Page 67 of Crimson Skies

Displeasure poured through the God of Darkness. He searched for the idiot who had spoken, determined to be rid of him first, only to recoil when he saw the deity scowling at him from the left.

“You?!” Elios spat out.“How did you get here?!”

Pyri curled a lip. “I flew, douchebag.”

Styx snorted. Acheron smirked. Hecate rolled their eyes. Cocytus and Lethe mumbled curses under their breath as they glared at their siblings who had sided with him.

The main vanguard of the Underworld.Darkness trembled aroundElios.I did not expect to see them here.He lowered his brows.Let’s just hope that bastard doesn’t truly have—!

He gnashed his teeth at the sight of the artifact that appeared in Pyri’s hand.Dammit!

“I hear the wings of war demons are especially vulnerable to this weapon,” Pyri said mockingly. “How about we test that theory?”

Elios barely had time to blink before the fire deity brought the Horn of Flames to his mouth and blew into it. An incandescent jet shot out from the weapon with a boom that parted the clouds.

It arrowed toward a unit of some twenty war demons.

Elios’s eyes widened.No!

Two Nephilim moved at his silent command. They were too late to stop the torrent of expanding flames from washing over their maces and smashing into the war demons. The creatures shrieked, wings combusting instantly.

They raked the air helplessly with their talons as they fell.

“Well, would you look at that?” Pyri watched the monsters tumble toward the distant ground. “Seems I was right.”

A group of Reapers and specters of the Spirit Realm dove to deliver the final blow to the war demons. Pyri grinned at Elios.

Rage flooded the dark God.

He called forth the blades he’d had his alchemists make, murder in his heart.

* * *

Cassius’s pulsequickened at the sight of the swords Elios had manifested. The left one had sprouted from the stump of his wrist, an organic appendage that sucked the light around it until it was shrouded in turbulent shadows.

Morgan furrowed his brow where he levitated within a dark gale wreathed with sparking emerald magic, his crown atop his head and the Sword of Wind in hand.

“Did that bastard make those with your blood?” he asked Atropos in a deadly voice.

“Yes.” A muscle jumped in the Moira’s cheek where her helmet framed her face. “I smell the essence of our divine ichor inside those weapons. But the rest of it is all his own energy.”

Cassius understood her wariness. Elios’s blades reeked of a corruption so pure he feared it might turn the air to poison.

“That monster.” Shadows boiled around Tenebra as she glowered at the God of Darkness. “How dare he?!”

“Calm down, Ten.” Atropos’s mouth pressed into a thin line. “We knew he might have something like this up his sleeve, after all.” She met Cassius’s gaze. “Now would be a good time.”

Cassius dipped his chin. The deities he had yet to rouse gathered around him. Morgan, Victor, and their Goddess sisters shielded them.

Elios screamed in outrage when he realized their intentions. The air thickened with his wrath, bringing storm clouds that leached the light from the sky and clogged the atmosphere with the acrid stench of ozone.

Cassius ignored the dark God’s protest. He gazed at his lover’s formidable back where he braced in front of him in all his indomitable splendor, the Sword of Wind humming in his grasp as he prepared to defend him to the death.

Morgan’s soul throbbed in tandem with his own, steady and strong, as hot and as dazzling as the sun.

Thank you, my love. Thank you for being with me for so long. Thank you for being my bedrock through the darkest hours of my life.Tears blurred Cassius’s vision.I hope you will forgive me, one day.

“My very own North Star,”he breathed.