“Holy fucking Spirits,” I breathed.
“What’s happening?” Jezebel called, her voice pure steel.
“I don’t know,” I shouted as magic crackled against my skin. “Keep going!”
We were on a familiar murky plane, our pegasus and khrysaor still beating their wings as if entirely unfazed. It was like the first time we’d traveled to that bridge, after I’d ingested the power from Kakias during the final battle of the war and our myth magic had fully manifested.
Only this time…
This time, it didn’t seem like one bridge.
No, under the clashing powers of gold and silver lights was a giant intersection of them. At least five spanned off into the universe. At this end, Ambrisk upheld the beating heartof all magic. The Balance Realm. But at the others…Winged creatures among endless cliffs and weeping stars in eternal slumber. Towering, glass-made buildings and crumbling statues that reached to mountainous heights. Fiery realms shrouded in stone, forms locked behind glimmering iron bars, and shadows that spiraled higher than the heavens.
I couldn’t keep them straight. Not as my magic twined and snapped with Jezebel’s, the air around us cracking with silver and gold lightning. Not as they flooded the entire junction, and Ambrisk’s strength pulsed incessantly at our backs, a heart of magic begging to break free, to seep through these veins into other worlds.
This. This was what Echnid wanted. What he was going to open. All of these bridges to other realms, powers mingling and raising curious heads. And Ambrisk was fighting to open that gate. Her magic pushed against my skin, trying to shatter the bars of isolation our realm had been trapped in for so long.
The mountains across the bridges quaked. The stars blinked rapidly as the edges of windows to other realms started to curl and wither.
And I could see what would happen if the veil was permanently peeled back. The worlds would crumble. That was the might of the Balance Realm. Why it was locked.
If given free reign, the magic of Ambrisk woulddevourthe realms.
Echnid couldn’t be allowed to do that.
Jezebel and I continued to flood mythos power into the Vincienzo dagger, and I gritted my teeth against the fear of realms falling. It fueled my steel will. My vendetta against Echnid no longer only my own.
“I’m running low,” Jezebel panted, her hair whipping across her face in the roaring wind tunnel of the bridges.
“When I saynow, we let go, okay?”
Jez nodded, lips pressed tight and profile bathed in silver as she held on for these final seconds. As we gave everything we could over to this blade that was our last hope in slaying a god.
And with the final burst of magic, a crippling wave of gratitude shuddered over me with the torrent of gold and silver light burning in the sky.
I met my sister’s eye. “I love you, Jezzie!” I shouted, voice lost among the roar of magic.
Beyond words, I loved her.
From the moment the false Curse appeared on me, Jezebel had stood by my side. She’d pushed me when I was most stubborn, shook me awake when I was fading beneath my own sadness, and suffered losses, hand-in-hand by my side. We may have been the warrior sisters born of myth, a legacy returning to Ambrisk when they were needed most, reincarnated between lifetimes, but strip away all those legends, and I was simply grateful forher.
She mouthed,I love you, too.
And then, I shouted, “Now!”
Our magic whirled through the air, snapping back to our bodies with the force of a hurricane as the desert rematerialized below. Gold flooded the air around me, and I pressed up on Sapphire, reaching for the Vincienzo dagger as it fell.
And as my fingers latched around the handle and I landed back atop my pegasus, the ravenous power ebbing up the blade thrummed through my blood, ready to end a god.
Chapter Seventy-Five
Tolek
There was power within me.In every step I took, in every look I cast at a passing warrior fleeing the city or charging into battle with such an innocuous fury that didn’t make sense with the calm in my mind.
Calm and emptiness. No pain, though deep, deep down it was there, lifting its head with stifled aggravation. And bolts of vibrant light kept knocking on that door.
They were all fools to run. Didn’t they understand they’d lost? By letting things like love command their actions, defend their hearts, they’d built their own pyres. By relying on anything other than themselves and the vast ether of Ambrisk, they’d opened the gates.
