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They all looked at me. I could almost hear the sigh buried beneath all the stoic badassery.
Honestly, though, they needn’t have worried about that. Faris didn’t see me as a daughter so much as a nuisance he had to put up with so he could carry on exploiting me.
Not that I was going to tell them that. In a fight, it would really come in handy to have three gods guarding my back—rather than stabbing me in it.
And the fight did come. Solarian’s minions were waiting for us when we tried to leave town.
“I take it those are the weapons you spoke of?” I asked, nodding at the black, baton-like sticks in our attackers’ hands.
“Yes.”
The god had hardly gotten the word out before one of the minions swung her stick. Weird, sparkling energy tendrils shot out of the end, slicing through the air like black lightning, cutting toward the nearest godly soldier. I launched myself in front of him, tackling him to the ground as Nero grabbed the trigger-happy minion and tossed her at the others.
“Are you ok?” I asked the soldier.
He didn’t respond. Or even open his eyes.
“He’s been hit.” The female god pointed at the new slit in her unconscious companion’s sleeve. A spiderweb pattern of black threads was spreading through his veins. “You’re hit too.” She pointed at the cut in my shirt.
It was large—so large that the bottom of my t-shirt hung limply by a few strands of fabric.
“I’m fine.” I brushed my hand over my abdomen. The skin was smooth, untouched. No black spider veins either.
“You were hit. I saw the lightning hit you. How is this possible?” She gawked at me.
“I guess it’s one of the perks of being a mongrel,” I said tightly, lifting her fallen comrade off the ground and transferring him into her arms. “We need to get him to a healer before that black shit spreads too far. Run,” I barked at the two gods still standing. “Run straight for the magic mirror and don’t look back.”
“What about you?” she asked me.
“We can take care of ourselves.”
The gods looked from me, to Nero, to the minions and their batons. Then they bolted out of there with supernatural speed, disappearing into the forest.
I strode toward the closest minion, my eye on the prize. I was going to get that baton.
He zapped me with a dose of black lightning. Shaking off the tingling sensation in my hands, I kept moving forward. He fiddled with some dials on the baton’s handle, then shot me with a stronger dose.
“Your toy doesn’t work on me.” I cranked my neck to the side, and it cracked. “You might as well hand it over.” Just a few more steps.
Panic flashed in his eyes. He swung the baton with both hands, trying to knock me over the head with it. I caught him around the arm, then kicked my leg under his, tripping him. His body hit the ground first, then his head. I swooped down and nabbed the black baton.
“Ready to get out of here?” I asked Nero.
“Yes.” He grabbed the batons from the unconscious people at his feet.
It never ceased to amaze me how effective a fighter Nero was.
“Well, we got the god-killing weapons,” I said, looking out across the field of bodies. “Let’s hope Faris is pleased.”
7
KING OF THE GODS
“Iam most decidedly not pleased,” Faris snapped at me when I arrived with Nero and his soldiers in the god’s great dining hall.
He sat alone at a large banquet table. It was covered with bowls of potatoes, carrots, and green beans—interspersed with baskets of steaming dinner rolls and a roasted turkey at the center of it all. The table was large enough to seat twenty; it was set with enough food to feed twenty too.
“What happened to them?” Faris demanded as the healer I’d called burst into the room.
