Page 73 of Crimson Skies

The hound whined and dropped the gory skull in its jaws before wagging its tail sheepishly.

Unease flitted through Tenebra as she observed the battlefield around them. It had been three hours since the war started. Only a fraction of the dark God’s army remained. She lowered her brows.

Hecate is wrong. He should have been here ages ago.

Orena’s words echoed her feelings.“With the power he wields, he should have found a way to this realm within the hour.”

Tenebra met her sisters’ grim gazes. “Let us regroup with Atropos and Cassius.”

Hecate hesitated before nodding curtly.

Pan and Pyri followed them as they rose toward where the Moira and the Awakener aided Styx and Acheron as they battled the Gods of the Underworld who’d backed Elios.

Tenebra’s scalp prickled when they were halfway there. The apprehension churning her gut deepened into a dark foreboding as her godly senses picked up on the anomaly around them. The others halted when she stopped and swept their surroundings with a vigilant frown, their expressions equally perturbed.

“What is that?” Kes murmured.

Tenebra’s pulse quickened with growing dread. “We need to hurry!”

31

Morgan whirledaround as the air thickened with corruption.

Something deadly was coming. He could feel it in the most primitive part of his brain. His eyes found Cassius as the same awareness throbbed from his soulmate through their bond.

Cassius turned and met his stare across the distance that separated them where he floated high up in the sky. The look in his eyes drenched Morgan in a cold sweat.

No!

He arrowed toward his lover on a burst of preternatural speed. He knew instinctively that if he didn’t get to Cassius in the next few seconds, he would lose him forevermore.

A sound portending the end of worlds tore across the realm of man with his next heartbeat. The abrasive din set Morgan’s teeth on edge and nearly burst his eardrums. He clenched his jaw and accelerated.

Oppressive murkiness swamped the atmosphere.

Morgan glanced upward at its source. His throat tightened. He slowed despite himself.

A crack that looked just like the one Cassius had opened in the Nether five hundred years ago was ripping the sky asunder.

Elios emerged from the growing rift inside a mantle of boiling darkness that stank of the Hells. Bile burned the back of Morgan’s throat.

Spinning around the God of Darkness in a sickening dance were the demonic versions of the five artifacts his alchemists had created using Atropos and her sisters’ divine energy and blood. The objects were as dark as the God who wielded them, their surfaces throbbing with a sinister pulsation that absorbed what little light remained from the air.

“It’s over, Icarus!” Elios jeered. “The Abyss is opening!”

Atropos clenched her fists where she hovered beneath Cassius, her face tight. Cassius watched Elios calmly.

Morgan swallowed. This was the moment they’d all been waiting for. The moment when Elios would bring Chaos to Earth. When their fate and that of all the realms would be decided.

An unbearable sense of loss swamped him with his next breath. He gasped, tears welling in his eyes and overspilling his cheeks.

His gaze locked on Cassius as he touched the unexpected wetness, confused. The soft smile on the demigod’s face drew a tortured sound from his throat.

“I’m sorry, my love,” Cassius said gently. “I hope you find it in yourself to forgive me, one day.”

Ice filled Morgan’s veins.No! Please, no!

Something was breaking inside him. The sacred bond that tied him to Cassius slowly unraveled as his lover prepared to let him go.

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