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I ron stared down at the text string between him and his brothers confirming the time they’d agreed to meet the day after tomorrow. Molly had insisted on hosting the event at her restaurant, as if the fate of the realm and the rest of their lives was a formal affair that needed proper catering and tablescapes.

He loved Molly, he really did. In the short time he’d come to know her and the other women welcomed into his brothers’ lives, he’d begun to realize what a band of cantankerous assholes the sentinels had devolved into before the soul bond had saved them all. It was an amazing thing to see the toll that such a brutal grind of an eternal routine had taken reflected back through the eyes of someone with no experience of the suffering but adoration for the hard work regardless. The familial ties that had sprouted between all of them had grown so thick, interweaving in and around each other like an unbreakable mesh, that Iron couldn’t help but smile at the little network they’d created.

And that was why he wouldn’t be attending the meeting to discuss the angels’ next steps.

He’d already decided what needed to be done.

Iron tapped back a quick thumbs-up to the meeting time and closed a group chat that had served as a lifeline with his brothers for mages knew how many years. He’d never deleted the thing, and thanks to Chrome’s tech storage wizardry, he never had to. Which meant he was never far from pulling up any of Bronze’s rude jokes, all of which had been crafted pre-Clara, one of Steel’s coffee experiments, or Brass’s ridiculous high Wordle scores. His participation had been limited to a handful of monosyllabic responses comprised mostly of K or Cool or Asshole , sometimes with a variation of all three.

Even though he never said much, he savored the connection all the same. So it was just another trouble stone to add to his stack when he finally shut his phone off and placed it in the mahogany-colored ceramic teapot on his dresser. It was one of his favorite artifacts he’d picked up in the Jiangsu province during his time in China some years ago. He guessed mortals referred to that time period as the Qing Dynasty, but he just called it a great vacation with kick-ass food and excellent kung fu training excursions.

Iron placed the lid on the pot and smiled as he remembered the way Anna appreciated the bit of stoneware also. If all went according to plan, soon it’d be hers, along with everything else he owned, as he’d outlined in the instructions he left for his brothers to carry out.

He hadn’t been able to look at Anna too closely before he left her sleeping an hour ago. It took everything he fucking had to pry himself away from her body, which she’d managed to wrap around his trunk like a greedy barnacle intent on capsizing the ship and happily going down with it if it meant more alone time together. And while he’d never actually confirmed anything to her, that brilliant mind of hers had worked out a likelihood that didn’t end with them holding hands and shopping for strollers or installing a car seat in her Subaru. (He’d made a special note in his instructions for Titan to handle that last one and for Rose to handle the former.) And just the fact that he had to put pen to paper on that subject was the only motivation fueling his actions.

If he dwelled on what he was leaving behind, he’d never move forward, and that would be as unforgivable as his selfish heart that screamed at him to take to the skies and get back in bed with Anna so he might finish out the moonlight with her draped around him and the two of them beneath it.

But he couldn’t, because the moment he turned around and flew right up that mountain of hers, it would take an act of the prime mages themselves to pry him from her arms.

Throwing back his shoulders, he tightened the cords on his leather bracers, rolled down his sleeves, and plucked the relic’s shard from his breast pocket. Not only had the thing never stopped glowing since they’d infused their combined fire into it but it now had the nerve to wink at him as though it approved of his conspiracy to abandon his family so that they might have the chance to remain as one.

He took it out of its test tube prison, placed it on the granite floor of his living quarters, then retreated a few healthy steps. He supposed there should have been more fanfare when a sentinel returned to the Empyrean after being away from it for so long. A finely pressed uniform and shoe polish seemed like they belonged in that scenario. But he’d never been one for dramatics. Instead, he kept to his usual combination of boots, jeans, and flannel shirt that he’d freshen up and buy in bulk at the outdoor apparel store once a quarter century or so.

Weapons were a different story. That shit he loaded up on.

Thigh and ankle holsters held a variety of blades while guns lined every usable inch of his waist, chest, and underarms, starting behind his back and snaking around to the front. Then he picked up his mace in one hand and his battle ax in the other and sank into the weight of the metal surrounding him. Combinations of iron, steel, titanium, chrome, all of it melded, calibrated, and perfect for his grips and preferences.

All of it was infused with boatloads of his full angel fire.

Without another thought, he pointed his mace and ax at the shard and released his flames through the metal. The shard danced and flared brighter under his power’s onslaught. He gritted his teeth, pushing more of himself into the tiny thing, willing it to show him that which he had not seen in eons.

Then he felt it, that hum of a forgotten resonance thickening through the air. It coated his skin and wrapped him in a hug that vibrated celestial energy through every cell.

“Holy shit,” he breathed. His eyes winged open, and his body shook against its soothing assault.

The room around him faded into nothingness as his form at long last dissolved from the mortal plane.

A great cry wrenched through him as Iron materialized in a barren landscape of scorched earth that was nothing like the Empyrean he remembered. Parched terrain beaten down by a dark and dusty orange mist stretched out before him and was accented by craggy rock structures that looked as pained as he felt.

His hand flew to his chest, checking that all vital organs were present and accounted for, when something strange abraded his palm. A carpet of charcoal-gray scales, which, individually, were no larger than his fingernails, enmeshed around his frame to form an armor he’d been so long without. Thickly ridged plates snapped over his shoulders, elbows, and other joints, all knitted together by the innate power of his celestial makeup.

My battle skin.

Iron tested the fit and strength of his old armor, twisting and flexing with a familiar grace that rushed into him with every breath he took.

“I don’t believe it.”

Then he patted his suit, searching for his weapons before remembering they were part of him now, melded into his battle skin and ready to be called upon whenever he desired.

