Unbound

by Amber Lynn Natusch

  “And you truly created this place?” A hint of awe tinged her words. Whether it was genuine or meant to appease him, I could not be sure, but it seemed to work.

  “Yes.”

  “And you did this right after I died?”

  “Yes.”

  Silence. “Because my death broke you?”

  He paused. “Yes.”

  “And now you wish to break Khara to regain the illusion that my death never occurred?”

  “I wish to have you back,” was his only response.

  The fire within her flared and roared and begged to be released, but she steadied it for a moment longer, her business with her brother still unfinished.

  “But I was never truly yours, Phobos. That is the lie you tell yourself. The lie you want to believe because the truth was never something you could handle when it countered your desire. Deimos knew this and did everything he could to protect me from you, but even he was not enough. Father was too blinded by bloodlust and war to notice. But it seems my death changed that for him—along with other circumstances.”

  “You lie!” he bellowed into the nothingness as his hands clamped down upon his skull. Our black surroundings began to buckle and waver, and I once again felt Eos’ smile spread across our face.

  “Your life has been a carefully curated lie, Phobos, but no more. You thought bringing me back would make that lie true, but it won’t.” The fire crept up our throat until it pooled at the back of our mouth, smoke billowing out when she spoke. “Tonight, you will pay for your sins against me. My life has been restored, but yours, dear brother, will soon end.”

  The ripples in the fabric of time and space bowed wildly around us as Phobos’ anger grew, until he let loose a cry of rage that rendered them still. When he regained his composure, he stared at Eos, dark eyes full of the madness I had come to know.

  “I will lock you up here forever, Eos. Do not think it impossible.”

  “I know,” she said softly. Sweetly. “And that is why I intend to destroy it.” With slow, calculated steps, she walked over to him. His wariness battled his desire to touch her, which rendered him still. “Perhaps you should have settled for the vessel herself,” she whispered as her hand grazed his cheek. “Maybe she could have loved you as you thought I once did.”

  Then her hands gripped his head with terrible force, and she hacked into his mind as Muses could—as I had learned to—and held it hostage.

  “Show me how I died,” she gritted out as Phobos began to struggle.

  “I don’t…know.”

  “Show me!” she screamed, digging her nails into his flesh and his skull in her pursuit. Phobos’ struggle waned and his body went limp in her grasp. “I want you to say it. I want you to say the words out loud.”

  He looked up at her with wide eyes full of realization. “I did it,” he whispered. “I killed you.”

  “You did. And now I shall return the favor.”

  Phobos collapsed at her feet as a nebula of white light appeared at the center of the darkness, sparking and shimmering like a conduit. It felt so familiar that I knew instantly what it was: the tether I had followed back to Phobos before. The one he had used to pull me into the Always and Never.

  While he fought to stand, Eos stepped back and squared herself to the source of energy before us. “Ares was right about something,” she said as she closed her eyes to focus. “Only one of us can survive this, Khara,” she continued almost silently before she drained my body of all its power. “And it will be me.”

  Before I could push past her soul to take hold of my body, she threw that power at the nebula that fueled the fear god’s alternate realm, and it exploded in a blinding white light.

  All feeling in my body ceased and I fell into the unknown, just as I had in my dream. Only this time, no one followed.

  And I never hit the ground.

  25

  But then I did.

  I crashed into something hard and jagged and punishing, and I tried to push my defective—but not dead—body up from the pile of rubble beneath me. In the distance, near the demolished throne of Zeus, lay Phobos. Eos had indeed succeeded in destroying the Always and Never.

  But she had not destroyed me.

  With great effort, I stood at the top of Mount Olympus, its utter destruction an appropriate backdrop for what would be our final battle. For it would be final for one of us, and given the state of my body and the depletion of my power, it would likely be me. But I would fight to the end nonetheless.

  I would make my brothers—and Oz—proud.

