CHAPTER 192

CHAPTER 192
The shadows moved before he did.

They peeled away from the palace walls like something alive, pooling across the ground between me and the Tamzyns in thick, deliberate waves that swallowed the light and left nothing behind. Not darkness the way night was dark, with depth and texture and the possibility of stars somewhere above it. This was absence. Total and intentional and his.

I stopped running, not because I wanted to but because the ground itself had become unreliable, the path warping under his influence the way the maze inside had, solid stone rippling like water, the distance between me and the Tamzyns stretching in ways that had nothing to do with actual space.

Hades stormed out of the palace, his eyes blazing with anger.

"Your friends think they've won, but it's no big deal. Taking that bitch away from me is not such a bad idea, because I get to keep you."

I turned around, my blood running cold, and not because I had a plan because I didn't. Standing with my back to him just felt worse than looking at him and I needed to see whatever was coming.

At least from his words, Reya had listened to me and gotten out of this place. I'd have to ask Ixion what happened with the man's wife, if I survived.

"You won't keep me Hades, I'm not a pair of shoes," I snapped, forcing out a false impression of courage I didn't feel at all and he could see straight through me.

"It's over Celeste," he breathed, tilting his head with something that might have been sympathy on a different face. "You fought well. Better than I expected, actually. But this is my domain and everything in it answers to me, including the ground under your feet and the air in your lungs." He spread his hands. "Come quietly and I'll forget this little adventure ever happened. You have my word."

"Your word," I chuckled dryly.

"I know, I know." He smirked, rolling his eyes dramatically, shadows trailing across his face. "Given our history, perhaps not the most reassuring thing I could offer. But that's all you're gonna get."

Through the bond I felt around for my Tamzyns, all three of them, and found them coiled and ready, vibrating with the effort of holding themselves back with Nala's presence the strongest, pressing against my awareness with a desperation that made my chest ache.

"Don't," I sent through their minds, hard and sharp. "Stay back. All of you. That's an order."

"Celeste—" Nala started.

"I said stay back." Danger was right before me and I wasn't ready for them to get hurt, not after the last time. I'd do this alone and hopefully what Terra and Pelagius had taught me would be enough.

Hades took another step toward me and the shadows thickened between us, rising off the ground now, reaching, so I threw up everything I had, a wall of compressed wind that hit him square in the chest and should have sent him flying but he didn't even rock back on his heels. He looked down at where the power had hit him, then back up at me, and the smile widened.

"Is that all you've got? I expected more from my brother. Or maybe he didn't trust you with enough of his powers."

His words began forming resentment in my chest but I fought it off because I had enough power and I would defeat Hades. I had to, there was no other acceptable reality, so I braided sun, earth and ocean together under my skin the way Mother had drilled into me and released it all at once, a concentrated burst aimed directly at his chest that hit him hard enough to make him stumble and hope bloomed before I could stop it.

I didn't give him time to recover. I reached deep and pulled at the powerful strings waiting for me despite my exhaustion, sending compressed wind ferociously at the ground beneath his feet, trying to destabilise his footing the way Pelagius had taught me and he stumbled again, shadows shooting down from his hands to anchor him to the stone, but in that half second I pulled lava to my palms and drove it toward him in a stream.

He raised one hand, the darkness swallowed it whole and then sent it back at me, fiercer, shrouded in darkness and fast wind, and I couldn't move out of the way quickly enough. The rebound caught me across the ribs and I heard something crack before I felt it, then the pain arrived, enormous and breathtaking, staggering me sideways with one hand braced against the air just to stay upright.

"Celeste!" Nala's voice was tight in my mind. "We're coming to—"

"No," I forced out through clenched teeth. "Stay back."

I felt him preparing to attack again and swallowed the pain down hard because Mother wouldn't have sent me down here if I wasn't strong enough, so I went at him again but differently this time, not power against power because I'd already learned that painful lesson. I used the air sense Pelagius had built into me over days of being slammed into the ground, feeling the way Hades moved, the slight shift in the shadows before he committed to an attack and I dodged two, deflected a third with a burst of wind that cost me more than it should have.

He was testing me, making me burn through my energy while he learned my tactics and saw the full extent of what I could do, and knowing it didn't help me one bit but I still went at him because what else was I supposed to do.

I forced everything remaining in me toward him and it seemed Hades was done playing because he moved through his own shadows like water through water, appearing from angles my air sense couldn't track fast enough, and every time I raised a defence he found the gap in it.

Earth power ripped the ground up beneath him and he simply rose with it, unbothered, and ocean sense from Pelagius let me feel the shifts in his energy before he struck but feeling something coming and stopping it were two entirely different things when the person throwing it had existed since before the concept of time had a name.

A shadow wrapped around my ankle and yanked. I hit the ground face first, tasting blood, and before I could roll over another one caught my wrist and slammed me back down, pinning me there. I sent a burst of sun power upward and it actually made him step back, his shadows recoiling from the light, but the effort of it emptied something out of me that didn't refill.

I tried to get up.

My arms buckled and I went back down, cheek against the cold stone, breathing in short painful bursts that told me the cracked rib had gotten worse. My vision kept going in and out at the edges and blood was pooling beneath my face from somewhere I couldn't locate anymore.

I tried again. Got one knee under me. Then the shadows came back down and drove me flat and this time I just lay there, my body making the decision my mind hadn't finished making yet.

I couldn't move.

The pain had gone past the point where willpower had anything to say about it.

Hades stood over me, unhurried, looking down at what was left of my fight with something close to satisfaction.

And then I heard it.

Three sets of enormous wings snapping open at once, the rush of displaced air so strong it moved my hair where I lay on the ground, and the deep resonant sound building in three massive throats that turned the air above me hot.

"Don't—" I began, my hurt voice barely above a whisper.

But Nala, Jock and Kelin were already airborne, already diving, and the sky above Hades' palace had turned the colour of fire..