Isaiah’s eyes shot to Hunt’s. “We’ve been tracking that thing.” He gestured to the pile of clothes that had been the resurrected Harpy moments before. “Celestina’s old contacts up here reported that the guard station at the wall had been attacked by some new terror, so we all raced up here, fearing it was something from Hel—”
“Why not send a legion?” Hunt asked, eyeing the two angels who’d once been his closest companions. “Why come yourselves?”
“Because the Asteri ordered us to stand down,” Naomi said. “But someone still had to stop this carnage.”
Hunt met Celestina’s eyes, the Archangel’s flawless face a mask of stone. “Going off-leash, huh?”
Temper sparked in her gaze. “I regret what I did to you and yours, Hunt Athalar, but it was necessary to—”
“Spare me,” Hunt snapped. “You fucking betrayed us to the Asteri—”
“Hunt,” Isaiah said, holding up a hand, “look, there’s a lot of bad blood here—”
“Bad blood?” Hunt exploded. “I fucking went to the dungeons because of her!” He pointed at the Governor. Bryce moved closer to him, a comforting presence at his side. He gestured to his forehead, barely visible with his gear. “I have this halo on my fucking head again because of her!”
Celestina just stood there, shivering. “As I said, I regret what I did. It has cost me more than you know.” She seemed to blink back tears. “Hypaxia has … ended things between us.”
“What, your girlfriend didn’t like that you’re a two-faced snake?” Hunt said.
“Hunt,” Bryce murmured, but he didn’t fucking care.
“You were supposed to be good,” Hunt said, voice breaking. “You were supposed to be the good Archangel. And you’re even worse than Micah.” He spat, and it turned to ice before it could hit the snow. “At least he made it clear when he was fucking someone over.”
His lightning thrashed in his veins, looking for a way out.
“Hunt,” Naomi said, “what the Governor did was fucked up, but—”
“She went against Asteri orders to be here,” Isaiah finished. “Let’s get out of the cold and talk—”
“I’m done fucking talking,” Hunt said, and his power stirred. “I am done with Archangels and your fucking bullshit.”
His lightning hissed along the snow. And as his vision flashed, he knew lightning forked across his eyes.
Celestina held up her gloved hands. “I want no quarrel with you, Athalar.”
“Too bad,” Hunt said, and lightning skittered over his tongue. “I want one with you.”
He didn’t give any further warning before he hurled his power at the Archangel. He gave everything, yet it wasn’t enough. His power choked at its limits, restrained by the halo.
A leash to hold demons in check.
It hadn’t worked on the princes. He’d be damned if he allowed it to keep working on him.
Hunt let his power build and build and build. The snow around him melted away.
Apollion had given his essence, his Helfire, to Hunt. And if that made him a son of Hel, so be it.
Hunt closed his eyes, and saw it there—the black band of the halo, imprinted across his very soul. Its scrolling vine of thorns. The spell to contain him.
Everyone knew the enslavement spell couldn’t be undone. Hunt had never even tried. But he was done playing by the Asteri’s rules. By anyone’s rules.
Hunt reached a mental hand toward the black thorns of the halo. Wreathed his fingers in lightning, in Helfire, in the power that was his and only his.
And sliced through it.
The thorns of the halo shivered and bled. Black ink dripped down, dissolving into nothing, gobbled up by the power that was now surging in him, rising up—
Hunt opened his eyes to see Isaiah gaping at him in fear and awe. The halo still marred his friend’s brow.
No more.
Knowing where it was, how to destroy it, made it easier. Hunt reached out a tendril of his power for Isaiah, and before his friend could recoil, he sliced a line through the halo on his brow.
Isaiah hissed, staggering back. A roaring, raging wind rose from his feet as his halo, too, crumbled away from his brow.
Celestina was looking between them, terror stark on her face. “That’s not—that’s not—”
“I suggest you run,” Hunt said, his voice as frozen as the wind that bit at their faces.
But Celestina straightened. Held her ground. And with bravery he didn’t expect, she said, “Why are you here?”
As if he’d be distracted by the question, as if it’d keep her fate at bay—
Bryce answered for him. “To open the Northern Rift to Hel.”
Naomi whirled on Bryce and said, “What?”
Isaiah, too stunned at his halo’s removal to pay much attention to the conversation, was staring at his hands—as if he could see the unleashed power they now commanded.
Celestina shook her head. “You’ve lost your minds.” She planted her feet, and white, shining power glowed around her. “You want to fight me, Athalar, go ahead. But you’re not opening the Rift.”
“Oh, I think we are,” Hunt said, and launched his lightning at her.
The world ruptured as it collided with a wall of her power, and Hunt poured more lightning in, snow melting away, the very stone beneath them buckling and warping as his lightning struck and struck and struck—
“Athalar!” Naomi shouted. “What the fuck—”
Celestina blasted out her power, a wall of glowing wind.
Hunt snapped his lightning through it. He was done with the Archangels. With their hierarchies. Done with—
Isaiah stepped into the fray, hands up.
