“Caelan—” She started to shout, but her words were cut off when Caelan closed his fist around the ball of energy and squeezed. A scream of pain and exquisite pleasure was ripped from his throat as he pushed the power into his skin, melding it with his own.
Tula released an answering cry of anger and frustration. She rushed across the distance that separated them, her beautiful features twisted in her fury, but she stopped when the tip of Caelan’s blade was a mere centimeter from her throat.
“Enough!” Caelan roared.
Power gushed through his body and filled his mind. Everything within him suddenly seemed more. A voice cried out for blood, vengeance, and death while a quieter one whispered for balance. Ghosts of Zyros and Lore. With a shuddering breath, Caelan forced the power deeper within him and wrapped it all in his own white light, making it his.
When he spoke, his voice remained angry but his control had returned. “Enough.”
“I will destroy you for what you’ve done. You had no right to take that, godling,” Tula snarled.
“Godling no more.” A slow smile spread across his lips and he lowered his sword. “I am the wall—”
“You are no wall! No one can stop me! I will destroy you like I’ve destroyed dozens of other gods before you,” she ranted.
Tula threw out her arm to strike him, and Caelan deftly spun away. He threw out his left hand, but instead of his sword appearing, he called forth the gold collar Zyros had placed on Lore’s throat. Turning back, he slapped it around Tula’s left wrist, instantly locking it in place. As he pulled his own left hand away, a matching one formed on his wrist with a gold chain running between them.
“No! No! What have you done!” She screamed, horror flooding in where the rage had been. She jerked on the chain again and again, but Caelan’s arm didn’t budge and the chain didn’t break.
“We are bound together for the rest of time,” Caelan declared with the slightest hint of a laugh in his voice. “You can’t destroy me without destroying yourself. I will always know where you are. I will know if you are whispering or harming those I love, and I will be there to stop you. If I must, I will lock us together in a godstone until all of Thia has turned to dust.” Caelan leaned close, a broad smile on his lips. “I am the God of Hope, and where there is life, there will always be hope.”
Tula screamed in impotent rage and, one last time, Caelan’s world exploded.
TWENTY-SIX
Rayne Laurent
The second blast of white light knocked everyone to the ground.
What followed was deafening silence. The thunder stopped crashing, and there was no more drumming of rain on the leaves. No gunfire. No sounds of fighting anywhere.
Rayne slowly pushed himself up into a seated position, blind to the mud and blood that covered him. Surrounding him, soldiers in Erya and Caspagir uniforms were doing the same, looking dazed and unsteady from the blast. They were in the center of the Erya forces after Drayce had delivered them from the New Rosanthe camp just minutes ago. Soto was trying to get the Empire to surrender now that their emperor was dead, while Rayne worked on a plan with his companions to reach Caelan in the ancient city.
“Cael!” Drayce screamed, the first voice to pierce his ears and to prod him into action.
Shoving to his feet, he grabbed Eno’s arm on his left, pulling him up as well. Rayne’s feet slipped in the mud and he lost his balance twice, but he was willing to crawl to Drayce if he had to. Snagging Drayce’s arm, he jerked the man from his terrified stupor.
“Shift now! Take us to Cael!” Rayne shouted in his ear. He whipped his head around to shout the same thing to Haru, but the dragon was already nodding, his body changing.
Before he could reconsider the frightening thing he’d commanded, Drayce was snatching him up in one giant taloned paw while Eno was wrapped in the other. Drayce launched them into the air while Haru followed with Adrian a heartbeat later.
Drayce didn’t bother getting high in the air. There was no point. They needed speed more than anything as they rushed to the side of their king.
But what they found in the ancient city of the Ordas left Rayne’s heart fractured in his chest. Not a single building was standing. Torn and broken bodies were scattered everywhere. Pools of standing blood filled the cracks in the stones.
And on a flat platform, where a large building had once stood, were three bodies.
As soon as Rayne spotted them, Drayce was diving toward them. Lore lay with a woman he could only guess was Zyros since he’d never seen her before.
Farther to the left was Caelan, his sword just beyond the reach of his fingers.