“Today? I’m changing today?”
“Well, it’s more of a fifty-fifty thing, you see.”
“What do you mean?”
Nylicia pierces me with those freaky eyes. “Sol, how bad do you want it?”
Not as much as before. She must see this in my stare because that sympathy returns. “I just . . .” It’s just me and her here, but it’s nearly impossible to confess this aloud. I motion towards my chest. “I don’t know if I can face eternity with this inside me.”
Her eyes seem to actually water. “I know the feeling very well. It’s a fifty-fifty chance, girl, but . . .”
“But?”
“If you don’t take this chance, Eve will die on the battlefield today.”
The words send pure electricity through me. I jump to my feet, my abused heart pounding with fury. “No one’s killing my fucking best friend,” I growl. Not again. Not if I have a fucking say.
“And this is why you’re so suited to it,” the Watcher whispers.
“Suited to what?”
“That indomitable will of yours will move mountains, Sol.”
“Will it help me . . . heal?”
More sadness. Hopelessness rises to choke me at the sight of it. “I can’t undo what he did. What it’s done to you.” She stares at my chest, as if seeing my twisted heart battering my ribcage. “Gods almighty, it’s so damaged in there.”
Choking. Tears rising.
The memory of him on that porch, seconds from fucking the female that was making out with him and jerking him off . . .
I didn’t matter at all. That’s why he didn’t stop to think how I’d feel. I must matter less than nothing.
The tears are leaking out, sliding down my cheeks. I catch them with my hands, disgusted with myself.
Since when does Soleria De Leon cry over manwhores?
Nylicia is staring at me as if my suffering guts her.
I manage to once again stem the flow of tears. “There’s a fifty-fifty chance that I’ll save Eve, or that my body won’t become immortal?”
“No. If you go on that battlefield later today, Evesse will be saved.”
“So my chance at immortality is what’s in doubt.”
The bird flying over her hand slows down, its speed dwindling as if from exhaustion. The light around her dims as well. “Soleria, if you go on that battlefield and actually make it back out, you’ll be fully immortal.”
My heart skips a beat, my mind racing to catch up. “If I leave it . . .”
“You either become an immortal on that battlefield, or you will die.”
Silence. Stillness. Shock . . . relief? “That’s my fifty-fifty odds. Immortality, or death.”
“Yes.”
“But either way, if I go, I’ll save Eve.”
“Yes.”
“What does my chance at immortality hinge on?”
“You wanting to come back.”
And since she’s the Watcher, she knows as well as I do where I’m currently at with that.
Pathetic, Sol. Really. One fool fucks up, and you’re ready to die over it?
Memories assail me. Again, flashes of him with that female wrapped around him. My scent was still on his skin, and he hadn’t cared.
My heart shrivels, agony rushing through my veins. God. If I could claw it out I would. Were you stupid enough to give yourself to him? I yell at it.
Yes. Yes my foolish heart was.
I gave it to him and he just crushed it with a callousness none of my exes ever showed me.
Nylicia’s voice pulls me out of my spiraling thoughts. “Your immortality will also hinge on another—”
“Ianthen?” I snap, ready to give up on the concept of eternal life right here and now. I want nothing from him.
“Not Ianthen. It’ll be someone else. That’s all I can tell you right now. Do you want to attempt this or not?”
As if I have a choice. Evesse will survive because I’ll be there. “When will I need to be at the . . . battle?”
“Later on today. Dimithinia will take you. I’ll ask her to remain with you until it’s time. In the meantime, you can get your affairs in order just in case.”
Just in case I die.
Alrighty then. “Got it,” I tell her and start to head up the stairs.
“Soleria?”
I look over my shoulder. “Yes?”
“So many need you. You are, and will be, important to so many. All the lives you’ll save, the evil ones you’ll end. You’ll turn one of the darkest forces to our side. You remember that.” In the blink of an eye, her glorious “glitching” facade disappears, and she returns to her still gorgeous, regular self. “When that wrecked heart he hurt stops beating, you. Remember. That.”
