Chapter 23

TWENTY-THREE

BASH

I turned in time to see Sandra lunging for the First Realm portal with Collins draped in her arms. A trail of blood streaked across the floor in their wake. Collins’ arms hung down lifelessly.

“ Collins . . .” I reached out for her, but my body collapsed under me and I crashed onto my face.

Everything went black.

NO, NO, NO! COLLINS!

I gasped and jumped—right off the side of a bed, crashing back onto my face on the ground. The white tile was cold against my skin. It felt so nice that for a moment I didn’t move. Where am I? What was I doing?

“BASTIEN!”

“GET HIM UP!”

I opened my eyes, though I didn’t remember closing them. My vision was a little blurry and wonky. The world spun a little. Venus had smashed me over the head with a crystal. I must have had a concussion. Wait. White, cold ground? I lifted my head just enough to see a sea of white. I’m back? She got me. She got me. Hands gripped my arms and lifted me off the ground, and panic like I’d never felt rushed through me. My body snapped into fight mode. I wasn’t going down without a fight. I swung my fists but missed. My vision was too blurry to see exactly who it was, but the person had dark hair and was taller than me.

Father.

I tapped my ring fingers and summoned my daggers made of bloodstone. The hilts touched my palm, and I attacked. Except my father blocked each and every one of my moves with just his fists, like I held balloon animals in my hands instead of serrated daggers. He barely moved at all, and yet he pushed me backwards across the room. My concussion must be worse than I realized. That left me no other option. I called on my magic and sent it out full force . . . just like Collins had told me to. The full extent of my magic, robbing my enemy of all of their senses until they couldn’t even feel themselves. I hated using it to this extent, but desperate times, desperate measures. I wasn’t going to let my father take me down, not when Collins needed me. I felt my magic sweep over my—Zuriel.

It wasn’t my father fighting me.

It was Zuriel.

I froze in place, throwing my daggers to the ground the second I registered it was him. Then I waited. I’d just attacked an angel. The second-in-command angel. The right hand of Araqiel. The angel who enforced everything. The angel who did all the dirty work. The most terrifying living individual I had ever met.

And I’d attacked him.

Zuriel wasn’t out of breath. His breathing was calm and steady. He wasn’t holding a single weapon. His wings weren’t even out. He arched one black eyebrow and narrowed his sapphire-blue eyes. “You’re safe, Bash.”

I blinked. “Wh-what?”

“Your magic is working. It merely has no effect on me. Breathe. ” Zuriel held his hands up. “Breathe, Bash. Now.”

I sucked in a deep breath.

“Close your eyes. Release your magic.”

I closed my eyes and let it go.

“Good. Open your eyes.”

There was no disobeying Zuriel’s orders, so I opened my eyes. My breath left me in a rush. I was in the infirmary inside The Emerald. In First Realm. I wasn’t back home. I wasn’t still being tortured by my sister. The white was marble, not snow. I stumbled back a few steps and crashed into the wall. The room spun. I blinked my eyes.

Zuriel flicked his wrists, and my bloodstone daggers turned back into rings on my fingers. He pressed his palm to my forehead and the room stopped moving. My vision cleared. “Breathe, Bash.”

Then I saw the rest of the room.

And I wanted to scream.

Collins was in an infirmary bed with people all around her blocking her from my view so all I could see was her pink and purple hair falling over the edge of the bed. And blood. Droplets of blood dripped down her arm, across her fingers, and onto the floor.

Every ounce of breath was sucked out of my lungs. My knees buckled and my legs gave out. My ass slammed into the cold marble, but I felt no pain. My body was numb but for the pressure in my chest. It felt like the entire realm sat there.

“ Tabriana, ” Zuriel barked over his shoulder, then pointed to me, “tend to that.”

I swallowed through the hot lump in my throat. My eyes burned. Collins. She was dying. I felt it in my soul. I was about to lose her, and it was my fault. I knew better. It’s my fault. We never should have gone back in there.

A woman with blonde hair and light-green eyes crouched in front of me. I must have flinched because she smiled softly and put her hand on my shoulder. White angel wings popped out of her back. “It’s all right, Bastien. I’m Tabriana.”

Tabriana? Then I remembered, she was the angel mother of Ezra, the vampire-Nephilim living in Fourth Realm.

“Bash,” I heard myself grumble as I stopped fighting her. “ Bash. ”

“Okay, Bash,” she said slowly and softly, like she knew I was on the edge of breaking apart. “I’m going to tend to the wound in your shoulder. Just sit still.”

