Hours. That’s how long it would take for us to lockdown the city from the outside. Hours we didn’t have unless the insideheld until I could make it to Ronan. That was the goal: bait him, humiliate him, shatter his ego until his focus narrowed to finding me. By then it’d be too late.
“Ready for this?” I asked.
“Not particularly, no, but here we are I guess.” Reina covered her nervous chuckle with her hand. Her horse shifted, and Hunter placed a calming palm on its flank. He glanced at his sister with quiet reassurance. There was every bit a chance they’d have to face their father though neither had the desire.
I had made the right call trusting him. As much as Serenity grated my nerves, they were good people to have in our corner. She worked effortlessly with all of them—Alexiares, Riley, Tomoe, Abel. Add in Tomás’s mind, the weapons he’d armed them with, and Isabella’s unit—maybe, just fucking maybe, we stood a chance.
Lola appeared with her coven, shadows shrouded in ghostly black.
She drifted toward us, her coven moving ahead without pause, but Lola’s focus stayed solely on Alexiares. Her hands framed his face, her touch awkward yet deliberate, like a mother unsure how to comfort her son. The embrace that followed was stiff, neither warm nor cold, heavy with unexpressed remorse. When she stepped away, she didn’t look back—and she wouldn’t.
I’d asked her to betray him after all.
“Anyone want to exchange goodbyes?” Tomoe quipped, her humor as morbid as ever. Tomás was the only one who laughed. I couldn’t bring myself to—she had hope. It was the only reason she’d make such a joke.
“Someone besides Tomoe say the last word before we dive headfirst into a creepy black hole,” Abel said, strapping the stabilizer Reina had crafted firmly to his arm. She watched him, a glimmer of pride in her eyes but also the loosening of breath. The device fit perfectly around his forearm, its matte blackplating sleek and snug, with thin lines of blue circuitry tracing its edges, faintly glowing like veins of light beneath his skin. One less fear she had to worry herself with—knowing he had that one extra way to protect himself on a battlefield that was not even under the best of circumstances.
Alexiares clapped him on the back and Abel cringed under his touch. “Sure. Don’t die. Let’s go.”
“Don’t die,” Abel muttered. “Right. Got it. I’ve only almost done that like three times since meeting you.”
“Okay, enough. Focus.” I willed myself to command their attention, but in all honesty, I could have lived in the moment of familiar banter forever. Wanted to replay it in my mind, to stay here. But I could not. We could not. And no moment, happy nor sad, could last forever. “Whatever happens once we enter the city … stick to the plan.Alwaysstick to the plan, no matter what.” I caught the crack in my voice, nearly slipping through—my only hope being that they remembered these words, carrying them with them forever. Through the highs and lows of life. They’d been said to me after all, and Prescott had molded the general that would bring peace.
“Be fierce. Be brave. Stay alive. You are strong.” I met each of their gazes, imprinting their faces in my mind. “You are capable, and we are finishing this today, together—always together even if we are fighting apart. It’s still the same fight. If you can still breathe, you damn sure can still fight. Remember that. Keep your eyes sharp and your wits about, and yeah, don’t die. Or I’ll kill you myself.”
Abel was the first to react—he snorted nervously as if he hadn’t expected me to crack a joke in a time like this. And I supposed he may not have. We hadn’t had the gift of time to find out how we fit together as a family in a time outside of complete despair.
“Very inspiring,” Tomás broke the ice, garnering a reluctant grin from Reina through her eyes betrayed the anxiety I knew rolled through my chest.
“You all talk too much.” Serenity shook her head. “Let’s move.”
They moved to join Isabella and Millie, now engaged in what appeared to be an incredibly one sided conversation with Lola. Most of her coven had accompanied her here, the others choosing to stay behind to protect their home. Many had answered what I teased to be a recruitment call, coming to St. Paul at her request when she promised to assist us, not yet signing up for war. Her coven had grown in size tenfold.
I truly hope they made it back to them after they guided us through. This was a sacrifice I hoped history would never forget. Tomoe walked between Tomás and Hunter, glancing over her shoulder at me with knowing eyes.
“No goodbyes,” Riley said.
“Never goodbye.”
He walked away, his hand brushing mine in a fleeting, almost unconscious goodbye, and then it was just Alexiares and me. The others faded into the periphery, their movements blurring into shadow. We didn’t speak—not at first. Those honey brown eyes that I’d despised made me melt. So sharp, so piercing as they held mine unguarded, letting me see the quiet storm that lay beneath.
My chest ached. I wanted to say everything—that I loved him, that I hated that it took twenty-seven wasted years to find him, that he was everything to me, the sun, the moon, the fucking galaxy and beyond. He was beautiful to me and I meant that purely in regard to the complexity of his soul. I wanted to scream to him that he needed to come back, to survive this because I could only imagine the world a bleaker place without him. Even if I wasn’t here, even if I didn’t have the luck in life to live outthose days with him. But all the words that could come to mind felt small. Hollow. I did the only thing I could.
I reached for him.
Alexiares’s hand slid into mine, and we stood there, frozen, as the world around us receded into nothingness.
“Alexiares,” I whispered, my voice barely carrying over the distance that didn’t really exist between us.
“Princess,” he said, his tone soft and edged with something close to reverence.
I squeezed his hand. “Use it all,” I said, my meaning heavy, pointed. He would understand when the time was right.
An arch of his brow was his only response, but it was enough. The portal ignited before us, a vast, black void, and without another word, we stepped forward together.
The portal flickered closed behind us. Alexiares and I released hands instinctively, both reaching for our weapons. Jax’s twin swords glinted in the morning light, their weight as familiar as the other blades lining my body.
A pristine city center stretched before our troops. Between the gleaming structures, freshly painted buildings, and pristine streets, I didn’t know what to focus on first—what disgusted me the most.
