Archon(128)

“—et insidias diaboli . . .”

His words trailed off as Naamah gestured for silence, passing a fingerblade near her throat. Even she wasn’t immune to the Tongue’s crushing effects. Her wings drooped and she panted loudly over the thunder, stalking slowly toward Troy.

More lightning streaked to the earth.

There was an earsplitting crack. Tileaf’s tree exploded.

Troy shrieked and shut her eyes against the blinding whiteness, still seeing half the trunk split to the base, listening to it rock backward and crash into more trees, knocking them to the earth. Heat, which was undoubtedly fire, jumped from its crown to the foliage, burning through the drier wood with incredible speed, racing through the park in a ring of flames. Almost instantly, the wind picked up, fanning it farther. Cinders and ash flaked down from the sky, their pieces blown about by the fire and the storm, stinging Troy’s nose and layering her skin.

She dared to crack open an eyelid, her joints aching horribly. Her insides were almost overturned by the exorcism.

Sariel stood in front of the flames, a black silhouette framed by the most painful orange. She could sense the smile on his face rather than see it.

“You bastard,” she said, overcome by rage. “You traitorous bastard. You’re done . . .”

Troy would kill him. She’d kill him. Oh, yes, their contract was definitely over.

Naamah stepped in front of her, blocking her view. The demon gasped for breath, her teeth displayed along with her triumph. “All that fighting for nothing. You would have been better off dying two days ago.”

She lifted her fingerblades, aiming for Troy’s head.

“Time to take that wing bone back.”

The black rain hissed to the earth without warning, big, oily drops plummeting from the center of the vortex in the sky. They smelled hollow and rank—sick with negativity, poison, and the most unwholesome matter—and then they fell in a sheet thick enough to be layers of ink. Naamah glanced back at Sariel, shouting something over the roar of the water. But they were definitively separated, and his answer was lost in the screech of the wind.

Blades whistled over Troy’s head.

She crawled to the left, hardly making a sound. Naamah was searching for her, frantic. Already, the demon had lost all sense of direction.

Master! Fury’s voice seemed to come out of nowhere.

It had been the demon’s critical error. Fury had the true form of a child, but her avian body hadn’t been destroyed, and she’d joyously crawled back inside of it.

Go ahead, Troy said to her, curling near a tree. The fire smoldered beneath the rain, but its heat continued to soak into her, making all her inner wounds a thousand times more terrible. Naamah’s blades swept above again, and the demon stumbled to the right, cracking off a tree root. Troy fought the instinctive desire to snap furiously for the demon’s ankles, to break them down to the marrow. Go ahead. Make her suffer.

The curses were the first sign that Fury had found her mark.

Then there was the incredible light.

Troy caught a brief glimpse of her Vapor’s claws raking Naamah’s eyes, but shut her own just in time to stay alive. The wind was incredible, ripping feathers from her wings, forcing her to dig her nails into the bark of her tree. Naamah howled, sobbing in a nearly pathetic agony while Fury dug into her flesh. Then the crow must have torn away. Her wing beats grew fainter, disappearing to a safer spot deep inside the park. Neither of them had time to bother with Sariel, if he was even alive anymore. Hopefully, if the fire hadn’t finally charred him to death, the black rain would melt the skin from his bones. Troy gritted her teeth, hissing and unable to stop while the water stung at her legs, her hands, her face.

She wrapped her wings around her body, flattening them against the wind—

Everything stopped.

A voice rose cleanly throughout the park, its melody rich and forceful. Notes that reminded Troy of icy waterfalls and cool darkness rang from end to end of the grotto, seeming to freeze out the fire. The heat dissipated, and in its place a deep vacuum spread into the ether. Troy opened her eyes to slits, watching the black rain fall in slow motion. Half the drops had crystallized into something else altogether, fluffing to the ground in chill, ebony layers. Troy focused on one of the black crystals, hissing softly at the glitter of its facets. The thickness of their layers half hid the horrendous light nearby, dulling it enough to keep her brain from searing.

Soft footsteps treaded through the snow, and the song gently died away.

Israfel emerged from the trees, grasping Sophia by the wrist. His Thrones were right behind him, their wingtips scraping through the chill black crystals. Troy wrapped her own wings tightly around her body, peering through a feathered gap, careful to keep her pained breathing to a minimum. If any of them had seen her or sensed her, they weren’t showing signs of it. The Supernal continued to step lightly across the grotto, stopping in front of Tileaf’s tree. The mysterious light gleamed off his hair, forcing Troy to shake away her pain.