CHAPTER 193

CHAPTER 193
The fire hit him before he could move.

All three of them at once, converging from different angles, and the sound it made was enormous, filling the entire space above the palace with heat and light and Hades' furious roar as the flames drove him back three full steps.

"Go back!" I screamed loudly despite the intense pain I felt, dragging myself upright on shaking arms. "I said go back, all three of you, right now!"

"We heard you the first time," Jock snarled, diving again. "We're choosing not to listen."

"Jock!” I growled, fear coating my insides.

"Save your breath Celeste dear," Kelin cut in, banking hard to avoid a wall of darkness Hades threw upward. "You can be angry at us later. But please start running."

“Run? You think I'll leave you guys here and run?”

I was already on my feet, strength came from desperation and I was back in the fight.

But instead of facing Hades, his Thornicks surrounded me, further alienating me from my Tamzyns.

I fought harder but I was no match for these beasts, especially since their master had beaten the shit out of me.

Hades spun toward the Thonicks, his voice cutting across the chaos like a blade.

"Hold her down! Don't break anything I'll need later!"

The Thonicks swarmed me before I could move, too many, driving me back to the ground with a weight I couldn't push through in the state I was in. One drove a knee into my back and I screamed, the cracked rib singing white hot agony up my entire left side.

"Get off me!" I drove an elbow back hard, caught someone across the jaw, felt them loosen for half a second and tried to wrench free but two more replaced the one and I went flat again, cheek against the stone, watching the battle above me through a blur of pain.

Hades and the Tamzyns tore across the sky, fire and darkness colliding in bursts that sent shockwaves down through the ground beneath me. Nala was fast, brutally fast, cutting angles I didn't even know she had, and for a few breathless seconds I watched her drive Hades back again and something wild and desperate rose in my chest.

Then I made the mistake of hoping.

A waste of emotions because he was rebounding, shoving clouds of dangerous smoke through their nostrils and I heard a panicked screech from Jock.

"Hades!" I screamed up at him, fighting against the hands holding me. "Hades, stop! I'll go with you, I'll stop fighting, just leave them alone, please, they have nothing to do with this!"

He didn't even look down at me.

"You're weak, exhausted and basically powerless, you'll go with me anyway," he snarled, throwing a wall of darkness at Kelin that caught him across the wing and sent him spinning. "So what exactly are you offering me?"

"I mean it! Call them off and I'll walk into your palace right now, no more resistance, I swear it!"

That made him look at me.

His expression wasn't cruel exactly. It was something worse than cruel, the look of someone who found the entire situation faintly ridiculous.

He tilted his head. "Celeste. You're going to do all of those things regardless. I don't need to bargain for something I've already won."

"Then why are you still hurting them?!" My voice cracked completely, all the pretence of composure gone. "If you've already won then call them off! There's no point, you don't need to do this!"

"I don't need to," he agreed, turning back to the Tamzyns, darkness building around his hands again. "But they came into my home and attacked me in my own domain and I am the god of the Underworld, not some inconvenience to be swatted away by oversized lizards." The darkness erupted outward. "So no. I don't think I will. In fact, I'm going to kill two of them and then seeing as you love these large lizards so much, I'll keep one to use to keep you obedient. Now stay there, I have work to do."

The roar he unleashed shook the ground beneath me.

It hit Jock first, full in the chest, and he went down with a crash that I felt in my bones. Kelin took the edge of it and slammed into the palace wall, sliding down in a heap, his wing bent at an angle that made my stomach turn.

Nala screamed.

Not through the bond. Out loud, a sound of pure fury that split the air, and she folded her wings and dropped into a dive aimed directly at Hades, everything she had, no hesitation, no strategy, just rage and love and the absolute refusal to watch this happen.

"NALA!" The scream tore out of me as I watched the horror unfold. "No, go back, go back right now—"

She didn't hear me or she heard me and didn't care and I grabbed the only thing I had left, driving my hands against the stone beneath me and pulling the earth up with everything I had, trying to take the ground from under him, trying to stop him before she reached him—

The earth listened.

It cracked open beneath Hades and swallowed him whole and Nala hit it a half second later, her dive carrying her straight into the gap before I could stop it, before I could pull back what I'd already released, before anything could be undone.

The bond went silent in a way I had never felt before and didn't have a word for.

Hades rose from the earth thirty feet away, shaking stone from his shoulders, completely unbothered.

Nala didn't rise.

The ground where she had gone under was still. Just stone. Just silence. Just the space where she had been a moment ago, alive and furious and diving toward me with everything she had.

I was looking at the ground.

Just looking at it.

Waiting, hoping, praying to every god within reach.

Somewhere behind me I could hear Hades saying something to the Thonicks, heard Jock making a broken sound through the bond, heard the distant noise of everything continuing around me.

None of it reached me because the realization hit harder than any blow I've gotten throughout this ordeal.

I killed her.

I killed her.

I killed Nala.

A Thornick grabbed my hair and wrenched my head back and I looked up at the sky above Hades' palace, dark and endless, and I felt something inside me shift.

And then shatter.

All the power my mother and Pelagius had given me were depleted, but this loss unlocked something I never thought existed in my veins.

The sun.

And Hades was about to find out why he shouldn't mess with the daughter of the Sun.