Chapter 26
IANTHEN
A ll around me is mayhem.
Inside me? Even worse.
Xreak just arrived a few minutes ago, joining the posse of beings now occupying this bathroom with Nythi and I. Everyone knows what his arrival means. Everyone.
The Aviraji have launched another assault.
Inches from me on the blood coated counter are the massive cuffs Nylicia brought along with her. A flat bar with eight engraved rings, as well as spikes on the inside of those rings.
Cuffs meant to help control my symptoms.
Because I’ve bonded.
And mated.
To a female I lost last night. Don’t think about it. Kind of hard not to. Especially after Nylicia delivered her little bombshell: I brought the fulfillment of the prophecy down on myself. Soleria was never meant to be the reason I died. What I did to her chasing my own safety is.
Rage. Pain. Can’t analyze this shit. Need to push the images of last night back.
At least Zen is in a much better place. He arrived a few minutes ago, merged with Mavrak. The craziest part? He seems to be in complete control. Apparently, Evesse’s powers did manage to heal him.
The acid in my chest seems to spread. Baby-blues full of tears. The horror in her expression.
Behind me, Cyake’s attention switches to Xreak. “Which Kystm was popped open now?”
“You mean which ones,” the guardian says. “We have a collapse of the entire Kystm grid. So far, twenty-two of them have ripped open along the east coast of the United States alone. We have another fourteen all over the upper part of Africa, most of them near or in Egypt. You can imagine what’s happening everywhere else.”
Fuck an assault. This is a call for all-out battle.
The beast trashing in me lets out another monstrous cry. Once again, we’re in agreement.
Kill as many of those motherfuckers as we can.
I roll up my sleeves and grab one of the cuffs. The spikes on the inside are razor sharp, almost surgical.
This is going to be pleasant.
Lining up my arm with the bar, I slap the cuff on. Instantly, the rings tighten around my forearm, those spikes sinking two inches deep. The engravings on the cuffs come to life as power leaks into my bloodstream.
I jerk, staring at the ceiling and breathing slow through my nostrils. A trickle of relief starts to alleviate the grinding of my organs.
Shaking it off, I reach for the second cuff.
“Is it working?” my Zyt’is asks behind me.
“Still feel like shit, but yeah. The world’s not spinning and my stomach isn’t trying to rip its way out my throat.”
XreakLi steps into the bathroom, taking in the bloodbath with his aquamarine eyes. “Damn. What the hell happened to you?”
I ruined everything. The one female I actually wanted could’ve been mine, now she’ll probably never want to see me again. Considering my current circumstances, there’s no telling how much longer I have left to live. I slap the other cuff on. “I fucked up. What else?”
“Indeed. What else?”
His reply pisses me off. As if me ending up in this predicament was a given. Because it fucking was. “Forget the details. Back to Earth. Where are we hea
ding first?”
“The majority of the infiltration is focused in one area. For now.”
“Where?” Zeniel asks, tucking Eve into his side.
Xreak faces him. “Pennsylvania. Place called Brownsville.”
The same place I finally located Enteax in days ago.
Not a coincidence, of course.
“They’re after Suffering,” Nylicia mumbles around the mouthful of popcorn she just dropped into her mouth.
Yes. She showed up to see my downfall with her own see-through bag of popcorn.
I’ll never forget this.
Zeniel voices the question in most of our minds. “Suffering?”
“Goddess of. I bestowed the powers on her years ago. Not that she knows yet. She’s still human. Her powers are mostly dormant inside her as of no—”
“That’s who Enteax was protecting in that house. The Aviraji want her.”
A human female with the powers of Suffering . . . and Enteax was protecting her? He has to want her. So do his handlers.
That girl is coming back with us, evil powers and all.
Minutes later, after Evesse has finished informing her R’mann that she’ll be accompanying us to this battle, everyone begins to dematerialize.
