Page 85 of Evermore (The Never Sky #3)

Paesha

I walked out of the theater with my heart in tatters, pieces of it scattered among the relics of lives I couldn’t remember.

The night air hit my face like a slap, a welcome jolt of reality after drowning in the truth.

The streets of Silbath were empty, as they had been since I’d come back to this city.

I made it halfway down the street when I felt it, the shift in the air, the subtle weight of being watched. Remnants stirred across my arms, their warnings a chorus of hisses at the edges of my consciousness.

Danger.

Death.

Run.

I froze, hand drifting to where Harlow’s blade now rested at my hip. I should have brought Levanya’s sword. Dammit. The shadows around me deepened, pooling like ink at my feet as I scanned the darkness.

He stepped out of the gloom like he’d been carved from it, familiar and foreign all at once.

Ezra. Thorne’s twin, with the same face that had haunted my dreams, but his eyes were colder, harder than I’d ever remembered them being.

I’d loved him once. Or so I thought. Until I loved Thorne.

Until my soul had been connected to its Ever, apparently.

“Hello, Huntress,” he said, his voice a perfect echo of his brother’s, yet devoid of the warmth that made Thorne’s cadence so beautifully, distinctly his. “It’s been too long.”

My fingers closed around the hilt of my dagger. “Not long enough.”

He smiled a predator’s grin. “I suppose that depends on your perspective. Time has a funny way of bending around us, doesn’t it? So many lives lived, so many deaths endured, and here we are again. The final act. Though I must say, the opening was my favorite part.”

“You fell in love with me,” I said, hardly believing the words that fell out of my mouth.

“I think it’s more fair to point out that you fell in love with me, wouldn’t you say? You proved my point to Reverius without even trying.”

The shadows around him shifted, and suddenly they weren’t shadows at all.

Figures detached themselves from the darkness, men and women with empty eyes and mechanical movements.

The Unmade Guardians. Dozens of them, emerging from alleys and side streets, surrounding the street in a tightening noose.

They were not like Archer at all. But then, I supposed they wouldn’t be.

When Archer was bound to me and they were bound to a murderous god.

“Did you think I would simply let you continue to exist, knowing what you are? What you’ll do to my power if I allow it?”

I backed up a step. My Remnants surged in response to my fear. “And what exactly am I, Ezra? Because I’m having a hard time keeping up with all the titles being thrown my way lately.”

My heart thundered in my throat. I was outnumbered, outpowered, and I’d wandered too far from Misery’s End for Thorne to hear me if I screamed. He would come. I knew it like I knew how to breathe. But not if he didn’t know. Not if he was respecting the space I’d asked for.

“The end. Of everything.” He gestured around us.

“It’s already happening. Look at what your simple existence has done to the realms. The power is failing, the barriers between worlds are thinning.

My brother, blinded by his infatuation, refuses to see it.

But I won’t allow the destruction to continue. ”

“So this is it?” I asked, trying to keep my voice steady as I assessed my options, counting the Unmade, looking for escape routes that didn’t exist. “The final confrontation? You, me, and your army of puppets? They’re cute. Have you named them? That one looks like a Franklin to me.”

His smile thinned. “I see that mouth hasn’t changed. My Guardians are far from puppets. They are the chosen, the ones who understand what’s at stake. And unlike my brother, they aren’t blinded by sentiment.”

The Guardians moved, a synchronized wave of bodies closing in. I could feel the power emanating from them, not magic, not quite, but something else. Something dangerous. As if they were mortal, but only just, their humanity overtaken by Ezra’s will.

“So you’re saying you remember what this mouth can do. Please forget that. Gross. And for the record, I’m not interested in breaking anything.”

“Your interests are irrelevant. It’s your nature. Your destiny.”

A Guardian lunged at me from the right. I pivoted, my blade slicing through the air, but he was faster than I expected.

So much faster. He dodged the killing blow, and his fist connected with my ribs, sending me staggering.

I felt the crack, the sharp stab of pain, but there was no time to process it as another came at me from the left.

I shoved my Remnants forward, shadows transforming into claws that tore into the Guardian’s chest. But for every one I wounded, two more rushed forward.

I was outnumbered, outmatched. They were something more , something twisted by Ezra’s power—faster, stronger, bound to a purpose that would end with my death.