  Phobos looked at me from the far side of the crumbled throne with madness in his dark eyes; madness born of the eradication of his realm. Anger reddened his pale face, and I forced myself into a fighting stance to ready for his attack. I spread my wings wide for balance in the hope that they could provide me some advantage in battle. To my surprise, their original mottled grey shade stared back at me. Their lack of obsidian feathers weighed heavily on my mind as Phobos wavered slightly, then inched closer.

  “You will regret what you’ve done, Eos.”

  “Eos is no longer here,” I replied. “She said that only one soul would survive. It seems that my body was unwilling to part with mine, as she had planned.”

  Fury blazed in his blackened eyes and he let loose a mournful war cry that shook the broken ground we shared.

  “You will die here tonight,” he said as he crossed in front of the throne. “You will perish at my feet in agony, and I will watch and relish in your anguish. Your family will never find your remains—not even Ares. Your death will plague them for eternity.”

  “And if I am relegated to the Underworld?” I countered as I steeled myself against his approach. “They will see me again.”

  He pulled out a dagger I did not recognize—something white and gleaming and without a hilt. Blood streamed from his hand as he clenched it tighter, and a prickle of caution crept up my spine.

  “Not if I use this, they won’t.”

  A feather of the Light shone brightly in his grip, and I understood the threat my mother’s kind posed to the Dark. Just as Kaine and Oz could wipe souls from existence with a swipe of their wing, so too could the Light; only theirs would work on tainted souls, which mine clearly was. I realized that Father had been right all along.

  Death really was not the worst fate imaginable.

  Never seeing those I loved again was.

  I pulled the blades Casey and Kierson had given me when I first arrived in Detroit from their sheaths and held them tightly.

  “Then I shall keep you from using it,” I said, notching my chin higher. “I will not fear the weapon of my mother.” Though my delivery was flawless, he saw through my bravado, as though he could still tap into my mind. His laughter filled the great expanse around the mountain and hemmed us in.

  “Your mother…” he mused as he paused only feet away. “I think I shall track her down once I finish here. Perhaps I’ll take a trip to the Underworld, as well. Stop by your beloved Victorian…”

  “Without your tricks, you are no match for my family.”

  At that, his maniacal smile widened. “Too bad you will not be alive to find out.” Anger surged inside me, and I opened my mouth to release it in a scourge of fire, but nothing came. Phobos’ laughter only increased. “I wonder if Eos didn’t manage to take something from you as she faded,” he taunted as I tried again and again to produce the Dragon’s fire. “Poor little empty vessel. Don’t you see? I’ve already defeated you.”

  My rage burned hotter still. “I would not be so certain of that.”

  I launched myself at him without warning, my wings arcing me over his head but close enough to land a strike. With lightning speed, I sliced my blade at his neck. The tip brushed his ghostly pale skin as he ducked the blow, but it drew blood all the same.

  When I landed on the far side of the throne, he lunged, gleaming feather-blade drawn back. I slipped to the side to dodge it, but his strike had been a bluff.
He followed through with a knee to my side that sent me reeling. My wings fought to slow my fall, but I crashed to the ground all the same. One wing crumpled beneath me, and the end of it broke with the force. Cold, sharp pain shot through me when I tried to straighten it; and when I attempted to take to the air, it became clear that it could not support me.

  Land-bound and seemingly without my powers, I would have to fight the god of fear with little more than my wits and my skills with a blade. And I feared that neither might be up to the task in my current state.

  “Delicate little bird, aren’t you?” he mocked. “I shall enjoy breaking you piece by piece.”

  “You would have to shut your mouth long enough to follow through,” I said to egg him on, “and I am not certain you can.”

  My response was met with the anticipated reaction. He surged toward me with his stolen blade drawn. But his anger overrode his strategy, and this time, I was ready. His attack was the same as the last, and I dove beneath the strike with my leg extended to sweep him off his feet. He hurtled over my leg, and I swung my arm backward to slice his leg. The sharp edge of the blade bit in deep, severing his tendon.