My sister nods at me and leaves as well.
Nylicia stops me before I can leave. “You, wait. I have something I want to discuss with you. Then you can join the battle.”
Everyone’s already left. It’s just me and her.
Naturally, that means I know exactly what she wants to talk about.
The pain roars back to life, despite the cuffs. Maybe my body isn’t reacting physically, but gods fucking damn, my chest . . .
Clenching my teeth, I walk the few steps to the wall and lean my forehead against it. Breathe in, breathe out. Eyes clenched, hands fisting.
“How could you fuck up this bad?” comes from behind me.
I slam my fist into the wall, sending chunks of marble flying in all directions. “Tell me I can get her back. Tell me I can fix this.”
“Why? Because if not you’ll die?”
Oh, she’s pissed at me. That tone says it all.
How fucking dare she? She could’ve warned me. She could’ve told me—I grit my teeth harder. Let it go. Not now. You need her help. “No. I’ll fucking die for her if I have to. I just need to fix it.” Her eyes. That look on her face.
I thought I was destabilizing, damn it! I killed an innocent man. Maybe more than one. I was running on pure fucking instinct.
I was going to kill Soleria if I went back to her to slake my lust.
And it’s still no excuse.
“Why, Ianthen?”
“Because I love her, Nylicia!” I shout over my shoulder. “I love her and I know I broke her fucking heart. I can’t leave it like that. I can’t.”
“You really do love her.”
There’s genuine surprise in her tone.
In a fury, I whirl around. “Why is this so surprising to you? Because the ‘manwhore’ shouldn’t be able to love?”
Nylicia stares up at me, the white, gold-veined marble of the bathroom making her multi-colored eyes seem solid. “Not necessarily. But despite all the eons, I still believe that a male who’s truly in love doesn’t hurt his female in irrevocable ways. And vice versa.”
“Oh, come on. After everything you’ve seen, you haven’t seen a male in love fuck up?” I snap.
“No. I’ve seen it. It just keeps baffling me every single time.”
She isn’t solid. You can’t kick her in the face.
“How far are you willing to go to fix this, Ian?”
“You know the fucking answer to that,” I growl.
“Hmm. What if I said you need to be captured?”
“By who?” So help me, Illion, but if she says the Aviraji . . . you’re going to do it anyway.
“Maeltzkon.”
“What the fuck female?” They’re back? Seriously? We went through freaking hell to get rid of them last time.
Nylicia waves me away. “Yeah yeah. They’re back. New name, and all that. Point is, I need you to get into one of their facilities. If everything goes according to plan, you’ll be there no more than twelve hours.”
“And I can’t just sneak in there by other means?”
“Do you want to be on the path to getting Soleria back or not?”
More teeth grinding. “I do.”
“Besides, this one’s off my radar. Entirely. The reports don’t come through to me, neither do visuals. They’ve managed to hide it. Need you in there to collect intel until we come extract you. And, as I said, path back to Soleria and all that. At the end of the battle, when a heart beats again, you need to follow Lisrn’s energy signature in wolf form. Let them capture you. I can’t tell you anything more than that.”
“Come on, female. Please give me more than that. Help guide me this time.”
Her eyes shimmer with sympathy. “Baby boy, don’t you get it? It was always about you learning to guide yourself.”
- Brownsville, Pennsylvania (USA)
The treaty’s been broken. That’s the main thought going through my mind as I attack yet another ceFtut. Thousands of creatures battle around me. Thousands of beings, gods and humans alike. The sheer size of this fight makes it almost impossible to hide it. Deteriorating town or not, thousands of humans are witnessing this.
Perishing in it.
How can Ryth consume these many memories?
This time, I doubt he’ll be able to.
The main oath of the treaty was that we’d all stay out of humanity’s business as much as possible. That we’d hide our existences outside of our own cultures and pantheons. This type of blatant disregard signals the final break in our peace accord.
