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Many people in this room were Angels, who could only die three ways. Old age, Elvan ore, or having their soul yanked from their body, just as Chasan’s grandson had tried to do a moment prior.

As blades crashed, and lightning soared, hundreds of screaming Angels and Witches closing in around him, he had no choice.

He had to do just as Chasan’s grandson had attempted to.

Focusing with all his might, he yanked on the energy that floated throughout the room. He siphoned their power, eating their life forces from the inside out. Auras of a thousand hues exploded through the room, creating the most beautiful kaleidoscope of colors with the golden lightning, whooshing from those falling bodies, now all but skeletons, into Lux.

And he couldn’t stop.

They wanted his children dead.

They wanted to kill his babies.

He couldn’t stop.

* * *

Lux awoke to a lightning strike.

He lay on the marble floor, but it felt like he was crawling. Or rather, like a million insects were crawlingwithinhim, searching for an orifice to escape the confines of his skin.

The snow fluttering from the clouds through the shattered glass ceiling landed on his face. They were hot.

As one fell into his open mouth, he tasted ash.

He stayed there for a moment, staring up at the shattered dome.

It was real.

Was it real?

It couldn’t have been real.

He couldn’t have done that.

Struggling upright, breathing in smoke, a fire burned in the corner, wooden chairs kindling the flames. The closer he squinted, he realized it wasn’t only furniture fueling that fire, but…

A gown.

A woman’s gown, and a woman’s hair, burning like a torch.

Lux lapsed to his feet, backpedaling to the corner of the room.

It wasn’t only that woman, but everyone.

Every single person who’d been in this room was either dust on the ground or an old decaying corpse.

He ran.

He ran as fast as those lightning strikes out the door.

When he made it outside, he expected to hear shouting. People asking what’d happened. Perhaps joking about the government always burning one another, who’d been mad about what this time?

But silence.

Silence, and…

Bodies.