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CHAPTER SIXTY-EIGHT

R ainbow-colored leaves swirled above Cassandra, stirred by warm, desert winds. There was silky sand beneath her feathers and a rough tongue lapping her cheek.

Her jaw was completely pain-free.

She struck out with an elbow and hit a fur-covered leg. “Alright, alright. I’m up. I’m awake.”

As she sat upright, the tiger standing next to her rippled, orange and white fur transforming into light brown skin and auburn hair.

“Hey, Cass,” Reena said with a sly smile, legs folded beneath a shimmering white robe. Identical to the one she’d worn in that picture Cassandra had found of Reena as a young female.

When she’d been an acolyte of Adelphinae.

“ Hey, Cass ,” Cassandra snorted, surveying her body, which was bathed in an iridescent, multi-colored sheen. She looked toward Reena, who was not glowing. “You’re not dead.”

“No. I’m not.”

“But I… I am, aren’t I?”

“Yes.” Reena nodded. “You are. Again.”

Cassandra jolted. “ Again ?”

Reena held out a hand, and Cassandra pulled herself to standing. The clairvoyant pool gurgled softly at her feet as a dramatic golden pink sunset kissed the dunes, a fiery sphere slipping beneath the miles-wide blanket of russet sand.

Reena stepped to the edge of the pool, beckoning Cassandra to join her. Her slinky confidence melted into nervous energy as she glanced out at the dunes. “I’m not supposed to be here. If she finds out…”

“She who? Adelphinae?”

Reena’s brows lowered and her voice pitched low. “He does this every time.”

“Reena, I don’t understand what you’re saying. You need to explain.”

Reena gestured to the pool. “Watch. See .”

The second word faded with a sibilant hiss, Reena’s voice multiplying a thousandfold.

The water churned, boiling and popping, then stilled. A scene crystallized upon the surface.

Cassandra’s body broken on the floor of the throne room in the Koenig’s castle. Tristan leaning over her, his lips pressed against hers.

Cassandra saw the precise moment of her death, the moment her soul left her body.

Tristan gathered her into his lap, letting out the loudest, most agonizing, most heart-broken wail she’d ever heard. She ached to return to him, to comfort him.

Wormwood approached, and Tristan tossed him aside like a rag doll.

Brethren swarmed Tristan, but he’d become a being of pure rage, ending his enemies with fists and feet, elbows and wings. In his feral state, no one could touch him.

His chest heaved, his features twisted into the cold, wrath-filled mask of a male determined to make the world pay for his bottomless grief.

A male with nothing left to live for.

He fought his way to the Koenig, who clutched the hammer against his chest. The centuries-old Windrider looked terrified. Tristan ripped the hammer from him, then swung it twice. Once into the Koenig’s stomach, then once across his cheek, instantly breaking his neck.

Tristan approached the throne, then arced the hammer over his head.

“Don’t!” Wormwood croaked from the floor. “Don’t bring that hammer down! It doesn’t belong to you! If you?—”

Tristan slammed the hammer into the throne and a blinding white flash blanched out the pool.

“What just happened?” Cassandra asked, leaning over the edge.

“Tartarus is gone,” Reena whispered.

The coldest fear trickled down Cassandra’s spine. “What do you mean it’s gone ? An entire city can’t just disappear.”

“It can,” Reena said sadly. “And it did. It has every time. In exactly the same way. Watch.” She directed Cassandra’s attention back to the pool.

Bile rose in Cassandra’s throat as she watched the same scene play before her over and over again.

Small details changed. Sometimes Tristan’s wings were another color—sky blue instead of iridescent black. Sometimes Cassandra’s facial features were different—her nose wider, her lips thinner. Sometimes Wormwood was a Deathstalker and not a Beastrunner. Sometimes the Koenig was female.

But in every single instance, the ending was the same.

Cassandra would die. Tristan would climb the dais. Wormwood would issue his warning.

And Tristan would end them all in a flash of blazing white.

The scenes blended together until there were echoes of Tristan rampaging through that throne room.

“Stop,” Cassandra whispered. “ Stop . Please. I don’t need to see any more.”

