A flame lit deep inside her, crackling and blazing.

  “After all the trouble these two brats gave me,” Pollux said, white wings glimmering with brute power, “I’m really going to enjoy killing them in front of you.”

  93

  Ruhn kept perfectly still as Brann and Actaeon, bound in gorsian shackles, were shoved to their knees before Pollux by those two imperial guards.

  The Hammer smiled at Lidia, who’d gone utterly still and pale. “I knew instantly that they weren’t mine, of course. No sons of my blood could be captured so easily. Pathetic,” he sneered at a seething Brann, who was sporting a bloody nose. The kid would take on the Hammer with his bare hands.

  Actaeon, however, watched Pollux carefully, though the boy was equally battered. His golden eyes missing nothing. Assessing all. Trying to find an opening.

  Lidia rasped, “Please.”

  Pollux laughed. “Too late for niceties now, Lidia.”

  Ruhn’s mind raced, sifting through every angle and advantage they might have. The math was damning.

  Even if Pollux lowered the gun pointed at Ruhn’s head, he still stood close enough to kill the boys with one strike. There was no way either Lidia or Ruhn could reach the boys in time, physically or magically. A bullet would be slower than the striking Hammer.

  And even with Tharion at Lidia’s side … No, there was no chance.

  “Go get Rigelus,” Pollux said to the two guards, not taking his gaze off Lidia, off Ruhn. “He’ll enjoy watching this, I think.”

  Without question, without so much as a blink at the atrocities they were leaving behind, the guards departed down the hall. Turned into the stairwell and out of sight.

  Tharion struck.

  A blast of water, so concentrated it could have shattered stone, speared for Pollux. Ruhn darted to the left as Pollux fired his gun. But not for him, he realized as the bullet raced, faster than it should have, borne on a wave of angelic power—

  Pollux dove aside, the plume of water missing his wing. But his bullet and power struck true.

  Tharion grunted, going down before Ruhn could see where the mer had been hit. Somewhere in the chest—

  As water dripped off the walls and ceiling around them, Lidia said, “Let them go, Pollux. Your quarrel is with me.”

  He snickered. “And what better way to destroy you? I suppose I can make one allowance: you can choose which boy dies first.”

  Brann snarled through his gag at Pollux, but Actaeon looked at his mother, eyes sharp, as if telling her to kill this asshole.

  “They’re children,” Lidia said, voice cracking. Ruhn couldn’t stand it—the pure desperation in her face. The agony.

  “They’re your children,” Pollux said, power flickering at his hand. “Ordinarily, I’d like to make this last a while, but sacrifices must be made in battle.” As if in answer, the very building around them shuddered. “I hear there are deathstalkers loose in here. Perhaps I’ll feed the brats to them.”

  “Don’t,” Lidia said, falling to her knees. “Tell me what you want, what I must do, and I’ll do it—anything—”

  Ruhn’s heart cleaved in two. For the boys; for her, debasing herself for this prick.

  He rallied his shadows. But if Tharion hadn’t been able to hit his mark …

  Pollux smiled at Lidia. “I always liked you on your knees, you know.”

  “Whatever you want,” Lidia pleaded. “Please, Pollux. I am begging you—”

  She’d do it. Give Pollux whatever he wanted.

  Her boys stiffened. Seeing that, too. Perhaps finally understanding what—who—their mother was. What had guided her all these years, and would continue to guide her in her final moments.

  Ruhn just saw Lidia. Lidia, who had given so much, too much. Who would do this without a thought.

  So Ruhn stepped forward. “I’ll trade you. Me, for them.”

  Any other opponent would have dismissed it. But Pollux looked him over with a cruel, hungry sort of curiosity.

  Ruhn snarled, saying the words he hadn’t dared voice until now, “She’s my mate, you fucker.”

  Lidia inhaled a sharp breath.

  Ruhn taunted the Hammer, “You want me to tell you how she said we measured up?” Crass, crude words—but ones he knew would strike the Hammer’s fragile ego.

  The blow landed. “I’ll kill the lot of you,” Pollux seethed, his beautiful face ugly with rage.

