When it was finally over, I collapsed beside Darian in the wreckage.
The city still burned around us.
Not all of it. Not enough to call Calimport ruined. But enough. Smoke rolled through the broken streets. Midwinter lanterns swung from snapped lines, their pretty colors smeared by ash and blood. Somewhere behind us, a building groaned and folded inward. Somewhere farther off, people were still screaming.
Darian lay on his side, one clawed hand pressed against the wound Nyssara had opened before she died. Blood pulsed between his fingers, dark and steady.
“Hold still,” I rasped.
He gave a laugh that turned into a groan. “That was my plan.”
With the last of his strength, he forced healing magic into the wound. The flesh closed slowly, badly, enough to keep him alive but not enough to make standing look like anything except a terrible idea.
He clenched his jaw, focused, and shifted back into his human form.
I followed a moment later, my body folding down from dragon-shape into something smaller, bloodier, and only slightly less broken. Every bone seemed to object to the arrangement.
I sat up with a curse and nudged him with my boot.
“Give me your arm.”
He cracked one eye open. “Why?”
“Because I need to get you back to Mira before she actually kills me.”
That got a real chuckle out of him.
Barely.
He rolled onto his back and threw his arm toward me like a man surrendering to fate and poor company. “Then pull, bastard. I’m fairly sure my legs only half work.”
“There’s a generous assumption in there.”
“Pull.”
I did.
Two men bonding through shared pain is a strange kind of comfort. There was nothing elegant about us. We stumbled through rubble, swore at loose stones, leaned too hard on each other, and laughed once when Darian nearly took us both down because his knee decided to become theoretical.
We passed Orothyn’s corpse near the edge of the square.
Or what remained of it.
The emerald dragon lay half-buried beneath broken stone, one wing twisted beneath him, his chest split open where I had carved through scale and bone. Embedded in the ruin of his breast was a crystal, dark green at its core, pulsing faintly with magic that tasted like distance, blood, and a name I had hunted for too long.
Liliana.
She had touched the battle through it. Sent power. Fed her children strength. Watched, perhaps.
But she had not come.
Coward.
I eased Darian down onto a chunk of fallen masonry. “Sit.”
He looked at me, pale and annoyed. “You’re bleeding from six places.”
“Seven.”
“That makes it worse.”
“I can count and bleed at the same time.”
“Pompous platinum cunt.”
The insult hit me so unexpectedly that I laughed.
Gods, I had missed this.
I crossed to Orothyn’s corpse and began chipping the crystal free. It took more effort than I wanted to admit. My hands shook. My grip slipped twice. Darian watched the entire time, because of course he did.
“Having trouble?” he asked.
“No.”
“You look like a raccoon trying to open a locked chest.”
I paused and looked back at him. “A raccoon?”
“Mira taught Caedrel the word. He likes them.”
I turned back before he could see what that did to my face.
The crystal finally cracked loose.
I held it in my palm, and for the first time in years, something in my chest eased.
Not peace.
Never that.
But direction.
Liliana could hide from rumor. From hunters. From prayer. From gods who had grown too fond of their own restraint.
She could not hide from me now.
I tucked the crystal into my pocket and shuffled back to Darian. “Up.”
He gave me a suspicious look. “You’re smiling.”
“I am not.”
“You are. It’s ugly.”
“You’re ugly.”
“You look like someone gave murder a religious education.”
I shoved him off his makeshift seat.
He kicked my good leg out from under me.
I hit the rubble with a grunt, and for one bright, stupid second, we were laughing like we had not just survived a battle that shattered half a district.
Victory had made us lightheaded.
The brood in Calimport was dead. Darian was alive. I had Liliana’s trail in my pocket. For one fragile moment, the night looked like something we might crawl away from with all the important pieces intact.
We were fools.
It took too long to cross the city.
Crowds choked the streets, pushing toward the gates in panicked waves. Guards did not stop them; there were too many frightened people and not enough authority left to pretend control still existed. Families shoved through the press. Merchants dragged carts until wheels broke. Children cried into cloaks. Bloodied festival-goers clutched one another and stared at the sky as if expecting another dragon to fall out of it.
“We’ll never get through before dawn,” Darian muttered.
He was right.
The main gates were madness.
So we turned toward the section of wall my breath had destroyed earlier in the fight. I had carved a path through stone and buildings when I struck Nyssara, and now that ruin served as an ugly little mercy. Fewer people had found it. Fewer guards had thought to block it.
As we limped toward the breach, something bothered me.
“Mira should have come.”
Darian went quiet.
I looked over at him.
His jaw was tight, eyes fixed ahead. “I made her promise.”
“To stay with the children.”
He nodded once.
The words sat between us.
That must have gutted him. Darian, who would throw himself between Mira and the world without thinking, had chosen to leave her behind because Caedrel and Maeril needed her more.