  When he landed, he stumbled forward onto his good leg and hobbled away to assess the damage. I lunged at his back and sank a blade between his ribs, but he shrugged me off before it could go deep enough to kill. I rolled across the rubble and sprang to my feet again.

  “You insufferable bitch!” he shouted as he balanced his weight on his left leg. “You think this is enough to stop me?”

  His thunderous voice echoed off the fallen house of the gods just before he charged me as best he could with a severed Achilles tendon. I parried his blow and quickly countered, but it soon became clear that I could not match his strength for long without my acquired abilities. I could hear the words of my brothers and Oz—their lessons in combat streaming through my mind—but I could not hold onto one long enough for the message to become clear. Instead, they clouded my brain with distraction that I could not afford.

  The sting of Phobos’ feather-blade in my arm was a harsh reminder.

  So was the punch that knocked me backward twenty feet.

  I landed on a rock jutting out of the debris, and the sharp sound of bone breaking rang through my head. At first, I could not move, the pain in my back holding me so still that I wondered if the fall had paralyzed me. If I would die wounded and helpless at the hands of a madman. But then my legs twitched, and I bit down on my blood-covered blade, then forced myself to stand. It took all I had to keep from falling right back down. I could not even raise my wings to steady me; the shot of agony that stabbed me every time I tried proved more problematic than beneficial.

  The tides had fully turned in Phobos’ favor.

  “It’s a shame, really,” he said as he stalked toward me, certain that victory was his. “Such a waste…”

  I loosed a blade at him. He batted it away, then launched himself at me and slammed his elbow down on my shoulder, driving it from its socket. I dropped to a knee and pulled the blade from between my teeth to clutch in my hand.

  I looked up at Phobos like the devil he was and smiled.

  “You can break my body,” I said as I struggled to stand, “but you cannot break my spirit. I am the Princess of the Underworld. The Queen of Darkness. And most importantly, a warrior of the Patronus Ceteri. I do not need my powers to kill you, Phobos. I am enough already.”

  His wicked smile faltered for a second, and his eyes dared to look at something beyond me as though I were no longer a threat. In that moment—that split second of distraction—I plunged my blade into his chest just beneath his ribcage. His attention snapped back to me, and his hands were around my throat before I could even move. But they did not remain.

  Instead, I fell to the rocky ground as Phobos disappeared from my sight. When I looked up, I found him on his knees on the far side of Mount Olympus. Standing behind him was Oz, holding an obsidian blade to the god of fear’s throat. The Dark One stared at me in silence, his brown eyes full of questions and accusations and regret. Something else, too, I imagined, though my mind was too exhausted to decipher what.

  Then another distraction presented itself.

  Trey appeared out of nowhere with my brothers—all of them—including those from the Elysian Fields and those that had perished in the battle before I left. They spread through Mount Olympus and surrounded Oz to be sure that he could not be controlled by Phobos and used against me. Against us.

  They did not know that their actions were unnecessary; did not know that Oz was already immune to the power that Phobos could no longer call.

  Kierson, Pierson, Casey, Drew, and Sean all rushed toward me, but I stopped them with a shaky outstretched hand. For what felt like the millionth time that night, I forced myself to stand on unsteady feet.

  “I am fine,” I said. Their dubious expressions said they did not agree. “Or I will be once I am finished here.” My gaze fell to the fear god, and theirs followed. Then I started toward Phobos. “I just need a blade.”

  Casey tossed one in the air, and I caught it without breaking my stride. I could hear them fall in behind me as I limped over to where Oz stood with Phobos before him. A tight nod of recognition was all he could muster in that moment.

  I tried not to dwell on the reasons why.

  Phobos struggled under Oz’s grip, undoubtedly frustrated by his inability to just disappear, but the Dark One held fast. My dead brothers grabbed his arms and spread them wide, rendering him motionless. Without his mind tricks to disable his enemies, and with no weapon to wield, he was as vulnerable as I was without my gifts.