  “Nah,” Ruhn said. “You touch her or the boys, and your attention will be split. Giving me the opening I need to blast you to Hel.”

  He should have taken that shot when Tharion attacked. He’d wasted the mer’s blow—and now Tharion was lying on the ground, alarmingly still, blood leaking from a hole in his chest.

  “Ruhn,” Lidia warned.

  “But,” Ruhn went on smoothly, “you hand over the boys unharmed, you let them and Lidia and Tharion go, and I’ll walk right up to you. With no guns, no magic. You can pull me apart piece by piece. Take all the time you want.”

  “Ruhn,” Lidia’s voice broke.

  He didn’t look at her. Didn’t have the strength to see whatever was in her eyes. He knew she hated him for putting that bullet in her thigh—but it had been to save her. To keep them from this terrible fate that they’d all arrived at anyway.

  So he said to her, mind-to-mind, I love you. I fell in love with you in the depths of my soul, and it’s my soul that will find yours again in the next life.

  He shut off the connection between them before she could reply.

  Then Ruhn faced the white-winged angel, lifting his hands. “All yours, Hammer.”

  94

  Unarmed, Ruhn kept his gaze on the Malleus. “What’s it gonna be, Pollux?”

  Lidia’s sons were watching him closely. Lidia said nothing. But the Hammer looked toward her. “I don’t see why I can’t have everything I want,” the angel said. Then grinned at Ruhn. “Wait your turn, princeling.”

  It happened so fast.

  Pollux pivoted to the boys. Fixed his stare on Brann. Pure, brute power flared around the angel.

  Lidia screamed as Pollux unleashed a lethal spear of his power toward Brann.

  Ruhn couldn’t turn away. Didn’t want to watch, and yet he knew he had to witness this crime, this unforgivable atrocity—

  But Lidia ran, swift as the wind. Swifter than a bullet.

  Ruhn didn’t understand what he saw next: How Lidia reached Brann in time. How she threw herself over her son, knocking him to the ground as she burst into white-hot flames.

  They erupted from her like a brimstone missile, blasting Pollux off his feet. Not some freak accident or bomb, but fire magic, pouring out of Lidia. Searing from her.

  “Brann,” she was panting down at her son, the boy untouched by the flame, scanning his stunned face, tugging the gag from his mouth. “Brannon.” She stifled a sob around the boy’s full name, but then Actaeon was there, hauling his brother away as best he could with the bonds still restraining them.

  “What are you?” Ace breathed.

  Still panting, blazing with fire, Lidia said, “An old bloodline,” and got to her feet.

  It was Daybright, as Ruhn had seen her in his mind. She’d presented herself—her true self—to him all this time.

  “Get them out of here,” Lidia said to Ruhn, hair floating up in a golden halo, embers swirling around her head. “Get the mer to a healer.” It was a miracle that Tharion wasn’t already dead, given the hole blasted through him.

  Pollux got to his feet. “You cunt,” he spat. “What the fuck is this?”

  “Shifters, as they used to be,” Lidia said, fire rippling from her mouth. “As Danika Fendyr told me we were. Now free of the Asteri’s parasite.”

  Ruhn gaped at her. She was free of the parasite? She must have gotten that antidote, somehow—from Tharion?

  Lidia was glorious, wreathed in flame and blazing with fury.

  Pollux’s power surged again. “I’ll kill you all the same, bitch.”

  “You can try,” Lidia said, smiling.

  Pollux ran at her, striking with his magic. The hallway shook, debris raining down—

  A wall of blue fire leapt between them. Pollux collided with it, then stuck. A fly in a burning web.

  Lidia stalked toward the angel as Pollux struggled against the flames.

  “You signed your death warrant when you touched my sons,” she said. And exhaled a breath.

  Flame rippled from her mouth into Pollux’s flesh. The angel screamed—or tried to.

  Freed of any secrets, of any need to keep them, Lidia seemed to unleash all that she was. Ruhn could only watch as fire poured down Pollux’s throat. Into his body. Roasting him from the inside out until he was nothing but smoldering cinders, a pillar of brimstone standing mid-strike, mouth still open.