“Stop,” he said, and power glowed in his friend’s eyes. “Athalar, stop.”
“She deserves to die—every fucking Archangel deserves to die for what they do to us,” Hunt said through his teeth. But it registered, suddenly, that Bryce was no longer by his side.
She was running back toward the Rift, her star blazing. So bright—with the two other pieces of Theia’s star now united with what Bryce had been born with, her star blazed as bright as the sun. The sun was a star, for fuck’s sake—
“No!” Celestina shouted, and her power flared.
Hunt slammed his lightning into the Archangel so hard it shattered her power, sending her flying back into the snow with a satisfying thud.
Celestina’s wings splayed wide, flinging snow in all directions, blood leaking from her nose and mouth. “Don’t!” she cried to Bryce. “I’ve dedicated years of my life to preventing the Rift from opening,” she panted. “Find another way. Don’t do this.”
Bryce halted, snow spraying with the swiftness of her stop. That magnificent star blazed from her chest, casting a brilliant glimmer over the snow. Breathing hard, Bryce said to the Archangel, “The Princes of Hel have offered their help, and Midgard needs it, whether you know it or not. Hunt and I have already killed two Archangels. Don’t make us kill you, too.”
Hunt glanced to Bryce in question. As if there was an alternative to killing Celestina—
“You …,” Celestina said. “You killed Micah and Sandriel,” she whispered.
“They were stronger than you,” Hunt said, “so I don’t think much of your chances.”
Hunt’s lightning flared around him, poised to strike, to flay her from the inside out, as he had done with Sandriel.
But Celestina’s brown eyes widened at his lightning, released from its bonds and spreading through the world. She’d never seen the full extent of what he could do—she’d never had the chance during those weeks they’d worked together. “How is it … how is it that you have the power of Archangels but are not one yourself?” she asked.
“Because I’m the Umbra Mortis,” Hunt said, voice unyielding as the ice around them. And he’d never felt more like it as he stared at Celestina, and knew that with one strike to her heart, she’d be smoldering, bloody ruins.
Celestina’s gaze lowered, and she dropped to her knees. Like she knew it, too.
A plume of pure, uncut lightning rose above Hunt’s shoulder, an asp ready to strike true. He looked to Bryce, waiting for the nod to incinerate her.
But Bryce was staring at him sadly. Softly, lovingly, she said, “You’re not, Hunt.”
He didn’t understand the words. He blinked at her.
Bryce stepped forward, snow crunching under her feet. “You’re not the Umbra Mortis,” she said. “You never were, deep down. And you never will be.”
Hunt pointed a lightning-wreathed finger at Celestina. “She and all her kind should be blasted off the face of Midgard.”
“Maybe,” Bryce said gently, taking another step. Her starlight faded into nothing. “But not by you.”
Disgust roiled through him. He’d never once hated Bryce, but in that moment, as she doubted him, he did.
“She doesn’t deserve to die, Hunt.”
“Yes, she fucking does,” Hunt spat. “I remember each and every one of them—all the angels who marched against us on Mount Hermon, all the Senate, the Asteri, and the Archangels at my sentencing. I remember all of them, and she’s no better than they were. She’s no better than Sandriel. Than Micah.”
“Maybe,” Bryce said again, her voice still gentle, soothing. He hated that, too. “No one is forgiving her. But she doesn’t deserve to die. And I don’t want her blood on your hands.”
“Where was this mercy when it came to the Autumn King? You didn’t stop Ruhn then.”
“The Autumn King had done nothing in his long, miserable life except inflict pain. He didn’t merit my notice, let alone my mercy. She does.”
“Why?” He looked to his mate, his rage slipping a notch.“Why?”
“Because she made a mistake,” Naomi said, stepping forward, expression pained. “And has been trying to make it right ever since. Isaiah and I didn’t come up here with her because she ordered us to. We wanted to help her.”
Hunt pointed to the Rift mere feet from Bryce. “She’s going to stop you from opening it.”
“I will not,” Celestina promised, keeping her head bowed. “I yield.”
“Let her go, Hunt,” Bryce said.
“Morven yielded, and you killed him,” Hunt snapped at her.
“I know,” Bryce said. “And I’ll live with that. I wouldn’t wish the same burden on you. Hunt … We have enough enemies. Let her go.”
“I swear upon Solas himself,” Celestina said, the highest oath an angel could invoke, “that I will help you, if it is within my power.”
“I’m not going to take the word of an Archangel.”
“Well, we’re going to need this Archangel,” Bryce said, and Hunt’s rage slipped further as he looked to her again.
“What?”
Bryce glanced at the Harpy’s body, half-melted from Hunt’s lightning clashing with Celestina’s power. The rock around it had been warped—his lightning had altered the stone itself. Bryce closed the distance between her and Hunt, reaching out to take his hand.
His lightning crawled over her skin, but he didn’t let it hurt. He could never hurt her.