I understood.
That was the strangest gift the hunt had given me. I had watched mortals closely for a century—really watched them, not as figures in wars or prayers or judgments, but as people. I had seen them starve so their children could eat. Lie so their lovers could live. Stand in front of blades they could not stop because the person behind them mattered more than survival.
I had thought gods understood sacrifice.
We didn’t.
Not like mortals did.
Beyond the ruined wall, the night opened into fields.
Darian pointed toward the tree line. “That’s where we set up camp. She should be there with the children.”
“And hopefully a meal,” I said, trying for levity.
He huffed. “If she’s angry enough, she’ll feed us to the children.”
I tightened my hold around his side and adjusted myself under his shoulder. “Then let’s hope she’s only mildly furious.”
We crossed the fields slowly.
Every step hurts. Every breath scraped. The city burned behind us, but the trees ahead looked quiet. Safe, almost. The kind of dark that promised shelter instead of teeth.
Then we reached the brush.
I saw Mira first.
She sat near the campfire, Maeril cradled in her arms. The baby was tucked against her chest, asleep or close to it. Mira’s hand rested at Maeril’s back, caught in the middle of a soothing motion.
But she was not moving.
Not breathing right.
Frozen.
Darian noticed a heartbeat after I did.
His body went rigid against mine.
“Mira!”
He tore himself free of my grip and lurched toward her.
A dark green beam cut through the trees and punched a hole through his leg.
Darian hit the ground with a sound that would have been a scream if magic had not sealed around him a breath later. A translucent bubble shimmered into existence, swallowing the noise completely. His mouth opened in agony, but no sound escaped.
I formed Judgment in my hands and stepped forward.
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Nothing.
No scent. No wingbeat. No heat signature. No movement in the shadows.
Impossible.
Hiding from my eyes should have been impossible.
Then a voice brushed my ear, sweet as poison poured over silk.
“Did you have fun with my children, Lendys?”
I swung wide.
Judgment cut through empty air.
The momentum threw me off balance, and I nearly went to one knee.
Too weak.
She knew it.
“Where are you, Liliana?” I shouted into the dark.
A soft laugh.
“I’m right here, my dear pet.”
She appeared beside Mira, seated on a fallen log as if she had been waiting there all night.
Black hair. Green eyes. Mortal shape worn flawlessly. Beautiful in the way venom can be beautiful when caught in glass. Her presence made the air curdle. Even the campfire seemed to bend away from her.
Liliana lifted one hand.
Her index finger glowed green.
Darian forced himself upright inside the silencing field.
“Stay down,” I snapped.
He didn’t.
Of course he fucking didn’t.
The second he planted weight on both feet, Liliana fired again. The beam tore through his other leg. Darian dropped hard, face contorting in silent agony.
She was playing with us.
Effortlessly.
I looked at Mira.
Tears streamed down her frozen face.
Maeril slept in her arms, untouched.
Caedrel.
Where was Caedrel?
I pushed a thin thread of power outward, searching the camp. The tent. The bedrolls. The little shape curled inside.
Alive.
Sleeping.
For half a breath, relief nearly broke me.
Liliana smiled.
“I haven’t harmed them yet.”
Yet.
The word opened a pit in my stomach so deep I felt the bottom fall out of the world.
I lowered Judgment slightly.
“What do you want?” My voice cracked. “My life? My power?”
I let the blade fall to the ground and took one step toward her, hands open.
“Tell me what you want, Liliana.”
If she had been simple, my life might have been enough.
She was not simple.
Her smile turned intimate and vicious.
“I want you to suffer,” she said. “Not because you killed my children. No, dear pet. They knew the risks of ambition.”
She leaned closer to Mira, brushing one delicate finger near Maeril’s sleeping head.
“I want you to suffer because you made my sister-in-name-only suffer. You made Tamara your tool.”
The words struck strangely.
Not because they were true.
Because I had never known Tamara had anyone like that. Not before me. Not close enough to speak of her with possession, with affection, with old resentment.
“I never made her my tool,” I said.
Liliana’s smile widened.
Whatever expression crossed my face must have pleased her, because delight bloomed over her features until she looked almost ecstatic.
Then she fired at Darian again.
The beam pierced his shoulder and burst through the wound Nyssara had left barely sealed. Blood poured from him in a hot rush.
Still, he crawled.
One working shoulder. Two ruined legs. No voice. No hesitation.
Toward Mira.
Always Mira.
I took one step to help him.
Green light flashed.
Pain tore through my right calf.
I stayed upright.
Liliana tutted. “Greedy. Always greedy. Even now, you want to save everyone.”
Another beam struck my left hip.
My body hitched, but I forced the rest of me to compensate.
I kept walking.