Kill them, Winter hissed, suddenly visible beside me, her bloodied face stark in the moonlight. They are mortal. Kill them all.

You know the power, Sylvie urged, her form materializing on my other side. Use it. Let it consume you.

Fight.

Run.

Bleed.

Fight.

Die.

The voices of my past lives crescendoed in my mind, a cacophony of rage and fear and desperate instruction.

I couldn’t separate individual voices anymore, couldn’t tell where Winter ended and Sylvie began.

They blurred into a roaring tide of sound that threatened to drown me.

But they also pushed me. Forced me to lean into magic.

A Guardian’s blade sliced across my arm, drawing blood. Another hit me from behind, sending me to my knees. My vision blurred, but through it, I saw Ezra watching, that same cold calculation in his eyes that I’d once mistaken for quiet intensity when I’d known him as only a lover.

Power roared through my veins like molten metal, burning away everything that wasn’t rage and pain and the desperate desire to survive.

To live, when so many before me had died.

My Remnants exploded outward in a wave of pure, undiluted destruction.

Golden bricks cracked beneath my feet. Windows shattered.

The air splintered as darkness poured from me in endless, violent waves.

He wanted a victim. One more notch. One final life.

But this one wasn’t his to take. I’d given enough. We each had.

I rose like a vengeful goddess, my body no longer my own but a vessel for the collective fury of a thousand murdered souls. “Is this what you feared?” My voice echoed strangely, as if others spoke with me, through me. “This power? This rage?”

Likely for the first time, uncertainty flickered across Ezra’s perfect face. “You can’t win, Huntress.”

I bared my teeth in a savage smile. “Fucking watch me.”

I thrust my hands forward, channeling the darkness like spears of shadow.

They found the throats of the nearest Guardians, constricting, choking.

I moved the Remnants like puppets, swinging them as solid, unbreakable iron fists.

Like a shower of arrows and a bevy of blades.

I blinded those that I could, clawed into others.

Until tendrils of Ezra’s power reached for me.

I had no idea what they would do, but I assumed if they got to me, it would feel like being erased.

Like dying, but never existing either. Like loneliness and abandonment.

I backed away, still aiming for his army.

But there were so many, an endless wave of soulless soldiers crashing against the shores of my dwindling strength.

A Guardian broke through the wall of power I’d built around myself, slamming into me with the force of a charging beast. We hit the ground, my head cracking against stone. The world swam. Black spots danced at the edges of my vision as his hands closed around my throat.

Not like this, I thought wildly, thrashing beneath him. Not like this. The world began to narrow, to fade. My lungs burned. Fingers of inhuman strength dug into my skin. My Remnants weakened, slipping from my grasp like water through cupped hands.

And then… air.

The weight vanished from my chest. I rolled onto my side, gasping, choking, struggling to focus through the haze of pain.

“Get the fuck away from her!”

That voice. That beautiful, savage voice cut through the ringing in my ears. I forced my eyes open to see Archer standing over me like an avenging angel, twin swords gleaming with blood and moonlight. My godsdamn redemption.

“Archer,” I croaked, the word scraping against my bruised throat.

“We don’t fight battles alone, Paesha. Not now.

Not ever. It’s us against the world. Against every evil god, every demon, every army.

” He didn’t look at me as he cut down a Guardian who rushed him.

Blood streaked his face like war paint, his blue eyes burning with cold fury.

“The fight’s already over. They just don’t know it yet. We’ve got you.”

We?

The air around us changed, thickened, electrified. The hair on my arms rose as power surged through the ruined street like a cresting wave. The Guardians faltered, stumbling back as if struck by an invisible force.

And then he was there.

Thorne.

Gone was any pretense of mortality, of restraint. He strode through the battlefield like wrath incarnate, golden light spilling from his eyes and fingertips. The Guardians between him and me crumpled like paper dolls, their bodies flung aside by the sheer force of his power.

“Brother,” he called, his voice thunder and lightning and forgotten fury. “You’ve overplayed your hand.”

Ezra stepped forward to meet him, his own power manifesting as an aura of cold blue light. “I never was a gambler. I knew the odds going in.”

“Then you already know how this ends.” Thorne moved to stand between Ezra and me, his broad shoulders a shield against the chaos. “You cannot have her. Not this time. Not ever again.”