Unchained Beauty (The Deadly Beauties Live On 5)

The fresh memories still ripping through my mind allow me to be anything but okay, but I suck it in. I begged for this. I needed answers. Now that I have them, I’m more confused than ever about what to do.

“In the back of my mind, I’ve had Kya and Karma as a failsafe plan,” I whisper, my mind still stuck on the memories. “Selfish motives even had me starting a feeding chain for the baby so the baby would be strong enough to survive without draining Karma after the rejoining.”

The pitying look she gives me has me fighting back the tears.

“Hannah possesses me every time, no longer content with sharing a body with someone, since she can’t move into the Lokie dimension and go forward with that plan,” I go on so quietly. “She destroys my soul from the inside because I fight her so hard for control of my body and mind, but she’s stronger.”

A vague, almost ridiculous thought crosses my mind for a brief second, and I store it away.

“She hasn’t ever destroyed Morgana’s soul because she’s not planning on keeping that body, and her soul might fuse with it if there’s not another already tethered to it,” Kimber states on an annoyed huff. “It’d make her a hell of a lot easier to kill if she was fused to a body.”

“Or it’d send her back to hell, since she’s still technically a true mortal soul,” I murmur to myself, feeling that sense of hopelessness fester.

“That’s how Slade takes your place this time. He’s finally strong enough to be a viable option before she attempts to step into that portal. But his soul will be destroyed with hers if he really siphons that prison and turns it into an internal nuclear bomb of sorts. Even if there was a body to reanimate, there’d be no soul,” she states, laying it all out there so I can finally mark that desperate solution of Kya and Karma raising him from the dead off the list.

“But now we also know this is much bigger than just Slade and Ella,” I go on, quieter.

“Almost everyone dies,” she states like she’s finishing that sentence. “And that’s just on that day. Hannah will go on to rule, and everyone else in the world will likely be next. She’s pure demon.”

“I’ve been in Slade’s prison,” I tell her quietly. “It is very strong, but I don’t think it’s going to be enough.”

“He’s had to guess at Hannah’s strength, and—”

“He underestimated my strength, because in all those timelines, I was never as strong as I really am, even without the extra dark boost of power I’ve gotten from him,” I interrupt. “That prison won’t be enough, because he used my strength as one of those damn variables in that fucking equation. I don’t have to understand the math to understand it’s wrong.”

She exhales harshly. “It could weaken her enough to where the rest of us might can kill her,” she states quietly. “So long as he can keep her inside him until we succeed.”

We sit silently for a few minutes.

“He’d die just to weaken her, and there’s still no guarantees she’ll really be dead. It could all be for nothing.”

“If we attack before then, he won’t have the power to even trap her inside him when he detonates,” Kimber states quietly. “Because he needs the cosmic burst of energy to channel all that power from the prison, since it’s not something that can be done on just any night.”

“Regardless, I don’t know if she can even die on any other night. It’s not just Slade who can draw from that cosmic burst. The Gemini Twin legend is fiction, remember?”

We sit quietly for another long, painful moment of reflection, digesting all we’ve learned.

“He painted himself into the picture,” I recap quietly. “He did all this just so Hannah would look at him and Alton as beings of the same power as me, even though Alton isn’t nearly as strong. Slade changed historical facts and manipulated everything, just to paint himself into the picture as a perfect alternative to me. He couldn’t figure out how to save me without becoming strong enough to take my place.”

She comes closer, moving to my side. “Even if he does die in your place, we all might die right along with him if it’s not enough or if it takes him too long.”

“Hannah will be able to tap into all my power, and without divine intervention, she’ll use it to destroy everyone,” I say as I scrub a hand over my face.

“Not if she doesn’t get you,” Kimber says on a whisper so quiet I nearly miss it.

“She’ll just have Slade, and as you’ve seen, that will be an equal threat. We’d all still die.”

“If his math is wrong. We don’t know that the internal nuclear bomb won’t be enough, Ella. It could—”

“Kimber, I know without any doubt in my mind that it won’t be enough. Letting Slade kill himself just to weaken her and hoping it’s enough for us all to kill her should be a last resort. Not our entire plan.”

The sun continues to lower, and I know I have to hurry to see Slade before I have to chain myself up in our underground cellar for the red moon.

“Ella,” Kimber starts quietly when I continue to watch the sun and stay silent, “We’ve all thought Hannah was the mastermind for being five steps ahead of us, and now we know it’s really been Slade as the secret mastermind all along. But like I said, changing the future is harder to do than you think. Sometimes you just change the details of the future, as you saw, but not the actual events. We’re still living the same events, despite all the drastic changes he’s made; the details are just different.”

“We’ll never laugh on that daisy bed,” I say quietly.

“What?” she asks incredulously.