The fate grins. “But is that all?”
And then, she’s gone and so is my moment. My wasted moment. Because I still know there are pieces to all of this I don’t understand.
“Want to take this outside?” I challenge.
Trevor glances from the bound godslayers back to me. “After you.”
“Reid…” I ignore Izzy, knowing that the only move we have right now is to get away from the innocents that they could hurt.
Every muscle in my body is tense as I walk past the godslayers, Izzy and the guys following closely behind me. I lead us to the scorched earth from Wilder’s loss of control with the god. Outside, the air smells of rain. Aiden’s clouds gather in the sky and the threat of a powerful storm seems to surround us.
We stop when we reach the center of the scorched earth, and we turn in a line, facing our enemy. Somehow, it feels like this is the moment everything has been leading to since we became gods. I don’t know that we’ll win, but I do know that I wouldn’t trade anything for this time we’ve had together.
Our time with Izzy.
“Gods,” Trevor says, his tone mocking. “Get ready to go back where you belong.”
I sense the Underworld beneath my feet. I sense the many souls, the many creatures waiting to obey my every command. And I level my hands with the ground, feeling them all, and then silently calling forth my realm.
The earth responds in an instant, shaking, cracking, and splitting around us. Everyone gasps. The godslayers ready their weapons against a force they can’t possibly stand against. Hel whispers warnings in my mind that I can’t focus on, and dark creatures leap forth from glowing cracks in the earth’s surface.
I smile. “You made a mistake.”
“You made a mistake,” Trevor says, but his smile is gone.
Suddenly, a woman shimmers into existence beside him. A woman that feels both like a stranger and like someone I’ve known all my life. She’s the same age as us, with caramel blond hair that whirls around her shoulders and a wildness to her eyes that I find frightening. She lifts a hand toward me, and suddenly, I can’t breathe. I can’t move. My underworld and my powers feel far away.
The godslayers lift their hands toward me, and I’m blinded by a golden light. I hear the shouts of my friends. I hear Izzy scream, but I can’t see any of them.
And then, I’m somewhere else.
The world around me is dark. I’m floating, touching nothing and everything.
“You failed.”
I jerk and turn to look behind me. Hel is there in a way she never has been before. She floats in the same dark space that I do. Her dark beauty is dimmer in this strange, sad place.
“What do you mean?” I ask, and my voice sounds far away.
She gives me the saddest smile. “You’re trapped here with me now, Reid.”
“No.” The word slips past my lips.
She nods. “And soon, all your friends and the other gods will return to this place too.”
My stomach turns. “No. No. How could this happen?”
“Because,” a tear slides down her pale cheek, “they did the one thing none of us saw coming.”
“What?”
She closes her eyes. “They allied with other gods.”
Chapter Thirty
Izzy
The second after Reid disappears, the storm raging across the sky intensifies.
“Where did he go?” Aiden shouts at them, his hammer gripped in one hand, his chest heaving.
Trevor grins instead of answering. Then lightning sizzles across the sky, filling the air with the scent of electricity and ozone from the storm. He glances up, his grin faltering.
Right before he’s struck by lightning.
The girl who floats in the bubble of magic, her hair drifting through the air all around her, watches his jerking body, watches him fall.
Then, almost lazily, she stretches out her hand toward Aiden, and in a second, he’s gone too.
Fear and fury washes over me. I don’t know if they’re gone or if there’s a way to save them, but I pity anyone who gets between me and my men.
There’s something in her hand--a small golden box--and I cue in on it. What is it that she’s carrying? Is it some kind of weapon she’s using against us?
Or, since they disappeared, does she somehow move them somewhere else?
She turns her face and I realize with a wave of shock she looks eerily like me, with her floating caramel blond hair around a familiar face.
She stretches out her hand toward me, the same way she did to Aiden, magic crackling across her fingertips. Maybe she’s mimicked my appearance somehow. There’s no time to make sense of it, not as magic ripples toward me.
I transform into a snake, dropping into the grass just as her magic slams into the place I was just standing. I slither rapidly through the grass toward her and as her gaze finds me, I jump up from the grass, transforming again, and land on my feet as Izzy.
Van’s sword flies toward her, and she raises her hands, bringing a sheet of magic with them. The sword glances off, then returns to Van’s hand, drawn by his magic. She flashes me a look that’s full of hatred and contempt, something horrifying to see on a face so like my own.
“Look at the box,” I call to Van and Wilder. “She’s trying to hide the box from us. I think she’s got Aiden and Reid in there somehow, or she used it to take them somewhere else.”
Like the hell the gods promised we would find ourselves in if we made any mistakes.
Well, I’m not leaving my men in hell.
Van nods in understanding and moves toward her, throwing his sword again. But she’s too fast. She raises her shield, and the sword bounces off. Then she raises her hand toward Van.
But he already expects that. I can see it. He somersaults forward and she just misses him, her magic blasting where he was a second before. It looks like part of the universe was torn out behind him, like there’s a darkness where he was, and then it’s gone.
“Go with me,” Wilder shouts, and a sweet memory rises: all of us playing soccer as kids.
They’re going to make a run at her together, trying to distract her.
“Izzy,” Wilder calls, giving me a look, and I know what he wants me to do.
She turns toward me, her eyes blazing with fury and hatred.
My fury blazes right back. She’s taken my men and I want them back.
As she blasts her magic at me again, I soar into the air, transforming into a pegasus. I fly toward her and she blasts me again, but I drop into the grass as a toad, and she turns to the guys in frustration. They’re both moving toward her so fast that she hesitates as she decides who to attack, realizing she might not have time to put both of them in her box.
I leap through the grass toward her. She never even sees me moving ever closer as she fires at Wilder. He ducks her first blast, and he grins that irrepressible grin of his.
She aims a second blast at him and this one, he doesn’t manage to duck. He tosses his spear toward Van.
Then Wilder is gone, ripped out of the universe, and my heart is too.
But we have to keep going.
Van plucks the spear from the air. I understand what Wilder thought--even if they sacrifice themselves for me, I can sneak closer and closer to her, always changing forms.