  She’d incinerated him.

  Lidia held out a finger. And poked the towering pillar that had once been Pollux.

  It sent Pollux’s ash-statue crumbling to the ground.

  Her sons got to their feet, shock stark on their battered faces. The knife in Ruhn’s boot helped him make quick work of prying open their gorsian shackles, but it was Actaeon who whispered to Lidia, “Mom?”

  She looked over a shoulder to her son. Her lips curved upward—at what he’d called her, Ruhn guessed.

  The palace shook again—whatever was going on outside, it had to be bad.

  “Get the mer to Declan to be healed. Even after taking the antidote, I don’t think Ketos’s own body can save him,” Lidia ordered. “And that’s the last vial of the antidote in his bag. My sister figured it out. Don’t jostle it, though—it’s volatile.”

  “Lidia,” Ruhn said, but her eyes blazed with true fire.

  “I need to help the others.” She launched into a run for the stairs. “Get my sons to safety, and we’re even. Save them, and I forgive you for shooting me.”

  She glanced back at her boys, and then vanished up into the palace. Into the battle-torn world beyond.

  * * *

  Lidia had known, even as a child, that she was pure power, and she’d kept that power buried in her veins.

  Not witch-power. She knew her flames were … different. Her father didn’t have them, either.

  She’d kept them secret, even from the Asteri. Especially from the Asteri. No other shifters had them, to her knowledge, and she knew what revealing them would mean: becoming an experiment to be pulled apart by the Asteri.

  Then she had run into Danika Fendyr, who had somehow learned things about Lidia’s paternal bloodline, and wanted to know if Lidia had any strange gifts. Fae-like, elemental gifts.

  She’d debated killing Danika then and there to keep the gift secret. And what else did Danika know—could she know about her sons?

  The shifters were Fae from another world, Danika had explained. Blessed with a Fae form and a humanoid one, gifted with elemental powers.

  It confirmed what Lidia had long guessed. Why she had named Brannon after the oldest legends from her family’s bloodline: of a Fae King from another world, fire in his veins, who had created stags with the power of flame to be his sacred guards.

  Lidia hadn’t mentioned any of that as Danika had filled her in on how they’d become shifters, and the Asteri’s experimentation with them on Midgard, which had eventually erased their pointed ears. She’d been glad when Danika had died, all her questions with her.

  No longer.

  After ingesting the antidote that her brilliant, brave sister had made, the fire had surged so close to the surface that she couldn’t deny it. Didn’t want to deny it.

  Flame rippled from Lidia as she raced out of the palace, through the city, and onto the battlefield beyond. Untethered, unconquerable.

  The dreadwolves scented her first, no doubt thanks to Mordoc’s keen bloodhound senses. Spotted her standing before the gates to the city. They knew her, even with the fire, and they raced for her in humanoid form, teeth bared. Mordoc led the pack, the hate practically radiating off him. Behind him, as always, ran Gedred and Vespasian, sniper rifles aimed.

  It was time for Lidia to clean house.

  “You—” Mordoc barked.

  Lidia didn’t give him the chance to finish. No longer would this male, Danika Fendyr’s sire, spew his vitriol into the world. He was done inflicting pain upon Midgard.

  Lidia turned Mordoc and the two snipers into ashes with a thought. Until all that remained of them was the molten silver from the darts in their collars, pooled on the ground. Another thought, and the pack of dreadwolves, now skidding to a halt in panic, met the same fate.

  Angels in the Asterian Guard shot from the skies, power blasting.

  Lidia obliterated them, too.

  Demons paused, their long-dead Fallen allies with them, mech-suits going utterly still.

  The Asterian Guard’s war-machines shifted directions and rumbled toward her, each mammoth tank armed with brimstone missiles. The angels manning them aimed their rifles at her and unleashed a barrage of bullets.

  Her fire a song in her blood, Lidia walked across the battlefield. Bullets melted before they could reach her.

  It was so much more natural than it had ever been. In the Cave of Princes, it had taken nearly all her concentration to douse the flames of the Autumn King around her companions. Only Morven had seemed to be surprised—the others hadn’t questioned how the flames had disappeared. There had been too much chaos for anyone to piece it together.

