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“No, but that drained me.”

“It may have but I’ve never seen anything more remarkable.”

Thane was curled up on his knees a hundred yards from them. He lifted his head and slowly rose. There was nothing but dead burnt bodies within three hundred yards of him.

He spotted them and started running. On shaky legs Katana rose and he scooped her up. “Holy shit! Holy shit! When I saw you both hovering in the sky, I knew you were going to change the tides of this battle.”

“It’s not over yet,” Hel said.

The voice of Pricilla shouting at what was left of her soldiers, echoed across the field. With the power of persuasion they couldn’t resist, a few thousand strong surged forward. Their dragons rose off the ground, fire arcing in great blasts. Even if they were afraid, even if they didn’t want to, they trampled over the scorched bodies or flew over the burnt landscape.

“Palenor!” Thane bellowed. “Push forward!”

King Drake’s dragons swooped back into battle. Taking off from the ground or flying out from behind where Valeen and Katana had unleashed their power. The fight on the ground was terrible but it was the dragons that frightened her.

Some of them skirted around King Drake’s force and went for the city.

“Stop them!” Thane roared. “Stop those dragons!”

King Drake himself slammed into the first and they smashed into the stone wall, taking out a massive chunk of it.

“Kill Pricilla and the persuasion from her commands will leave their minds,” Thane said. “Find her!”

Deep horns blew from the east. Dread trickled through her. Just when they had a real chance of winning, the hope she’d gain slipped away.

Not more…she couldn’t even muster the strength to turn and see what other army was coming for them.

She’d just giveneverythingshe had in her.All Mother, please.We can’t do this alone.

A flock of blackbirds sailed overhead, ravens and crows cawing.

The blackbirds always seemed to come for Thane during battle…

“That’s…Valeenlook.” Hel strangely sounded like he was in shock.

She slammed her eyes shut and reached deep down to get the drive to keep fighting.I have to fight. I have to finish this. But even as a full goddess with all her strength, she wouldn’t be able to channel power like that again for days.

Hel grabbed her chin and turned her face. “Open your eyes. That’s Villhara’s flag.”

A tingle ran down her spine. She must not have heard him correctly.

“Val, that’sourflag. And House of Night and House of Magic with it.”

Finally, she dared to look, blinking several times. The black flag with a silver moon cycle around a starburst, rose high in the air. Hel’s red flag with a serpent wrapped around a sword and a wreath of runes was beside it, and the purple sign of their combined territory, Villhara, a serpent wrapped around a lily on a vine.

It was a miracle. Nothing else could explain it… “But, it was gone. We saw it. House of Night was destroyed.” And they’d heard that House of Magic had been taken over… and yet there were thousands of warriors marching with their flags. And at least a hundred more dragons in the sky.

In the front, on a white-winged horse, rode a goddess with flowing black hair. Even from this distance she knew that face. The beautiful face they’d left in the underrealm… or so she thought. “Hel, is that your mother?” she whispered in disbelief.

And beside her rode another; her twin, Balneir, Thane’s father. And with them a god she’d known from the very beginning. She couldn’t believe what she was seeing, but it was Era, a fellow primordial and the god of time. Heneverinvolved himself in wars.

Another still, a fourth horse carried Elora, the goddess of wisdom, the one who’d guided them through the stone.

“My motherandmy grandmother.” Hel’s jaw had yet to close.

Thane stepped in front of them rubbing his eyes. “It can’t be.”

“It is,” Hel breathed.