His body jerked with shock. A suspicion he’d dared not entertain suddenly seemed...likely. Was Ophelia the monster?
No. No! She couldn’t be. He would have sensed it from the beginning. Would have recognized her long before this, no matter her state. He would not have coldly, cruelly killed an innocent harpy in battle. Not his own female, a potential gravita. Not even Halo was so cruel.
The assurance gave him little peace, however. In the ensuing minutes, he fought merely to defend, learn, and think. He took blow after blow, each hit worse than the last. The boar’s quills leaked a sweet-smelling toxin, tinged with Ophelia’s carnality. And the way the creature faked a left and swung her head right. A slight hesitation with the final step before a leap. Things the harpy had done in battle.
His instincts sang louder and louder, until a chorus filled his head. My Ophelia.
She lived—as the boar. The way she had avoided questions about her involvement and death. Evasions about the blade itself. Her reaction to the removal of the brand. The guilt she’d projected upon occasion. His trust? In tatters. Killing Five? Nothing compared to this. Ophelia had known the truth all along, and she’d chosen to leave him in the dark. Chosen to leave him ill-prepared while the fate of the Astra hung in the balance. To make Halo suffer the shame of what he’d done over and over again for the rest of eternity.
Betrayal scorched him, and he gave a bitter laugh. Ophelia was Erebus’s champion. Well-chosen. Forcing Halo to fight her as well as his own protective instincts. No wonder he’d vomited after the previous battles.
How could he ever, for any reason, harm the sensual beauty who pleasured him? The insatiable vixen he wished to pleasure in turn.
How could he do it again?
Halo’s stomach wrung bile into his throat. How could he not do it?
Either Ophelia fought for Erebus, betraying harpykind, which Halo doubted, or she was letting herself be used for another reason. Something she’d hinted at during their shower, he realized. But either way, she had lied to him. Because she had wanted this. The truth was so clear now.
So. Halo would do this with zero emotion. Just as he’d done as a child. He would do it because he must.
He forced a total shut down. His mind blanked, his thoughts homing in on his goal. Tonight, I end her life. Tomorrow, her freedom.
He stopped defending himself against her assaults and launched an attack of his own. The tusks—gone.
Her sharp cry of pain did not affect him. Didn’t gut him to his core.
Huffing and puffing, she circled him. Calming? Or planning the day’s dinner menu?
“Surrender, and you’ll feel no more pain.” A command.
She went still. He prowled closer...
Spooked, she bucked. Waging a war within herself?
He avoided her next series of strikes, hoping to tire her out, but she never fatigued.
Erebus laughed all the while.
Increasingly aware of the rawness inside him, Halo did the only thing he could. He broke her front legs, forced her to kneel, and pushed her snout into the dirt.
“I warned you, harpy.”
As he held her down, her muscles strained and tendons pulled taut. Her strength was incredible, her determination unmatched.
Heart thundering, he grated, “Surrender, Ophelia, or it will be much worse for you. You have no other options here.”
Still, she fought, bucking. Erebus’s laughter acquired a maddened tinge as it echoed across the battleground.
Gnashing his molars, Halo fit a mystically enforced rope around her legs, binding her feet together.
And still his harpy bucked.
Ignore the rise of nausea. If she would just stop.
“Do not think you can save her, Halo,” the god called. “The labor doesn’t end until one of you delivers a fatal blow.”
Exactly as he’d suspected. Halo debated his options. Kill her. Kill himself instead. Let her kill him. This was a test but grading mattered. He was supposed to learn something.
What, what? To sacrifice himself for others, the same lesson as Roc? To win, no matter the cost?
The fate of the Astra at stake...
He fortified his resolve and withdrew the self-cauterizing dagger. Inhale. Exhale. Halo drove the blade through her spinal cord, severing her neural pathways. She flopped to the ground.
He repositioned, crouching near her face. Their eyes met as she struggled to breathe. Life was draining from her irises swiftly, her internal light dying. When blood leaked from the corners of her mouth, he nearly roared to the sky.
The trumpet blasted. Halo lurched away to vomit. Ophelia is dying, and it’s my fault. Playing with her one moment, killing her the next. Again. To know he’d harmed her as brutally and often as he had... That she’d let him do it...
“Another victory for you,” Erebus called with a delighted grin. “My sincerest congratulations, Astra. How proud you must be.”
Halo spit in the sand to clean his mouth and returned to Ophelia’s side. As he pet her, he glared at the god. “Your loopholes grow tiresome. You took her from me before the proper time.”