Forty-Four
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Logan
M y blade blocked Tobias’s massive tail. He hissed, and the crown
around his head flared in anger. The dead he’d reanimated, even the
ones with broken and missing limbs, screamed as they charged.
I rolled away, and Neverra leaped forward, cutting at the snapping jaws of the great beast.
“You move like Samkiel,” Tobias bellowed at Dianna. “He taught you something when he wasn’t trying to get between your legs?”
“I swear, you all have a bigger hard-on for him than I ever did!” she screamed back, chopping two of the burned undead creatures in half.
She was skilled, but blood loss had slowed her down. Neverra took one look at her and her blood-soaked clothes when we first arrived and rushed in head first. Now I knew why. Regardless of Dianna’s cockiness, I could feel it too. Her power, normally so bright, full, and violent, was dwindling.
It was no longer a burning blaze but a smoldering ember, and Tobias wanted to extinguish it.
“You really think you can kill me?” Tobias asked, his baleful glare sweeping over us. “You are no gods.” His massive tail whipped toward us.
Neverra leaped out of the way, clinging to the wall nearest her. “You. You are nothing.”
The cerulean lights on my skin glowed a shade deeper, and I strode across the floor toward Neverra. The dead fell in pieces beneath my sword, my fury a cold, controlled thing now. Flames roared behind me, the heat scalding. Tobias screamed in pain and then roared, Dianna pulling his attention back to her. I landed right under Neverra, catching her as she jumped down.
“I’m okay,” Neverra said, pressing a kiss to my lips before wiggling out of my arms and summoning her blade.
Tobias tossed a large stone at Dianna. It crashed against the wall, the remains of the building shook, and debris rained all around us. I pulled Neverra into an alcove and curled my body over hers, protecting her from the metal and wood pelting us. The dust was so thick it was almost blinding, and every breath had become a struggle. This place wouldn’t hold. Not with him acting like a battering ram.
“I told you to leave,” Dianna hissed, and my head snapped toward her.
She was next to us, having moved so fast I hadn’t even seen her. She kneeled, peering from the makeshift shelter we’d found. Blood trickled from her head, making her inky black hair even darker. The rocks he’d tossed hadn’t missed completely. She looked rough, her shoulder mauled and the stab wounds on her side still open. With the way her blood flowed, I could tell she wasn’t healing, her body burning through her powers to keep
itself going.
Fuck.
Tobias roared and slammed his tail against the wall. The undead swarmed through the building, searching for her.
I grabbed her sleeve, turning her toward me. “We can’t beat him. You’re too hurt, Dianna. We need a god. We need Samkiel.”
“No.” she snapped, her eyes blazing. She jerked away from me. “Just let me think.”
“Think?” I shook my head. I already knew the outcome. “We don’t have time to think.”
Dianna raised her bloody hand, telling me to shut up, but remained focused on Tobias.
Neverra shifted against me. “Dianna. We need a plan. Logan drained a lot of energy healing me. We can help but—”
“No!” she snapped at Neverra, her eyes wild and feverish. “I can do this. I need to do this.”
I knew what she meant and how important this was for her, for the sister she’d lost, but we were up against a King of Yejedin with no god in sight.
No matter how strong we were, it took a god to defeat a king. We needed Samkiel regardless of what she wanted or how she protested.
I knelt, rocks biting into my knee. “Dianna—”
Neverra cut in, not giving Dianna a single inch. “You can’t do everything alone.”
Dianna’s head whipped toward us, something primal and devastating flashing across her features.
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