved, but Lucius continued to dodge invisible obstacles.
“Only he can see it,” she explained, her eyes concentrated into slits. Gold lit up her irises as the magic in her blood took over.
The gods took advantage, landing several blows to him while he was distracted by Naomi’s illusion.
My heart skipped a beat as Lucius turned toward us and charged in our direction, rage spilling into his frighteningly sharp features and bottomless black eyes.
Raiden grabbed me and pushed me to safety, before turning and meeting his father’s fist. Raiden slammed into the ground as Lucius gripped his neck, sending a thunderous roar through the mud and roots, cracking the ground. Lucius turned back to us. Raiden’s piercing blue eyes found mine in the blackness. “Get out of here. Now!”
Aziel pushed Naomi from Lucius’s grasp, flinging her into a tree. “Nai.” I screamed as Lucius flung Aziel into the darkness of the forest and ran at Raiden from behind.
He moved from where I lay in time, but he took a hit in moving the attack away from me. Lucius’s fist impacted Raiden’s chest, knocking him to the ground and burying him several feet deep. Raiden’s bones cracked under the pressure, sending crackling through the easing thunder.
I ran toward Naomi. Her chest heaved up and down, each breath a mercy to what could have been. I ran my hand along the poppy bruise on her forehead, brushing off the speckles of bark.
