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T his place was a battleground. Soaked in blood and covered in darkness.

And now Jonah is admitting that we’re headed into the realm where Typhon himself is caged.

“What exactly did Vanguard leave behind?” I ask, and then a horrifying possibility occurs to me. “Are we here to free the titan?”

Even as I ask the question, I doubt it could be true.

I saw both Jonah’s and Vanguard’s memories of the battle against the primordial deity. They hated him. They would not be coming back to free him.

Jonah’s exclamation confirms it. “Fuck no! To free that old god would be to rain hellfire down on the entire world.”

“And yet some of his bones made it out,” I snap, needing answers.

Jonah’s jaw clenches. “He deliberately shaved off multiple bones before the battle and gave them to his followers so that his evil would live on even if he was defeated.”

“What happened to those followers?”

“The Valkyrie Queen hunted them down and killed them.”

“You mean Lady Tirelli. Or Amalia Avery, as she was also known.”

“No,” Jonah snaps. “I speak of her mother.” His shoulders sink. “But yes, Amalia was eventually given all three boxes. As I understand it, one of the boxes was intended as a decoy. The other two contained the bones.”

“So the Valkyries harbored Typhon’s power.” I shake my head. “Instead of destroying the bones.”

“There is no destroying the bones,” Jonah says. “Just as there is no controlling them. They are true to their owner. They seek only power.”

Where he stands ahead of Jonah, Striker has remained quiet, but his forehead creases at Jonah’s assertion that the bones can’t be destroyed.

The woman in the park said the same thing. She claimed that it was impossible to destroy the bones, and if I thought I had seen it happen, then my eyes deceived me.

Vanguard’s warning about the realm suddenly returns to me: Do not believe what you see. Only what you feel.

Where he stands ahead of us, Striker’s lips part, and I wait for him to counter Jonah’s claim, but all he says is, “We need to keep moving.”

“Do we, though?” I ask, the soles of my feet prickling uncomfortably against the power within the dirt. “We could turn around right now.”

Jonah begins to protest. “No?—”

But Striker’s response is firm. “I gave my word,” he says quietly. “I won’t break it.”

Normally, I wouldn’t want him to. In fact, it would be in my Fury nature to hold him to his word in most circumstances. But right now…

What is this feeling rising up within me?

It’s a sensation I haven’t felt since I became a full Fury.

My palms are suddenly sweating, and my heart thumps far faster than it should be.

Is this panic?

Am I panicking?

A cold, horrible fear settles within my stomach and invades my senses against my will.

But… why?

There’s nothing here right now that should frighten me this much. The roses have parted. The air is clear. No threat is coming at me.

Maybe the malevolent power that’s soaked into the ground beneath my feet is causing me to feel this way, but I don’t think that’s it…

Whatever might be causing this panic, I face the feeling head-on, stepping forward and slipping past Jonah, trying not to kick up any dust as I go.

Reaching Striker, I refuse to release him from my gaze. “I respect your decision. But whatever Vanguard left behind, it can’t be worth losing your life.”

Striker’s blank expression fades, and I suddenly recognize how carefully he was controlling his features, the little telltale signs of his emotions that he used to reveal in the press of his lips or the tension around his eyes, the blaze of his beast in his irises.

“Or yours,” he says softly.

“Or mine,” Jonah grumbles, edging up behind me. “We need to keep moving.”

Vanguard stirs across Jonah’s shoulder at that moment, giving a groan that indicates he’s waking up. His body must have processed the poison as quickly as he thought it would.

Even so, Jonah keeps hold of him as we hurry along the path Striker created.

Striker himself moves quickly, but he keeps glancing back, making sure we’re with him until we reach the other side, where there’s another stone platform and a single opening.

This one is obscured by what looks like falling mist.

Vanguard regains his feet and straightens the scabbard across his back. “Thank you, friend,” he murmurs to Jonah before stepping up to the misty entrance.

“Remember that once we step into this next realm, time will be even more precious,” he says, casting a firm look back at Striker and me.

“This final realm is designed to latch onto any living thing. It won’t want to let us pass, and it certainly won’t want to let us leave. We’ll need to work together.”

At our nods, Vanguard takes a deep breath. “Let’s go.”

We’re only two steps behind Vanguard, and Jonah is one step behind us, but the time difference is horribly clear as soon as we move through the misty entrance.

Within the few seconds it takes us to step through, Vanguard has already made it twenty paces ahead.

I nearly stop still at the horrific landscape I’m now facing.

Bones jut up through the ground, which appears to be covered in pure, gray ash. The air is dank and completely still, its gravity somehow heavier, so weighty that I find myself struggling to stay upright.

Ahead of us, Vanguard is hunched over, pushing himself forward, his muscles visibly straining as he heads toward the only structure in this seemingly endless wasteland.

A mound of rock rests fifty paces away. It’s easily fifteen feet high, and its surface is shining and black as if streams of lava wound around each other before they cooled.

In the center front of the mound is a splash of color.

Fine streaks of gold stretch across the rock.

With each labored step I take, drawing me closer to the mound, a sense of horror fills me because it’s clear that the splash of color is the shape of a person, and that person is a female figure, her golden hair splayed out around her head.

And then, also becoming clear, is the shape of a golden snake resting around her waist.

She’s a Fury.