  I leaned in close enough to see the fire fueling his madness slowly snuff out, leaving fear in its wake. An irony of sorts for the god of that emotion. Poetic justice, indeed.

  “You sought to enslave me. To strip me of my will. To rape my mind into submission. To make me a prisoner in my own body. But now, Phobos, you have lost.”

  He let out a mirthless laugh. “You have lost, too. Everything that made you special—made you powerful—is gone. You are worth nothing without the magic of your vessel…”

  I leaned in closer still. “What you do not understand—could never understand—is that I would have knowingly and gladly given up those powers to stop you.” My eyes betrayed me and darted up to Oz. “If that is the price I must pay to bring you down and protect those I love, then so be it. But I do not believe that it is.” Oz craned the fear god’s head back to expose his neck. “It was the realm of your fractured mind that claimed those abilities, not Eos,” I said, anger rising within me, “and now, in death, you will give them back.”

  Before he could say anything else, I retreated a step and swung my arm in a wide arc. It leveled off at his head and carved clean through his neck until the sharp metal no longer met resistance. Phobos’ head hung from Oz’s hand as his body fell at the foot of Zeus’ crumbled throne. Blood rained down upon us all.

  “I believe this is yours,” Oz said, handing me the disembodied head. I took it and tried to keep my amusement hidden.

  “You cut that a bit close, did you not?”

  His stare fell to the head, then back to me. “I wasn’t the one who chopped it off—”

  “I meant your arrival.”

  He took a step closer and let his eyes rake over my body. “You didn’t exactly flash the bat signal for me to follow.”

  “Then how did you find me?”

  He loomed over me as I fought to remain upright, my beaten body begging to collapse. “I’ll always find you, new girl. I thought we established that a long time ago.”

  I shook my head. “You are confusing that with ‘where you go, I go’.”

  “Which works better when you don’t run off without me to do reckless shit.”

  “If it gives you any measure of comfort, I do not anticipate a need to do that again in the foreseeable future.”

  His expression tightened. “It doesn’t.” He inched closer and wrapped h
is hands in my hair. “But this might.”

  His lips quickly found mine and I leaned into them, allowing my guard to fully fall for the first time since Phobos had entered my life. There was peace to be found in Oz’s kiss; a sense of security and reassurance I had never sought before—had never known I wanted. It was strange to desire something so strongly that I did not need to survive, and yet I did. For living without Oz was a fate I would never entertain.

  26

  “All right, all right, break it up, you two,” Kierson said as he walked up behind me. The crunch of broken stone beneath his feet announced his approach, and I reluctantly pulled away from Oz to turn and face him and the others.

  I ignored Oz’s growl of displeasure.

  “I lost your blade somewhere around here,” I told him. “Though I am confident I can track it down…”

  Kierson’s laugh ricocheted off the rocky remains of Mount Olympus as he gently scooped me up in his arms and hugged me. But even though he was delicate in his effort, my body protested. I winced just once, but that was enough.

  “Jesus, you idiot,” Casey barked as he pried me out of Kierson’s grip, “she’s a broken mess. Be more careful.”

  “Sorry! I forgot. I was just so excited—”

  “Well, calm the fuck down.”

  Kierson’s elation deflated in an instant, and he took a step back.

  “Do not fret,” I said with a smile. “I am confident that what is broken can be fixed.”

  Casey stepped in front of me, blocking my view. “What happened, Khara? Why aren’t you healing? You just said you were taking back what—”

  “She did not regain her vessel power,” Pierson said as he stepped up to flank Casey.

  I nodded once in agreement. “It seems I was wrong about that.”

  “She is as she was when we first met,” Drew said softly, no hint of the grin I loved to see him wear.

  “Not entirely,” I replied with a pained smile. “I still have my wings—and the skills you all have taught me.”