War has begun again.
The ceFtut rips its leg out of my jaws, landing before me, its weight bending the concrete inward. Enraged, it opens its massive jaws, howling in my direction.
All I see is the white outline of it, the outline of the world beyond. As well as the grimy red tendrils of energy that come off these fuckers.
Growling low, I flex my hind legs, feeling the concrete give way beneath me. I must have killed dozens of these fuckers since arriving, but I have no problem killing more. I brace to jump—
SAVE HER!
My body jerks from the shock, the sudden pain.
SHE’S DYING!
Sol’s here? What the fuck is happening? Where is she?
I feel the exact moment her heart stops, my own heart stopping alongside hers.
Because of my primal immortality, my mind and body continue functioning for moments longer.
My head snaps back on a howl.
From the distance, I hear Evesse’s scream. “Soleria!”
“No!” Ismini yells. “Soleria! No!”
Like a tank, I barrel in that direction, my heart remaining motionless, cold poison seeming to radiate through my bloodstream.
It’s my death. I’m leaving with her.
Get to her. Die with her.
They took her from me. They took her from me and I never even got to say I’m sorry.
I howl again, feeling the weakness spreading.
“Live, damn you,” I hear a warped, female voice that sounds like Dimi. “I command you to live.”
Just as I sensed her death, I feel the exact moment Soleria’s lifeforce returns to her body. An infusion of power, of life, is like a shockwave in me.
Suddenly, I hear Crius’ howl, would recognize it anywhere.
Can’t focus on whatever is going on with him. My female is all that matters.
I pump my legs harder, trying to dematerialize. Trying to change. My inner wolf is too frenzied to release its hold. The seconds it takes to reach her destroy me.
There. Straight ahead. All I see is her outline and that vortex of white, red, and dark blue power that is her aura.
Holy fuck. So. Much. Power.
I slide to the ground next to her, pres
sing my head to her chest.
Thump. Thump. Thump. Thump.
Her reawakened heart is the fiercest thing I’ve ever heard, a perfect echo to her amplified energy signature.
She’s back. Alive.
Immortal?
I try again to morph out of this state. My body refuses and I can’t stop rubbing my snout into her chest, taking the sound of that heartbeat into me. Interminable moments pass, and I hear Crius arrive behind me in a demonic-like rage.
Dimithinia was also killed?
Evesse assures him that the ancient queen will return right before sending Zen off to get someone named Maykayla. I feel him leave right after.
I press my ear back to Soleria’s chest. That beat is everything for me, its sound the only anchor to sanity I possess.
“She’s going to be okay, big guy,” Evesse says, reaching for me. Her fingers massage the spot between my ears. “You’re the biggest idiot I know, but we’re going to get her back for you.”
A wave of gratitude engulfs me. Raising my head, I turn to her and allow her to hug me to her.
“We’ll get her to Vedlyl. You’ll see. She’s going to be fine.”
She has to be. I can’t live any other way.
Zeniel arrives with a young mortal female, but I ignore everything going on around us. Even as I hear them mention Enteax’s name and the newcomer’s connection to him.
Dyletri and Zen get into an argument about Enteax.
Cyake comes up to us, kneeling for my female. “We need to get her back to Enzyria.”
Not him! That wild inner yell sends me flying in his direction, jaws snapping at his outstretched hands before he can lift her up.
He shoots back. “Bro, chill! I’m just trying to help!”
I know he is, but the last few weeks he grew too close to my female, at a time when my instincts were being torqued out of control. I can’t stop my reactions to him being near her anymore than I can change back to my regular form.
“I’ll do it,” Zen says.
Some of the anxiety eases in me.
“It’s time, Ianthen.”
The sound of Nylicia speaking into my mind reminds me of her earlier words. “At the end of the battle, when a heart beats again, you need to follow Lisrn’s energy signature in wolf form. Let them capture you.”
Blood Drenched Conquest (Ryze Book 3) Page 23