Page 70 of Death God

Marlowe’s handsome face came into view. He opened his mouth to try to warn me, and a spear pierced his skull and came out of his mouth.

I screamed in terror and soul-deep agony.

Next, I was chained inside a sealed coffin deep within the earth. I knew that I wouldn’t escape again. I was being spelled to stay awake inside the coffin, staring at its low iron ceiling while counting every second to eternity.

I gasped for air. Icy fear and terror paralyzed my every fiber, and my own screams pounded in my ears.

This nightmare vision would come to pass if the horseman of war won.

No, no! I refused to accept this fucking vision as reality.

I wouldn’t allow death to take Marlowe from me.

I summoned my power in utter devastation, but it wouldn’t come to me at first. I fought with everything I had, kicking and screaming and cursing and threatening, until a firestorm burst out of me.

I used the flames to reweave the threads and spin them, fast and furious. I shoved the fates aside and reversed time.

I was Death. I was flame. I was even more, and I just had to believe in myself.

A blink, and I was no longer at the threshold of the Underworld, weaving in time. Crouching in the bowels of the dark tower, deep in enemy territory, I stared at the empty cell where my father had been trapped for over a century.

While grief battered me, a new hope also brewed in my middle. I’d come back from the Underworld holding time power—a gift not even granted to my father.

I just needed to ride out the rest of the night to let the transformation run its course. Then, in the morning, I’d be powerful enough to take on War.

I’d spear his head on the high wall as a welcome gift for my mate when he arrived with his army. That’d be glorious and poetic and romantic as well.

This was a gift my mate would appreciate.

“We gotta go, Pip!” Freckles called urgently as he tried to get me up. “The dark mages are coming. I feel them. We have to leave now!”

My court of spirits had also been screaming warnings at me. While I was in the middle of the power merge, they couldn’t get near me.

A sense of peril drilled into me.

The horseman of war was here.

But I was still too weak to move.

I managed to lift my eyelids to look at Freckles and mouthed, Leave me.

“Never,” he said. “I’m going to carry you out of here. You’ll be fine, Pip.”

Freckles scooped me up into his arms.

“Not so fast, mage.” The Alpha King spoke in the horseman’s sinister and smug voice from the shadows before he came into view, his purple eyes fixing on me, greed burning in them.

Spartoi had taken control. I couldn’t even sense a trace of Jared’s presence. The entity had shoved him aside like he was nothing.

A dozen powerful dark mages stood behind their dark lord.

The blood drained from Freckles’ face. The light mage put me down and stepped in front of me to shield me, spells ready on his fingertips.

“You won’t have her, horseman of war, the fallen and corrupted,” Freckles snarled.

That was the first time I’d heard the good-natured light mage snarl so viciously. He’d never even raised his voice before.

Despite his bravery and loyalty to me, he was no match for Spartoi and his minions. They were going to kill him in front of me. I couldn’t lose another friend. I couldn’t bear the thought of hearing Bangs wailing at the news of her brother’s demise. She’d already lost her apprentice who had died for me.

---