Step.
Beam.
Step.
Blood.
Step.
Burning muscle.
By the time I reached Darian, five separate wounds were spilling down my body in red streams. I leaned over him and reached for his collar.
An invisible force stopped my hand.
Liliana sighed. “No. He has to reach her himself, or it won’t be sincere.”
Rage filled my chest so violently I thought my ribs might split.
She looked at Darian and smiled.
“Oh, go on, Darian. Get to your wife and child before you bleed out. I’m sure you’ll live.”
She laughed while he dragged himself forward another two feet.
His hand finally closed around Mira’s ankle.
He looked up at Liliana.
She pointed her glowing finger at his temple.
Darian closed his eyes.
His voice came through the bubble for one brief, impossible second, thin and raw.
“Let them go.”
Liliana’s power gathered.
Then something moved behind us.
A small roar cut through the dark.
Caedrel.
The sound broke Liliana’s hold for less than a second.
Less than that.
But it was enough for Mira’s eyes to move. For Darian’s head to turn. For me to look back and see Caedrel launching out of the tent, small body midair, face twisted in fury too large for a child.
Time slowed.
Not metaphorically.
Not in memory.
The world crawled.
Mira’s gaze snapped to him.
Darian’s hand stretched uselessly from the ground.
My eyes fixed on the beam leaving Liliana’s finger.
I saw the angle.
The speed.
The line.
No.
Move.
Take a step.
Leap.
Do something.
Move, damn you.
I screamed inside my own skull, begging my body to be faster, begging some forgotten scrap of godhood to answer me just once.
I was too slow.
We all were.
The beam struck Caedrel in the chest.
A hole opened where his heart had been.
His eyes rolled back.
Mira’s scream began before sound returned to the world.
Darian’s followed.
Mine came last.
I caught Caedrel in midair a fraction of a second too late.
His head fell against my arm.
Small.
Too small.
So much smaller than the idea of him had ever been in my mind.
I screamed at Liliana until my throat tore. A bloodcurdling curse, raw enough that my voice gave out beneath it. Maeril woke and started crying in Mira’s arms as the paralysis finally broke enough for Mira to lunge toward me, toward him, toward the son already gone.
Liliana watched us with pure ecstasy on her face.
“Good,” she whispered.
Darian moved.
Somehow, impossibly, he moved.
One hand transformed into a claw and caught Liliana by the leg, digging deep into her flesh.
She looked down at him, almost amused.
Then fired a beam through his skull.
Darian died with his hand still gripping her.
I tried to scream again.
Nothing came out but blood.
Liliana turned and fired twice more.
One beam tore through my throat.
The other punched into my chest above Caedrel’s body.
My knees hit the ground.
She laughed softly, circling us while Mira froze again under her magic, Maeril crying loose and terrified in her arms.
“I never thought killing a god would be this easy.”
I could not answer.
I could barely breathe.
Liliana bent and took Maeril from Mira’s arms.
Mira’s eyes went wide with a suffering so complete it looked almost inhuman. Her body could not move. Her mouth could not form words. But her eyes begged, threatened, shattered.
Liliana rocked Maeril gently, shushing her like a mother.
“There now,” she cooed. “Mommy’s got you, dear girl. I’ll take you away from these bad people. Yes, I will.”
She looked back at me and smiled with all her teeth.
A portal opened behind her.
“Goodbye, Lendys. Say hello to Tamara for me, if you live.”
Then she stepped through.
Her laughter vanished with the closing portal.
The magic dropped.
Mira collapsed where she stood.
Not asleep.
Not wounded.
Just gone beneath the weight of what she had seen.
I was dying.
I knew it.
The cold came fast, too fast to feel real. Blood filled my mouth and throat. My chest would not hold air. Caedrel lay in my arms, warm still, but fading into the kind of stillness no child should ever know.
My next thought was not for myself.
It was for Mira.
For Darian.
For the one kindness I had left to give them after dragging my misfortune back into their lives.
There was old magic.
Older than temples. Older than most names for gods.
One life for another.
A cruel bargain. Simple. Absolute.
Mine was nearly extinguished already, but it still counted. A guttering flame is still fire. A dying god is still a price.
With my good hand, I drew the sigil for heart across my own chest in blood.
Then the symbol of life on Caedrel’s forehead.
My fingers shook. My vision narrowed. The pool of my blood crept outward, inch by inch, toward the campfire a few feet away.
I spoke the incantation with what remained of my will.
The words scraped through my ruined throat as broken sound and power.
I gave everything.
The last thing I saw was white light blooming around Caedrel.
The last thing I heard was him breathing.
Then my blood reached the fire.
It sizzled softly.
And everything went black.
When I woke, I was lying in the light of the Starlight Palace.
Alone.
On a catafalque.