“Good. This has to be more secondary after today. Logically, we can’t take the star back until we find it. But it’d be to our advantage to have a direction, to give Sawyer some possible coordinates when we do find the third star.
“She’s going to be even more pissed.”
“She’s hurt. Maybe we find it before she’s back in action. And no,” he said when Riley just raised her eyebrows. “I don’t believe that for a minute.”
“Okay then. To round it up. Find the star, find the island, get the job done. Hope getting the job done includes destroying Nerezza.”
“A sword does her, according to our seer.”
“And it would be extra nice if it was yours, but neither of us thinks it’s going to be that clean and done.”
“Bran enchants it with that in mind. It may be time to start working on that part of the deal.”
“It couldn’t hurt.” She’d thought of it herself. “Could be with the spell Bran’s already put on the weapons, we’re already covered there. But . . . Let’s lay it out while we’re here and the others aren’t.”
She could talk straight to him, she thought. Say things to him she’d hesitate to say to the others. Things that weighed against hope.
“If we don’t finish her before we get the stars back to the island, we’ve still saved the worlds. Yay, us. But she’s going to come for us when we’ve done our job. She can afford to wait.”
Her eyes held his, cool and steady as she continued. “Bran and Sasha go off and get married, have a couple kids. Annika and Sawyer are living on some island—on land for him, in the sea for her. They’ll probably even make that work. Me, I’ll find a dig or write a book. Likely both. You’ll do what you do. And she’ll come for us, one or two at a time, and pick us off like flies. She can’t kill you, but she can probably come up with something worse.”
The image didn’t sit well, so she reached over, took his beer, had a sip. “We’ve been set on this course, every one of us. We’ve been brought together for one purpose, all of us. To find the stars, return them, save the worlds. We’re getting there. I believe we can do it. I think we can complete the quest. But after that, Doyle, nobody says we all live happily ever after. Nobody says we’re fated to kill the dark god and do a victory dance.”
“Then we’d better say it, and do it.” He took the beer back, sipped. “Because no way I’m being the sex slave of some psycho god for eternity.”
“I was thinking she’d more likely keep you slow roasting over an open fire pit for eternity.”
“I like the heat, but the point remains. We’d better do it, Gwin. All the way. Or nobody rides off into the sunset until we do. We’re stuck together until she’s blown out of existence.”
She’d thought of that, too, but . . . “Annika’s only got a couple months before she’s mermaid all the time.”
“We do it before. We’ll put Bran on the sword. We’ll be ready for her when she comes back.”
“Okay. One god-destroying sword goes on the list.” Riley gestured. “Read.”
• • •
In her chamber, in her cave, deep underground, Nerezza stirred. The pain! The pain scored like claws, bit like teeth under her skin, burned like jagged tongues of fire and ice over it.
In all of her existence, she had never known such pain.
Her scream of rage sounded as a gasping whimper.
The thing that had once been Andre Malmon—human, wealthy, savage in his way—held a chalice to her lips in his clawed hand. “Drink, my queen. It is life. It is strength.”
The blood he fed her trickled down her scorched throat. But the pain, the pain. “How long? How long now?”
“Only a day.”
No, no, surely it had been years, decades. She had suffered so much. What had they done to her?
She remembered whirling wind, a terrible fall, scorching heat, blazing cold. Fear. She remembered fear.
And the faces, yes, she remembered the faces of those who’d struck out at her.
Tears burned down her cheeks as she drank, as Malmon’s lizard eyes stared into hers with a mixture of adoration and madness.
This, this is what they’d brought her to.