Reena swept a hand across the pool and the water stilled, the churning boil giving way to soft ripples.

Tears blurred Cassandra’s vision. “Why are you showing me this?”

Reena shook her head. “It can’t end like this.”

“Yeah, no shit.”

“No—” Reena grabbed Cassandra’s hand “—I mean it will not end like this. Not this time. The eight paths are coalescing. The specific convergence. You and I being here together proves it. He is coming for her. And it’s not just our world that’s at stake this time. It’s all worlds.”

Cassandra’s anxiety skyrocketed. “He who? Reena, what are you?—”

Reena cut her off with a shhh , then glanced back toward the dunes.

“I have to go.” Reena gathered Cassandra into a hug and clutched tightly. Cassandra never wanted her to let go. “We’ll see each other again. Sooner than you can imagine.”

“How?”

Reena pulled back, her sympathy morphing into celestial confidence.

“Because I’m sending you back to change the ending.”

She raised her palm to Cassandra’s chest.

And pushed her into the pool.

The moment Tristan’s lips met Cassandra’s, they heated. Not the normal, intimate warmth of two mouths meeting, but something hotter. Something glowing.

Something divine.

The only time Tristan had felt anything remotely like this was when Ione had kissed him beneath the Imperial palace in Delos. But this was infinitely stronger.

He continued to press his lips against Cassandra’s, but popped his eyes open.

Iridescent light shimmered across her body—whether it was coming from inside her, from inside him, or from somewhere else, he couldn’t tell.

He pulled back, awe stealing his breath as Cassandra’s bruises and breaks disappeared, her body instantly healing itself.

“Cass?” he whispered.

A drop of water plinked onto his hand and when he looked down, more droplets splattered. He touched his face, found wetness beaded there. It wasn’t tears.

He was summoning water.

Beyond the wards of Tartarus.

A temporary gift from the Goddess due to the connection he shared with the female beneath him.

A rush of wind burst from the floor and Cassandra sat upright, placing a hand on Tristan’s cheek. “Don’t destroy Tartarus.”

Tristan hugged her to his chest. “What?”

She snaked her hands under his armpits and clung to his shoulders, shuddering with fear. She pushed back and cupped his face. “Reena told me that we need to do it differently this time.”

“Daredevil,” he said, running a thumb across her blissfully intact jaw, “what the fuck are you talking about?”

Before he could interrogate her further, she pushed to standing, swiveling her gaze across the amazed crowd. Who’d just watched her rise from death.

Over at the cage, the Brethren holding Ronin, Mireille, and Silas had dropped their daggers.

Cassandra strode for the Koenig and reached out her hand. “Give me the hammer.”

The hall was so silent Tristan swore he could hear pebbles rattling outside in the courtyard.

The Koenig cocked his head, signed something and Wormwood approached to help translate.

“He wants to know why he should give it to you,” Wormwood said.

Lightning crackled through the throne room, snapping between the columns and arcing from floor to ceiling. Several Brethren screamed as a bolt cracked into Wormwood’s chest and the male crumpled to the ground.

Dead.

“That was for Ana, you weaselly little prick,” Cass whispered before turning to the Koenig and putting on a fake-sweet voice. “Oops. I slipped. I’m a bit new at this.” She blasted an untamed gust of wind that blew back Aedelmar’s hair. “Hand over the hammer. Now .”

There was a powerful echo in her voice. As if it had multiplied a million times over.

And High Gods, it was a thousand kinds of untimely, but all Tristan could think was how much he wanted her to use that voice while she stripped him naked and rode him into oblivion.

He’d always known his Daredevil couldn’t be tamed.

Not even by death.

Aedelmar cautiously approached Cassandra, his footsteps the only sound in the hall. As if every one of his Brethren and each and every prisoner held their breath. He towered above her, clutching the hammer’s handle and frowning deeply.

Tristan’s protective instincts flared as Aedelmar grabbed Cassandra’s hand and wrapped it around the handle.

He uttered a single word, a bit garbled without his tongue, but clear enough to interpret.

“Koenigin.”

Queen .

Of Tartarus.

Cassandra had won her appeal.