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Micah ripped her from her body and shoved her essence into a glass box. Put it at the base of Justinian’s crucifix. Rumor says he’s going to dump the box—Viktoria—into the Melinoë Trench and let her fall right to the bottom of the sea to go insane from the isolation and darkness.

Fucking Hel. You can’t do anything?

They’re traitors to the Republic. They were caught conspiring against it. So, no.

But Athalar’s not crucified beside Justinian?

I think Micah came up with a different punishment for him. Something worse.

What could be worse than what the other two are enduring?

A long, horrible pause. A lot of things, Ruhn Danaan.

Bryce let the words wash over her. She sat on the couch and stared at the dark screen of the television. And stared into the black pit inside herself.

PART IV

THE RAVINE

68

For some reason, Hunt had expected a stone dungeon.

He didn’t know why, since he’d been in these holding cells beneath the Comitium countless times to deposit the few enemies Micah wanted left alive, but he’d somehow pictured his capture to be the mirror of what had gone down in Pangera: the dark, filthy dungeons of the Asteri, the ones that were so similar in Sandriel’s palace.

Not this white cell, the chrome bars humming with magic to nullify his own. A screen on the wall of the hallway showed a feed of the Comitium atrium: the one body spiked to the iron crucifix in its center, and the glass box, covered in dripping blood, sitting at its feet.

Justinian still groaned every now and then, his toes or fingers twitching as he slowly asphyxiated, his body trying and failing to heal his taxed lungs. His wings had already been cut off. Left on the marble floor beneath him.

Viktoria, her essence invisible within that glass box, was forced to watch. To endure Justinian’s blood dripping on the lid of her container.

Hunt had sat on the small cot and watched every second of what had been done to them. How Viktoria had screamed while Micah ripped her from that body she’d been trapped in for so long. How Justinian had fought, even as they held down his brutalized body on the crucifix, even as the iron spikes went into him. Even as they raised the crucifix, and he’d begun screaming at the pain.

A door clanged open down the hallway. Hunt didn’t rise from the cot to see who approached. The wound on his temple had healed, but he hadn’t bothered to wash away the blood streaking down his cheek and jaw.

The footsteps down the hall were steady, unhurried. Isaiah.

Hunt remained seated as his old companion paused before the bars.

“Why.” There was nothing charming, nothing warm on the handsome face. Just anger, exhaustion, and fear.

Hunt said, aware of every camera and not caring, “Because it has to stop at some point.”

“It stops when you’re dead. When everyone we love is dead.” Isaiah pointed to the screen behind him, to Justinian’s ravaged body and Viktoria’s blood-soaked box. “Does this make you feel like you’re on the right path, Hunt? Was this worth it?”

When he’d gotten Justinian’s message that the deal was going down, as he climbed into bed, he’d realized it wasn’t worth it. Not even with the medwitch’s antidote. Not after these weeks with Bryce. Not after what they’d done on that couch. But Hunt said, because it was still true, “Nothing’s changed since Mount Hermon, Isaiah. Nothing has gotten better.”

“How long have you three been planning this shit?”

“Since I killed those three drug lords. Since they told me about the synth and what it could do. Since they told me what kind of power it gave Danika Fendyr when she took it in the right doses. We decided it was time. No more fucking bargains with Micah. No more deaths for deaths. Just the ones we choose.”

The three of them had known there was one place, one person, who might get the synth. He’d paid the Viper Queen a private visit a few days ago. Had found her in her den of poisons and told her what he wanted. Vik had the gold, thanks to the paychecks she’d saved up for centuries.

It hadn’t occurred to him that the snake would be in the Archangel’s pocket. Or looking for a way into it.

Isaiah shook his head. “And you thought that you, you and Vik and Justinian and whatever idiots would follow you, could take the synth and do what? Kill Micah? Sandriel? All of them?”

“That was the idea.” They’d planned to do it at the Summit. And afterward, they’d make their way to Pangera. To the Eternal City. And finish what was started so long ago.