Page 105 of Merciless Is My Crown

“No, you should call me out when I’m making a mistake, although”—I glanced up through the hole—“not at the very last minute when we’re already committed.”

The air in the room shifted, tightened, then Zorander appeared exactly as we’d planned, pinpointing our location perfectly.

He spotted Carex’s headless, bloated carcass, his nose wrinkling before he tipped his head back to survey the sky overhead. “It’ll be dark in a few minutes.”

“Then we wait,” I said quietly, picking up a book on Fae war history, then another on ancient royal bloodlines, and two on arcane magic, until I had four stacked on the floor beside me.

The demolished room looked the same from when a rageful Raziel had thundered in on a sea of blue-black magic to save me.

One wall was entirely gone, books strewn everywhere, some burned, the others shredded…and then there was Carex’s body, picked over by the rats that no longer had a dungeon full of prisoners to gnaw on.

Good. A flash of grim, fierce approval went through me at this lovely bit of twisted revenge dealt out by the universe.

I was glad he was gone, but…

Some part of me wished I could have saved this city, too, along with its people. Now they were scattered across the three realms. That didn’t make me a liberator, it made me…I didn’t know what but something almost as bad as Carex.

Maybe worse since he never pretended to be anything other than a monster.

While I was busy pretending I wasn’t a monster at all.

“It’s time,” Zorander said roughly, backing away to give me space.

I cocked my head at the enormous skull. “Do you want to…I don’t know, look at it for a while longer?” I asked Raz softly. “This is, after all…you. Sort of.”

All of our skulls were down in those tunnels except for this one, brought up here to be put on display. Gattica, the god that was Raziel’s ancestor. Predecessor.

Whatever you called Gattica, he’d been huge, bigger than the rest of us, and just look at those fangs…so wicked and curved.

“No thank you. Once is enough.”

“Agreed.” I looked between them. “Ready? We don’t know how long we’ll have before she arrives. Could be minutes or hours.” But she’d come. For this, she would come.

Raziel sent a spiral of magic up to the gaping hole and closed it off, surrounding us in a cocoon of magic reinforced by a layer of Zorander’s shadows. Enough, we hoped, to keep those Reapers from swooping down on us.

I sent my magic crackling toward the skull, shadows thundering like a hammer swing, powerful enough to shatter bone, and shatter it did, sending slivers of yellowed bone across the floor at our feet until we stood in a sea of golden rubble.

But I wasn’t looking at the destruction. I was staring at Raziel.

“Do you feel any different?” I breathed, picking up the books and clutching them to my chest.

“Nope. Still the same old pain in your arse.” He grinned and something inside me relaxed. I’d argued with myself about this for hours, about the chances that if we destroyed the skull, it might somehow destroy Raz and…

Sometimes it was good to be wrong.

Zor’s head was tipped back, studying those airborne creatures, so dark I could barely make them out against the sky. But nothing came flying from the darkness ready to devour and shred.

Still, we’d be fools to relax our guard.

“So now what? Do we just…”

Raziel’s shields peeled back, the walls shuddering as a ripple of dark power thrummed through the air, sending me staggering backward, loose, oversized boots slipping on bone shards as the Oracle materialized in the center of the room, her back to the decimated skull throne.

“Anaria. I wondered when you’d slither back to the scene of your greatest crime.” The Oracle’s dark eyes dipped to the pile of books clutched in my arms. “I see you’ve come to retrieve some items for Torin.” Her gaze narrowed. “Or are those for you?”

“Too bad you’ll never know.” I tipped my chin higher.

She was hideously beautiful with her dark, devouring gaze, those cherry-red lips, and perfect white skin. Was this truly the magic restoring her to her previous form…or an illusion?

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