He tightened his arms around her and launched them both at Nergal. She grabbed the head of the staff just as Nergal put his hand around her throat and Grizz tried to crush Nergal’s head into pieces.
As her vision wavered, Val knew she wouldn’t have the strength to hold out. Talon, the shifters, everyone would die.
Including Khent.
The thought of his dark gaze never looking upon the world again hurt. She knew Khent wasn’t afraid of death. A warrior and scholar in any form, Khent would endure and thrive even.
But Nergal wouldn’t let him or any of the others go to their peaceful afterlives. He’d trap them all in his gray doom for eternity.
She refused to let that happen.
Instead, she let the memory surface, the one she’d kept suppressed since she’d first been enspelled to forget. Yet it had never faded, just been ignored.
A deal from a being who wanted to come back.
A life for a life, Nergal had proposed. The same proposition the being inside her offered.
Yes,she whispered to the being before passing out.
And the world shuddered as the Liminalities across the cosmos yelled as one, “No.”
CHAPTER
FORTY-SEVEN
Khent appearedin the bazaar to…nothing.
No sounds, no smells, just gray mist filling the spaces between demolished buildings. He didn’t see a living creature, including his mate.
Flying around and looking down didn’t help, so he shifted into his man’s form as he landed, trying to see better from the ground.
He released a hold on his senses, and his new wings flared out from his back automatically. Something bad had happened here. Something that pulled Irkalla out of its tidy portal into consuming the Mundane world, centered in the bazaar.
But where had Valentine gone? Talon? Grizz?
He opened his senses and followed a source of energy to a dark void near a destroyed section of tents in the inner circle of the bazaar. To his bemusement, he noticed spots of fluid and chunks of what used to be people on the ground.
The Staff of Blight had definitely been here.
Yet no Nergal or Vladimir?
Feeling for Valentine, connected to her by energy, he felt a slender tether remaining when he should have felt her vibrant lifeforce instead.
Worried and displeased to be worried, he snarled and followed the trail through the void.
Into Irkalla.
Or what used to be Irkalla.
The monotony of shadows, ghosts, and pale demons had shifted in an odd way, like the piece of a puzzle that isn’t quite fitting yet still sits in a place it doesn’t belong.
Khent walked through a large, empty cavern, his footsteps a muffled echo soon muffled by?—
He spun and would have killed his attacker. Only to find Rolf poised to fight back.
“There you are.” Rolf huffed. “I’ve been looking for you.” He paused and looked around. “What the hell is this?”
“Irkalla, apparently.”