But that wasn’t enough. He needed to test the theory.

As if no time had passed at all, Iron stretched out his hands to call forth his mace and ax. Both shimmered into being and settled at once into his battle grip. Then his wings responded. Pearlescent energy blazed between his shoulder blades, stretching out far and wide. The feathers were no longer iron, as they’d been in the mortal realm. Instead, they pulsed with the primal celestial light and power of the Empyrean.

“It worked. It fucking worked.” Iron tested his power and found it to fit and function as well as if it had never left him. It was beautiful, stunning. He was about to drop to his knees in praise of it all when a subtle warmth kissed the back of his neck.

Behind him, the Empyrean’s gates shone with a brightness to rival the sun. Tall, gleaming beams of celestial fire encased each rung of the gates as they shot northward into the mist above. The flames glowed a crackling fierce electric blue and snapped and hissed as they arced between the supports in both vertical and horizontal fashions, locking all of the Empyrean behind a mesh of celestial magic.

The sentinels’ magic. The same fury that, with the help of the celestial mages long ago, Iron and his brothers had unleashed from outside the gates to enact the Sealing.

The wonder of it all was a thick thing in Iron’s throat. “It held. All this time, it held. Thank the mages.” It had all been worth it. The battles, the bleeding, the terrible losses, and the innumerable number of souls saved.

It had fucking worked.

But his joy was short-lived. A heavy presence thickened the air around him. The flames licking at the gates pulled away slightly from their posts, aiming their ardor at something emerging from the fog.

Iron turned and froze. A dark figure cut a path through the mists, followed by waves and waves of bald soldiers. There were so many, stretching on toward an end Iron wasn’t sure existed. The closer they got, the easier they were to identify. Innumerable numbers of gold bands stretched tightly across throats winked menacingly in the light of the fire at Iron’s back. Single bands, double, triple. There were so many of them, all signifying the different classes of charmers who served Cyro. The beings looked nothing like the versions he’d fought over the long years, with their black tactical gear and reinforced artillery common among their mortal presence. Instead, they lined up, bare-chested and bold, muscles, magic, and gold and teal tattoos on full display for whatever they had in store—not for him, he realized with horror.

For the Empyrean.

“I’m so glad you’ve come to join me, and by the looks of it, you’ve finally managed to connect the dots of what we’ve come to do here today.” Cyro stood before his minions in all his arrogant glory, though the formalwear he normally favored had been replaced with a type of shadowy battle skin, one that draped him in plates of ashen bone with wisps of white smoke clinging to his frame. A lone fang-like object hung from his neck. The full relic of the Empyrean’s gates that Iron’s shard had been severed from.

Iron had zero interest in whatever dark magic the bastard had coated himself in, only how to cut the head off the snake. “You look like the goddamn anemic Michelin Man, bringing all that third-rate garbage behind you up here to me.”

“I had a feeling it would be you. The one to crack the code, I mean. Chrome is too hotheaded, Rhode is too damaged—sorry about that—and Tungsten fancies himself too much of a leader to realize when he’s being led around. Of all the sentinels, though, you were the one I was never quite able to figure out. Until recently, that is. Tell me, do you think it’s a coincidence that, of all your brothers, you were the one I expected to finally meet this day?”

“I expect you to eat my shit.” Iron’s body erupted into flames. He crouched low, preparing to lunge.

The bastard smiled at him, flashing far more fang than Iron was used to seeing from the showboating asshole. A warning singed the hairs at the back of Iron’s neck. “How was Anna before you left her? Was she well?”

Cyro stepped fully out of the landscape’s mist. Iron squinted at the weapon the demon ruler held in his hand. Something long and pale, no bigger than Iron’s ax. Then Cyro tossed it to the ground between them.

Iron’s fury blazed a rage in his core.

It was no weapon. There was a wet stump of flesh and bone on one end. Five delicate fingers on the other. A shining symbol painted on the underside of a wrist that spoke to him and him alone. Daegan.

Breath punched from his lungs, but he forced himself to look closer. Really look. He could not be wrong in this.

And then his world collapsed. Pale purple nail polish, the exact color of the glasses he’d given Anna, dotted each fingernail. He’d painted them himself after she’d rummaged through her polish collection, proudly plucking the perfect color from the bin. She’d asked him to paint every finger and toe so that they’d match her new glasses, and he’d done so gladly, perfectly content to deny her nothing.

A beastly cry erupted out of him, scattering the encompassing mist outward in undulating waves. Green shields were thrown up in response, barricading the charmers from the blast of his fiery anguish and what else might carry on its heels.

The dark magic beating off those things pricked his nose and thickened the tears pooling in the corners of his eyes. It was the same vile magic that had snuffed out his angel fire the last time he’d encountered them.

But now there were many. Too many.

His heart ached, bled, was fucking ripped open across the mist and depleted of all usefulness and meaning.

Anna. His Anna. Her copper-spun hair and sunlit smile, her laugh, her kind heart, and her terrible taste in junk food. Her fucking child . They were all gone.

Because he’d wanted to chase a dream he had no business believing could be real.

Iron wailed harder, louder, until his fire pushed out farther beyond the reach of his weapons, just past the edge of his rage.

Cyro’s cruel smile widened, and he kicked at Anna’s arm, sending it flying into the mist. “That’s it, brute. Show me your belly. Let me see those wounds bleed.” The relic at Cyro’s throat taunted him further. Bone weapons coated in black magic leaped into the bastard’s hands.

Iron sprinted toward the demon ruler, ax and mace swinging, power pumping, fire seething.

He’d take down Cyro and every one of those fuckers in a blaze of the Empyrean’s might.

And then he’d turn it on himself, because any love he’d had for living had died along with Anna.