“Choose, Niérian.”
“Ask me,” I forced out. “Ask me the truth.”
His voice was hard when he spoke. “I don’t have to.”
He stood and faced Ephyra, his left hand fisted, still holding the pearls. Tiny spider veins of gold appeared through the skin. He lifted his hand and opened his palm, eyes fixed on his prey.
The Circe’s eyes went wide. So did mine.
The blood vessels in Hank’s hand and wrist shimmered gold, the power of the words filling him, sweeping up his arm. It took my breath away, and I knew this was one of those images branded into my memory forever.
* * * He’d whipped her. The barb had rent the gown from her shoulder, exposing her back and the mark she bore. The mark like his. He knelt next to her. He knew what it was, and yet . . .
“Finish her.” Ephyra’s command shivered through him.
He went to place a hand on her broken body. Pushing her off the ledge would be such a simple thing and then he’d find peace.
The serenity he’d glimpsed and longed for so many times called to him, beckoned him stronger than any siren lure.
Just do as asked and then it’d be his. Or he could kill Ephyra instead.
He wanted to scream with this war inside of him. This fucking indecision.
Niérian. Hank.
Who the fuck was he?
Did it even matter now?
And then she placed the words into his hand. His fist closed tighter over the pearls. The tighter he squeezed, the hotter they became.
“Choose, Niérian,” he heard the voice of the Circe call to him amid the oracle’s constant utterings and the ragged breathing of the woman next to him.
The indecision pulled on his mind, stretching it out like a rubber band as far as it would go and then snapping back, breaking, opening, flooding with something new. Warmth surged from the words, seeping down into his hand, spreading out and bringing with it understanding and knowledge. “Ask me,” Charlie urged. “Ask me the truth.”
“I don’t have to.”
He didn’t need to ask her for the truth; he already knew it.
He didn’t need to decide; his decision was already made.
It was crystal clear, and he’d rain destruction down on them all.
And then try like hell to survive it.
When he glanced up, he realized that only a heartbeat had passed and the last Circe was waiting for him to fulfill his part of the bargain. He stood.
His hand was hot now. Shimmering golden power snaked through him. He opened his palm for the Circe to see. The pearls were gone. They’d sunk deep into his skin, into the essence of his being, leaving behind a round brand. The words that had been inscribed on the jewels were now within this mark, shimmering like the gold energy radiating from the Circe.
His mouth twitched, then widened in a deadly smile.
Time slowed. Realization appeared in her look and she threw out her hands, her mouth opening, a syllable coming out. Oh, she knew. She knew the choice he’d made.
But he was already speaking, already drawing that shimmering gold knowledge into his core, gathering the word he knew but didn’t know, building and building and building.
Destruction rang out of him with utter clarity; he didn’t care if it killed him because he was taking her with him. Either way he won. He saw her death before his word even reached her.
As her power flowed out to him, it was obliterated by his as it rode on an unseen wave toward her. Her eyes went wide. And then it reached her and blew her body apart.
One second there, the next . . . not.
An unsatisfying revenge.
Directly behind where the Circe’s body had been, the wave connected with the statue.
A crack boomed, shaking the chamber.
Oh shit.
He reached down and grabbed Charlie, tossing her screaming self over his shoulder. He heard another crack, this one from Charlie, and knew that something else had broken inside of her. He’d wounded her more, but then wounded was better than dead, and that’s what they’d be if they didn’t get the hell out of there.
He ran, but her voice stopped him. “Sandra,” she slurred. “You have to get her. Please. I promised . . .”
“Fuck.” He swung back around and raced for the oracle who was chanting wildly to the eerie sound of the statue cracking, like an arctic ice sheet about to give way.
He fisted the black hair, dragged the head off the pedestal, turned, and ran.
Over the dead sirens at the door, down the passageway . . . And then it shattered, the sound dropping him to his knees as he tried to balance the woman on his shoulder and not drop the head in his hand. He used his forearms to cover his ears, as something bigger and far more powerful erupted outward, blowing apart the chamber behind them like an atomic bomb.
He surged to his feet.
Out into the chamber that was open to the sea. The walls behind him blew. They were picked up by the force and sent hurtling toward the cave opening. The walls disintegrated. His body was pinged by debris, large portions of the wall, tiny pebbles like a million arrows slicing into his flesh.
And then they were out, blinded by light and then submerged in deep water.
He kicked his way to the surface and dragged them to one of the many rocks that jutted up into the bay of Fiallan. He pushed Charlie as high as he could, laid the head of the oracle beside her, and hung on, his body pulled back and forth by the churning water.
His strength waned.
The cliff that made up the south side of the bay collapsed, rocks dropping into the sea, the great obelisk tower on top of it crumbling, too. And like dominoes the next two towers in the wall went down. The last one, which rose out of the cliffs on the other side of the bay, remained standing.
A massive wave barreled toward them. “Fucking hell.” He drew in the last of his strength and hauled his ass onto the rock and then dragged them higher, to the very top while the wave crashed at their feet, spraying over them with force and moving on out to sea.
He lay, belly down over the jagged rock, breathing harder than he ever had before. Soaking wet, his body limp, and his exhausted mind in disbelief. The grid was down. The Circe were gone.
After a time, there came a strange, echoing “Thank you.” It flowed through his exhausted mind with a warmth that he could only describe as a smile.
“The sea will heal you”—this time the echo was clear, the voice grief-strickenly beautiful—“and restore that which was needed in you to end the Circe’s reign. You have done well, siren.”
As she spoke, he saw images of the past and knew that in the sirens’ time of need, during the war with the Adonai, that the deity had shown herself to the Circe and given them the means to protect the city while its strongest warriors were away fighting. The deity had offered her own power, a temporary gift. But the Circe had bound her, turning her own power and that of the Malakim against her, binding her there where they used the power, drank from it, used it to rule, and to live far longer than they should have.
All this time, she had been trapped.
Until she was able to pass along the gift of the Source Words to him. And now they were his. He opened his palm to find the mark still there, like some round brand made from pearly white ink with the golden shimmering inscriptions written there. His words. His family’s legacy finally achieved. He’d been made for this. Trusted.
