Page 70 of Shadow Fall: Part Two

His answering smile was tired but so soft. “I’m glad to see you unharmed, too, Verena. You saved us.”

She scoffed, rolling her eyes even as her cheeks went pink.

“You did,” he insisted. “You took Cronus away, and gave Harvey chance to blast his shadows apart”

Her blush deepened. She shrugged. “I just threw one of Wyn’s weird magic things. It was nothing.”

My eyes went right to Wynvail, finding him fighting emotion as I expected. She called him Wyn. Harvey had last week, too. It was irrefutable proof that Wynvail was family, and ours. Wanted, loved. All the things Cronus told him he’d never be.

“You throwing Wyn’s magical shit was the reason I was able to kill Cronus,” I disagreed with Verena, perching on the edge of Wane’s bed. The chair was too far away. I needed to be here, feeling his breath on my skin, his warmth seeping through his leg into my hip.

Wane inhaled jaggedly, his stare snapping to me.

“He’s dead,” I said softly, sliding my palm along his cheek, stroking my thumb over one of his many scars. “I killed him. He can never hurt you again.”

“How?” he asked, his voice thick. Verena ducked out the door to find the others, but I gave Wane my full attention, keeping eye contact.

“Verena threw that gold sphere, do you remember it?” When Wane nodded, a furrow between his tired eyes, I said, “It made a world the size of a house, that’s what Wyn said—but it actually made a house that was a whole separate world. Cronus and I ended up there, but he wasn’t supersized and massively powerful. It was like the house levelled the playing field.”

Wane’s eyes filled with tears as I explained the rest, skipping over Cronus’s emotional torture and mind games when fear and horror entered Wane’s eyes—I never once mentioned what he told me about making Wane kill us—but by the time I reached the end, exploding him in the Damned Realm, Wane’s eyes shone with pride.

“You did it,” he breathed, his bottom lip wobbling. “You really killed him.”

“I really did. He’s gone.”

His throat bobbed, his expression so torn that Wyn reached for him too, squeezing Wane’s shoulder.

“I’m free,” Wane whispered, choking on hope and shock and relief. “I’m really free.”

WYNVAIL

“This place is as lovely as I remember,” I drawled, wrinkling my nose at the stench of piss, shit, sweat, and blood.

“It’s worse than I remember,” Haley replied, gripping my hand in a white-knuckled grip as we walked down the endless black corridor that ran under the Damned Realm. Solid doors alternated with the bars of cells on our left. Every now and then there were delightful puddles our boots splashed through, the light from my white magic, and the glow from Haley’s golden dagger, not reaching far enough into the dark to illuminate them.

I glanced at her dagger now, still not used to the way it shone with pure, radiant gold instead of blood-red. We’d all expected her magic to fade back to normal since she murdered Cronus three months ago, but nope, it was still as gilt and godly as ever. I was starting to wonder if my mate hadn’t elevated from a god descendent to a goddess herself. Halwen Vakhara, goddess of sarcasm, kindness, and knife fights.

“What are you thinking?” she asked, throwing me a strange look.

“That you’re a goddess and I want to worship you. But not here,” I added quickly. “We’d both get rabies, tetanus, and herpes, somehow all at once.”

She shuddered, edging closer to me as we walked as fast as possible. “I hate this place. I hate thinking of Wane being locked down here for a hundred years.”

I brought our joined hands to my mouth, brushed a lingering kiss over her knuckles. “I know. I hate it, too. I wish I could have done more.”

She gave me an understanding look and squeezed my hand. “You did everything you could. Cronus controlled you as much as he ever did Wane, don’t forget that. You were his prisoner too, just in a different way.”

My stomach knotted, the scars on my thighs burning even if they’d stopped causing me pain the moment he died. “I know. It just doesn’t feel right that I had Alphaven and Wane had this.”

Her eyes softened in the white-gold light. “I know. But he’s dead, and everything that’s done is done. You have to stop beating yourself up over things you couldn’t control, Wyn.”

I winced. “I didn’t mean to make this self-pity hour.”

She huffed, knocking her shoulder into mine lightly. “You’re allowed a little self-pity. We all are. And you know that’s not what I meant.”

My stomach squirmed when she gave me the look.

“Say it.”

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