Chapter 16

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

HALWEN

S acrifices, thefts, and gifts bestowed

When archdemon's final seeds are sowed

Those were the lines of the prophecy repeating in my head over and over as I marched on the front lines of an army, feeling thoroughly out of place among demon warriors, angel soldiers, and gods who burned with grudges against Cronus. I was a criminal, a killer and a thief, not a soldier.

I dug through the pack Wyn prepared before we left, and clenched my teeth as I found the smooth bone edge of the hair pin. My toes curled in my boots, my eyes blown wide, and I tasted lightning and power, fire and ice. But I could endure this. If it would take Cronus down, once and for all, I could endure this. I tucked the pin under my leather armour, pressed to my skin at my waistband, and the constant connection, the deluge and endless storm of power seared itself right to my nostril hair. 1

Sacrifices, thefts, and gifts bestowed. I knew what it meant, knew what Erebus had told me in the vision in the forest by our new house. It was power—every element. Sacrificed magic, stolen magic, and gifted magic. Inherited magic, passed down through my family line and through the—the baby's father's line.

I didn't know the extent of the magic I possessed yet, the magic I could only access because of the life growing inside me, but I knew it was a damn sight more than just a snippet of time magic and Wane's shadow.

It would be enough to kill Cronus. Wouldn't it?

I swallowed the knot in my throat as we marched closer to the wreckage of the once-beautiful building. Its pale dome was now cracked and lay discarded on the ground, in the middle of a pile of ashes and rubble that reminded me too much of Olympus in the moments before I drove my dagger into myself.

The dagger he stole.

"I'm here to get it back, asshole," I said under my breath and hoped he heard me.

I had so much rage, so much emotion brewing inside me that it drove out any common sense, any self-preservation instincts. I wanted to fight and punch and stab and bleed and scream. Nothing else mattered.

I realised now, as we marched down the broad avenue, that the mask I'd been wearing all week was for one person—Verena. But Verena was safe, and she wasn't here, so the mask ripped itself off to show the rotting, howling, broken thing underneath. And that thing wanted everyone else to be in as much pain as she was. It wanted Cronus and his henchmen to suffer most of all.

"Hales," Emlyn murmured beside me, armour rattling as he reached across to set a hand on the small of my back. "Calm down."

"I am calm," I replied, my tongue burning with the bone pin's power. But I heard it in my voice—the need to draw blood, the hunger to cause pain.

Was there any difference between me and Lili now? Would we both be bathed in blood and rage by the end of the day?

She marched at the heart of the front line, a beacon of power with golden light shining around her brow— the halo, murmurs went through the ranks. Another legendary power. But was that what I'd seen shining that day in Olympus, when we lost?

The bloodlust boiling through me wouldn't even entertain loss. We would be victorious. He would die.

"Where is he?" Harvey demanded, staring at the wreckage of the Capitol building.

"He's still in there," a woman answered from the line behind us. I peered back to see a rosy woman with long, dark hair threaded with silver, and gleaming eyes that held an otherworldly power. I quickly looked away, even my violence not wanting to cross the woman. The goddess? Titan? I couldn't tell at this point.

"Why does my magic pull me to you?" Harvey asked, his mouth twisted with annoyance and distrust.

The woman laughed softly. "Because your magic is bitter sunlight, Harveil, and I am Eos, goddess of the dawn."

"Well," he said, facing the road again—and the Capitol which was now so close we crossed onto the long path that led to its collapsed doors. "Shit."

"I'll strike and blind Cronus's left eye. His right eye is yours," the woman said, something annoyingly flirtatious in her tone.

I walked across smooth bricks, trusting Em on my left and Kai on my right to keep me moving and not let me fall as I twisted to face the woman, the goddess. "Do you know what this dagger is called?" I asked conversationally, pulling my knife an inch out of its sheath.

Light rippled through her eyes. "I do."

I smiled, letting my insanity and hunger for blood show. "Good."

I faced the front again, my message delivered. Judging by the sudden tension in the soldiers around us, we were in the midst of yet more gods. And I just made them all afraid of me. My smile widened; I ignored Em's worried glance and followed the march of the crowd.

My heart beat harder, exhilarated and terrified all at once. There was a heartbeat all its own in this army, and I knew the three companies approaching from the other compass points would have their own heartbeats, too: a loud mix of thumping footsteps, creaking leather, and those ever-present drums. If this heartbeat could speak, it would chant kill him, kill him, kill him.

"Halt," Lili yelled, her voice brutal and cold.

Ahead of us, the drummers stopped dead, flanked by twin pools of ashen water, debris and chunks of pale thrusting out from the pools like broken teeth. I sucked in a breath, an arrow of fear making it through my craving for violence. That was the signal; the drums had stopped.

"Fuck," Harvey breathed beside Kai. I felt the tremor though his soul, felt his doubts, his desire to run. It was too late to run.

My pulse fluttered in my neck as I waited three seconds, five, seven, ten—there!

Cronus had left the shattered Capitol building as a symbol of his power and might, but all around it gleaming buildings thrust from the ground like knives of obsidian, catching the pale light from the storm gathering overhead and trapping it in the dark stone. Dark shadow. I couldn't forget that these were built with stolen shadows. With Wane's shadow. A single swath, cut from him.

A smile stretched across my mouth, hooking deeper as I watched the sharp knife of a building to our left shudder.

"It's coming down," Kai breathed, surprised.

