Page 36 of Shadow Fall: Part Two

"I'm sorry," I mouthed, and beat my wings hard, carrying me through the stormy sky to the fallen titan.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

One second, drizzle sluiced my hair to my cheeks, the next the dark clouds tore open in a furious downpour and I screamed as wind threw me from the sky. It wasn't an ordinary storm; magic was already heavy in the air, and now it lit up every cloud in ominous sapphire, emerald, and dark, bloodstain red. Somewhere, below, my mates were roaring at the sky. Terror, urgent and barbed, ripped through every one of their souls. Had Wynvail already told Em and Kai?

A shiver went down my spine at the thought of Kai's rage, but I scanned the storm of magic and homed in on a dense shadow stretching across the ground. Cronus. My heart skipped, but I couldn't let my fear get to me now.

We're so close. He's almost dead.

I slammed a wall down on my soul, blocking out the howling panic on the other side of my tethers. They knew the plan. We weren't splitting up, not really. All I had to do was slice Cronus open long enough for Lili and the gods to reach inside him and pull out anyone left alive, and then I'd be back with my mates.

Two minutes, I assured myself, and ignored the delusion in that promise. Five, tops.

I snapped my dark wings to my side and dove towards that enormous dark figure splayed on the ground. A burst of dawn light split the storm for a moment, long enough for me to see two dozen angel soldiers and armoured gods wrestling to keep the titan down. Cronus was wrapped in vines and shadow and silver thorns, scythes and stakes driven through his hands and feet to pin him to the ground, so much magic choking him that I coughed as I plummeted through the rain clouds.

For a second, the wind tugging at my feathers threw me back to the Labyrinth, and I was falling helplessly, unable to save myself or my mates. But I clenched my jaw and fixed my eyes on Cronus's featureless face as he thrashed. I wasn't in the Labyrinth. He wouldn't send me there ever again.

I was close now, so close I could see the individual soldiers as they swarmed around the titan, more and more piling on with magic and weapons. My mates had to be down there. The gods had reached him first with their superior magic, but we'd been on the front line. Fear doused me, colder than the storm.

I snapped my wings to drive myself faster and cut through the remaining distance like a bullet. My attention snagged on a woman stalking through the ranks of gods and warriors towards Cronus's head, a broadsword in her hands. Lili. My wings faltered, my whole body jerking in shock, when she lifted the massive sword above her head and drove it, point down, through Cronus's skull.

It should have killed him. I knew the age of gods was over and he'd crowned this the second golden age of titans, but that blow would have killed anyone. Anything.

Except a monster who'd devoured hundreds of people and their magic. Including my mum's.

Rage clenched my teeth until they threatened to crack. Give 'em hell, Halwen.

Yes, my soul purred, blood pounding in my ears. Justice, it snarled, justice...

I held my breath as the ground flew up towards me, rain-dark and already slick with blood. Would mine join it?

The wind got hold of me when I snapped my wings out, flipping me so suddenly that I couldn’t stop it. The whirlwind was terrifying, my mind too slow to correct my course for long, long moments.

My body finally righted itself metres from the ground, and my boots slammed into stone—too hard, too fast. My knees buckled. My stomach flipped. I couldn't afford to be weak in a moment like this.

A gentle hand caught my elbow and steadied me on my feet, and I turned with blood ringing in my ears, staring into an unfamiliar face. The man was younger than me and short, clean shaven and pretty with tanned skin, golden curls, and blue eyes so bright they hit me with a physical heat. He looked like a teen heartthrob.

"Hello, niece," he said with a smile.

I ripped my arm out of his hold at the tone of his voice—the menacing amusement and cruelty of every bully I'd ever met.

I slammed my fist into his stomach when he advanced on me and ripped my volcanic dagger from its sheath, holding it up in warning.

Golden Boy blinked, all innocence and offence. I didn't buy it. "Why would you need a knife? I'm family, after all." He drew another step closer, and then another, crowding me back against—against Cronus's prone form. Shit, whoever this asshole was, he’d trapped me against one of Cronus's onyx ribs until I had nowhere to go.

Well, nowhere to go but through him.

"You get one warning," I told him. "And you only get that because we're apparently family, and I have a serious shortage of that."

The heartthrob smiled, but no matter how pretty he was, there was something wrong with him, evil oozing from those baby blues. "I'm Eros, your uncle. I’ve wanted to meet you ever since I heard you survived the battle of Olympus. How did you manage it, when even Aphrodite was slain?"

I spat on the ground at the mention of that raging bitch. "Good riddance."

Eros's blue eyes flashed with so much light and danger that I considered crawling across Cronus’s body just to escape. It wasn't the same evil I'd seen in Iapetus, but it was the hunger and malice I saw every time I looked at Cronus. He wanted to beat me to a pulp and dance in the gore I left behind.

"Aphrodite is a thousand times the woman you are, a thousand times the warrior you are. You are nothing." He shoved me into Cronus's body, and I inhaled a sharp breath when magic lashed me—shadow but unfamiliar, and far more painful to touch than any I'd felt before. He'd twisted Wane's shadow, polluted it with his own vileness. I gritted my teeth and whipped up my dagger, holding it under Eros's chin as he advanced until he was touching me. My stomach twisted.

Who the fuck did this guy think he was? Sure, he was Eros, god of love and sex or whatever the fuck else. I was Halwen, criminal and murderess, and I had a knife that killed gods.

---