Echnid prowled toward us, each step reverberating through my bones. Spirits, the way he consumed the air made my stomach turn. Malakai was stone beside me.
“Everything on warrior land belonged to me first,” the god said.
I bit my tongue to keep myself from snapping that perhaps he should leave it to those he abandoned.
“Will you help heal the land, then?” I asked, much milder than the fire roaring in my veins. Something tapped against my power, sliding along my bones, as if wanting to know what those flames felt like. I scratched at the webbed gray Curse mark on the inside of my wrist as it pulsed.
“If my plans come to fruition, everything that has wronged us shall be healed.” The menacing curl of his lips and amusement in his voice did nothing to soothe my nerves.
“What is it you want from us?” I asked Echnid.
He swelled, white mist swirling around him and creeping across the marble floors. “I want to give you everything you dream of, Ophelia Alabath. I want you to bathe the world with the light of the warriors, to raise our people back to their rightful place.” He folded his powerful hands behind his back. “You deserve this. We could be the most righteous team any realm has ever seen.”
His words washed over me, commanding and tempting all at once. They pulled at some facet of me, a root planted so deep, I hadn’t known it was there.
And in the mist, I could see that world he spoke of, where warrior power was not suppressed. Where seraphs were never slain, and pegasus and khrysaor conquered the skies.
A small part of me wanted it, an inkling that bubbled slowly to life in my veins.
Echnid leaned closer. “I want you to be my partner as we lavish the warriors and creatures beneath my domain. To rule with me, restore the seraphs, vanquish those who betrayed me, and in turn, see your dreams come true.”
I held my breath as he spoke. White mist gathered around my ankles like shackles. I considered running, fleeing, taking Malakai and escaping the palace now, but the allure of Echnid’s power promised if I ran, it would find me. It would call me back where I belonged.
See your dreams come true.
What were my dreams? What could Echnid give me?
“How will you do that?” I asked.
Echnid assessed us for a long time, and I fought the urge to scratch at the Curse scar again. Finally, the god admitted, “There is much that has been left out of Ambrisk’s history. No truths of the Wars Among Gods that sent worlds to ruin have been told here.”
The Wars Among Gods?
“Why are you telling us this?” Malakai asked, his deep voice grounding.
Echnid steepled his fingers and eyed me. The mortal movement was so simple, but what he said next rattled me. “You and I are meant to be a team of fabled proportions, Ophelia. Forget all those beyond these mountains. I ask, what legacy do you want to leave behind?”
A legacy? I’d barely thought beyond today, beyond the battles we’d been fighting. WhatdidI want? I’d never hungered for power, but I’d been handed it. And with that power, I wantedto protect those within my rule. But it was so much more complicated than that.
As if Echnid heard my conclusion, he said, “Together, we will restore Ambrisk to the might it was meant to be before that war. We will dismiss the gods who damned me so they have no contact with my warriors, and open the bridges they caused to lock.”
Dismiss the gods?Could he do that?
“Won’t that only worsen the repercussions felt across all realms, including Ambrisk?” I asked, scratching at my Curse mark. Surely, altering godly magic could destroy worlds. They were in the very fabric of the universe. No one knew where the gods came from, but they had created realms. If their power was no longer tied to warrior magic, surely that would change everything?
But…something within me bubbled up. A morbid curiosity that almost wanted to see the gods suffer.
“Warriors never kept gods beyond me, so why should they be beneath their thumbs? Together, we will wrench this realm from my brother and sister gods for the greater good of all warriors.” That was it—what I needed. To help the warriors. Echnid paused as I drew closer to that conclusion. “What is it you desire? Together, we will reach it.”
Malakai’s hand landed on my elbow, the touch sending a pulse of awareness to my brain that shattered my trance with the god’s words, and a voice in the back of my mind cried,Nothing.
Echnid could not give me anything because my heart was beyond these walls. It was held in the hands of a man who’d escorted me through the darkness and promised to find me across any realm. It was serenaded not by mysterious, depraved magic but by late night laughter and teasing on moonlit beaches—by childhood bets and the scratch of a pen against parchment.Citrus and spice and the mountain air and warm amber specks in chocolate-brown eyes.
That love was sealed in the way his voice cracked as he said my name when Echnid pulled me through the rip in the air, and I would do anything to return to him. To benefit the greater good of the warriors withhimat my side. Those were my dreams—a life with him without any gods or Angels breathing curses into our blood.
I stored all of those vows deep within my spirit, in the place where myth magic had broken free. Beneath the feathers of my seraph wings and every tether to Angel magic, and I gave Echnid a small smile.
“I shall think about it,” I said, and Malakai’s hand tightened on my elbow.