“She’s dying.”

Tabriana’s smile vanished as she worked on my shoulder. “Yes, but they’re going to try and stop that. Hecca is here.”

Hecca? That was Nickel’s angel mother, the angel with the healing touch. I frowned and looked over Tabriana’s wings to the bed where Collins was and my jaw dropped. My pulse quickened as relief rocked me hard. All of the angels were here. All of them. Araqiel stood at the foot of the bed, his dark eyes locked on Collins—not a taco in sight . . . Which meant this was more serious than any other moment I’d ever seen him.

Hecca and Nickel stood on opposite sides of Collins’ bed. They were facing each other with their hands on her body and golden light between them. Forfax and Adimus, the angel fathers of the Shifter Realm Nephilim, stood with their backs to me next to Nickel. Mendrion and Charmeine were pillars of concern by Collins’ head. Sashael stood next to his daughter, Jada, both of them with identical blond braids and dark skin. He glanced to me, then nudged Jada. She turned and her eyes widened.

Something moved in my peripheral vision, but when I looked it was Philip bursting through the infirmary doors with panic pulsing in his aura. He sprinted for Sandra who was being held up by her mother, the angel Eloa. The second he got over there, Sandra turned and collapsed into his arms. But Eloa kept her hand on Sandra’s back.

Zuriel stood halfway between me and Collins with his arms crossed over his chest.

“ We’re gonna lose. She’s going to win because we can’t stop her .”

“You can stop her, Bastien,” Jada said softly as she knelt in front of me.

Oh great, I said that out loud.

“Bastien, you can.” Jada’s hazel eyes watched me carefully. “Look at what you’ve managed so far.”

“Call me Bash, please.” I cringed, then scrubbed my face with my hands. “ She named me Bastien, and I haven’t the stomach to hear it from anyone else.”

Her face fell. She tossed her blonde braids over her dark shoulder, then moved to sit on the ground beside me. She let out a deep sigh. “I remember the moment your mother lost your loyalty.”

I dropped my hands and glanced down at her. “ What ?”

“In that cave made of moonstone by the sea,” she said in a distant voice.

I blinked through a new wave of tears.

“I was there. Hiding, as I always did.” She looked up at me with haunted eyes. “The day your mother told you to kill those children.”

My stomach turned. That day had been my last straw. It was the day I decided I’d help destroy my mother.

“I knew the moment you spotted your victims that she hadn’t told you they were literal children. I saw the resolve in your expression when your loyalty moved to us. ”

I closed my eyes and tried not to think about that day, that moment.

“I was the fae you entrusted to help hide those kids. Do you remember?”

I nodded. “I did not know it was you at the time.”

“I know. That wasn’t important at the time.” She took a deep breath. “I was there the next day when Cleo took your voice.”

I didn’t want to open my eyes, didn’t want to see Collins in that bed, but my mind kept replaying Venus’ visions to me, so I opened my eyes and focused on Jada beside me. “Why are you telling me this?”

“To give you something else to think about.” She turned her hazel eyes up to me. “And to remind you that it was a time long ago that you thought you’d never be able to kill them all. That it was hopeless. And yet here you are, already having killed three of your monstrous, supposedly invincible sisters. The endgame is not impossible.”

“It is if I lose her,” I whispered.

“You have not lost her yet.” Jada put her hand on my arm. “You know better than anyone the power of hope.”

I cringed. “This . . . this is different.”

“Yes, it is. But that’s why the angels are helping. Right, Tabriana?”

I looked to my left where Tabriana was carefully tending to the nasty hole in my shoulder. “Why are you all here? I thought it was against the rules?”

Tabriana frowned and those light-green eyes blazed with rage. “Because if she dies before we get the Chaos Stone back, we lose all of the realms, including this one.”

My breath caught in my throat.

Tabriana met my wide stare. “And we like it here. We’ll worry about forgiveness from Heaven later.”

My emotions rushed to the surface. I was about to lose it. I was going to completely and entirely fall apart. The angels were breaking strict rules from Heaven by trying to save Collins’ life and it was all my fault. I knew better. We’d gotten lucky with Aryk and Marigold. My mother had underestimated us. We caught her by surprise. I knew better than to think she was fooled by us any longer. She was so much older and more powerful, and she played us like pawns.

Jada squeezed my bicep, and it was the only anchor tethering me to sanity. “You said we have to sever her bond to Third Realm first. How do we do that?”

“I have no idea.”