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When I took his hand, I felt a powerful rush of magic, like I’d just grabbed a lightning bolt. “Whoa,” I gasped.

“And now we conquer,” Faris declared, roughly seizing Parisa’s wrist.

Her thoughts hit me like an avalanche, burying me in fragmented memories I didn’t recognize and thoughts I couldn’t connect. But, slowly, the deluge slowed to a trickle. Memories and thoughts untwisted, peeling away to leave her mind raw and exposed, ripe for the harvest.

Had I just thought that?

No. I shook my head. It must have been Faris. That sounded way more like Faris.

We aren’t as different as you think, his voice said in my mind.

I didn’t want to consider that possibility.

Let’s just get this over with, I told him.

Very well.

“Tell me about these,” Faris said aloud, indicating the bracelets on Parisa’s wrists.

“They are immortal artifacts,” she replied in monotone.

Her will wasn’t her own. We’d shattered her defenses. I should have felt more conflicted about that, but I wasn’t. I had to save Bella. And Stash. And maybe the whole rest of the universe, while I was at it.

“Are your immortal artifacts functional?” Faris asked her.

“No. The chains have blocked all my magic. I can’t use them.”

“But I can.” Faris opened the fastenings on the bracelets.

Parisa didn’t try to stop him.

“Wait,” Cadence said, moving in for a closer look at the bracelets. “I recognize these.”

So did I. “We saw them in Zarion’s treasury. Or at least some just like them.” I looked at Parisa. “Is that where you got them?”

“No,” she said. “I got them from my father.”

Even with her willpower shattered, the goddess was still playing games.

“And where did he get them?” I asked her.

“My father had them for many years, long before our imprisonment.”

Faris brushed his fingertip across the smooth metal, and the runes lit up with an eerie blue glow. “Yes. I remember seeing Regin with bracelets like these long ago. I knew they were immortal artifacts—my brother was an avid collector of immortal artifacts—but after his banishment, when I went to his castle to retrieve them, they were all gone.”

“That’s because he hid them!” Parisa blurted out with glee.

Faris narrowed his eyes at her. “Where?”

“In the City of Ashes.”

“The City of Ashes…” I glanced at Nero. “Where you had your archangel trials.”

“The angels always had their trials there,” Parisa said in a sing-song voice. “My father knew the other gods were coming for us, so he hid his immortal artifacts in the vault.”

“The vault that we opened,” I said to Nero.

Parisa nodded like a little puppet on her strings, no will of her own. “We were trapped in exile for so long. Father said that when the vault finally opened, the artifacts were spelled to teleport to us. And then we would have everything we needed to enact our revenge. He’d stockpiled so many immortal artifacts. We kept waiting for someone to open the vault.” She cracked a smile. “And then you did! So I guess I should be thanking you.”