  Now her fire flowed and flowed. Her truth was freed.

  The war-machines halted. Angled their guns and bombers toward her. They’d wipe her from Midgard.

  But she’d keep going until the end. She didn’t look behind her at the palace, where she could only pray that Ruhn—her mate—was getting her sons to safety.

  For the first time in her miserable existence, she let the world see her for what she was. Let herself see all that she was.

  The missile launchers turned white-hot. Lidia rallied her flames. Even if she intercepted the missiles in midair, the shrapnel alone could kill her allies—

  There was one way to stop it. To get there first. Before the missiles launched. And take them all out, herself included.

  She began running.

  She wished she’d been able to say goodbye to her sons. To Ruhn. To tell him her answer to what he’d said.

  I love you.

  She cast the thought behind her, toward the Fae Prince she knew would keep her sons safe.

  The war-machines followed her movements with their launchers. They’d try to blast her into Hel before she could reach them.

  Emphasis on try.

  It had been a short life, as far as Vanir were concerned, and a bad one, but there had been moments of joy. Moments that she now gathered and held close to her heart: cradling her newborn sons, smelling their baby-sweet scents. Talking with Ruhn for hours, when she knew him only as Night. Lying in his arms.

  So few happy memories, but she wouldn’t have traded them for anything.

  Would have done it all again, just for those memories.

  Lidia dove deep, all the way into the simmering dregs of her power.

  The war-machines loomed, black and blazing with power. Ready for her. Launch barrels stared her down, brimstone missiles glowing golden in their throats.

  Lidia unleashed her own fire, ready for her final incineration.

  But before her flame could touch those war-machines, before the brimstone missiles could fire, the launch barrels melted. Iron dripped away, sizzling on the dry earth.

  And those brimstone missiles, caught in the melting machinery …

  The explosions shook the very world as the missiles ruptured, turning the war-machines into death traps for the soldiers within. They melted into nothing. The heat of it singed Lidia’s face, and amid the burning and billowing smoke—

  Three tiny white lights burned bright.

  Fire sprites. Simmering with power.

  Through the fire and smoke and drifting embers, Lidia recognized them. Sasa. Rithi. Malana. Blazing, raging with fire. They must have crept up unseen from behind enemy lines. Too small to be noticed, to ever be counted by arrogant Vanir.

  Another war-machine rumbled forward, rolling over the ruins of the front line.

  A stupid mistake. The metal treads melted, too, pinning the machine in place. Trapping the soldiers and pilots within it.

  They tried to fire their missiles at Lidia, at the three sprites now coming to her side, but they never got the chance. One moment, the war-machine was there, missile launchers primed with their payload. The next, the metal of the machine flared white, and then melted.

  Where the machine had been, a fourth sprite glowed, a hot, intense blue.

  Irithys.

  She lifted a small hand in greeting.

  Lidia raised one back.

  “We found her,” Sasa said to Lidia, breathless with adrenaline or hope or fear or all of them at once. “We told her what you and Bryce said.”

  Malana added as Irithys zoomed for them, leaving a trail of blue embers in her wake, “But it did not take much convincing to get her here.”

  “How did you know to come today?” Lidia asked as Irithys joined them, a blue star in the midst of the three shimmering lights of the others.

  Irithys grinned, the first true smile Lidia had seen from the Sprite Queen. “We didn’t. They reached me yesterday, and we talked long into the night.” A fond smile at the three sprites, who turned raspberry pink with pleasure. “We were still awake when Bryce Quinlan and Hunt Athalar’s video went out. We raced down from Ravilis, hoping to help in any way we could.”

  “We arrived in the nick of time, it seems,” Sasa said, nodding to the smoldering ruins.

  “We wouldn’t have wanted to miss all the fun,” Rithi added with a wicked smile.

  Irithys’s smile was more subdued as she studied Lidia. The queen’s flame set Lidia’s own sparking in answer. Dancing over her fingertips, her hair, in joyful recognition. “I sensed the fire in you the moment we met,” the queen said. “I didn’t think yours would manifest so brilliantly, though.”