Did he really think Wane couldn't do it, when he possessed a hundred shadows, a thousand? Cronus had done this with a single shadow. Wane could subjugate the entire known universe if he wanted—not just Earth but Olympus, Heaven, Hell, and every realm in the underworld. It could all be his. The universe should be glad he wasn't hungry for power. I wouldn't have been so kind after the way it had treated us.

"Got it," Wane breathed beside Emlyn. I felt his excitement, his electric glee as the building lost its form all at once, collapsing into smoke and shadow. Dark, sinister satisfaction curled through Wane's soul, and I peered down the line at him, not recognising the cruelty on his face or the wicked smile. If anyone deserved revenge, if anyone deserved to make their abuser suffer, it was Wane.

"Another," I urged him, and held his stare when he glanced at me, his eyes full black. I must have looked similar with the bone pin's power ravaging me. "You're fucking incredible, Wane."

His throat bobbed. His smile softened, just slightly.

"Don't push too hard," Harvey warned, but I shook my head.

"He could remake the whole world if he wanted to," I murmured, remembering Erebus's warning that Cronus wanted just that. I smirked. If you want it, come and get it, fucker.

And he would. I knew he would; he was greedy and covetous, and he wanted Wane's raw, malleable magic more than anything.

"Ready," Lili yelled from the centre of the line. I tensed, an equal dose of nerves and thrill shivering through me. I stared at the dark, ominous buildings all around us, my heart swelling with pride and something deep and unnameable when, one by one, they collapsed into smoky shadows. No longer anything but the rubble Cronus had made the city of Washington, DC.

A cry of shock and panic went through the soldiers and gods behind us, and I turned with a frown, already gripping my dagger and calling more magic, gathering it in my chest where I could unleash every bit of it on the threat. But it wasn't a threat that made them shout, and a laugh of disbelief left me when I watched the shadow Wane ripped from Cronus's buildings glide along the ground, parting a path in the army. It poured over the bricks and flowed up Wane's back, attaching at his shoulders in a long, menacing cloak.

My heart drummed so damn fast. I'd never been so in love with Wane as I was right then.

"Is there time for a quickie?" I asked seriously.

Harvey snorted. Wane smiled, flattered, a strange mix of affection and murder in the bond between us. The part of me that had always loved dangerous men 2 preened and pressed itself against him. It was a good thing Em was between us; I'd have climbed Wane like a tree.

"No," Emlyn rumbled. Killjoy. "Where the fuck is Wynvail? What's taking him so long?"

I didn't know, and I didn't like it.

"I can feel him," Wane said suddenly. Not Wynvail. Cronus. "His presence, his power." He shuddered, shadows thickening around his shoulders. "He knows I unmade his buildings. He's coming."

Any playfulness left me, replaced by dark, seething rage. Bleed him, break him, kill him.

Give 'em Hell, Erebus had said. I'd show Cronus exactly why demons were villainised, and why Hell was feared.

"Draw!" Lili yelled, but I was way ahead of her. I'd had my magic ready to unleash for an hour, and I'd been pulling up more and more during this whole march down the avenue. With the bone pin pressed to my skin and my own magic building, evolving, I wasn't entirely sure what I was capable of.

There would be no chance for tricks this time, no fake timelines, no alternate lifetimes to break me. If he wanted Wane's shadows, he'd have to face us as we were, and see if his spiteful, all-reaching power was a match for the storm growing inside me.

Storm. That would be a cool name for a child. I shook my head to free the thought, letting my rage build into an inferno. I tasted blood and ashes on my tongue. Like I had the day Cronus unmade Wyn, and he died in my arms.

He needed to pay. Needed to suffer.

Wane's low laugh made me jump. He was terrified of Cronus, feared him more than anyone else, but that laugh—auspicious and wicked—was a refusal to be afraid. And I turned at a sudden rush of movement and magic in the air, stared at the black, jagged skyline as it just … collapsed. Wane unmade it with half a thought, and never once looked away from the Capitol where Cronus waited. Or where he hid? Did he know we were here to bring about his end?

"Hold!" Lili yelled as rubble shifted in the building ahead of us, chunks of masonry crashing to the ground as something surged out of the wreckage.

"King's final stand, titan's last breath," I said, blood pounding in my ears as I watched Cronus's twenty-foot-tall shadow form erupt from the ruins, "A hellborn angel will deliver death."

Kai let his snakes erupt into the air around us, twenty of them brushing past me. No, fifty. No—I couldn't count how many. My heart swelled even more. I was so fucking proud to be the mate of these incredible men. But where the hell was Wyn?

Kai cast an unreadable look my way and finished, "Gods and mortals and titans all will bring the end at shadow fall."

"Hold!" Lili screamed louder when a few errant streak of magic escaped our company. The other three were close enough now that I glimpsed soldiers to our left and right, the others just visible behind the collapsed Capitol.

Cronus was surrounded. My pulse thrummed.

Cronus stepped over the bricks and shards of mortar, towering over us on the long path up to the building, as grotesque and horrific ever. This time, I knew exactly what those flashes of light within the darkness were. Knew they were gods he'd consumed. Eaten, like they were jelly babies and not people with families and lives of their own.

Power thrashed under my skin, desperate for an outlet. I bit my tongue and held it back, but my whole face burned with the bone pin's power, and I felt the magic all the way to my little toes.

Lili waited until Cronus was ten giant feet away from us, close enough to trample us if he rushed us, and then screamed, "Fire!"

My breath caught. I twisted my head when someone roared my name. Wyn? But the army rushed forward, and I was swallowed by the collective furore, the need for blood and vengeance shared by each and every one of us.

He dies here. Now.

I drew my dagger, ripped the metaphorical lid off my power, and screamed as we drove towards Cronus.