The Destroyer had escaped her dark prison in the Haeven Mountains.

Cyrene could hear the confusion spreading among her ranks. Could sense the shift in the battle. An unknown variable had entered the equation, and no one knew how to solve it.

Least of all Cyrene, who had been preparing all this time to face Kael. To finish what they had started long ago and be done with this once and for all. Now, here stood a goddess. How was she supposed to fight a god?

“Hello,” the goddess said, taking another step through the portal.

Another figure followed. Tall and also dressed in black from head to toe. Except his face was visible…and she had seen him before.

Merrick.

Her stomach curdled. The head of Edric’s royal guard. Likely Kael’s now as well. What was he doing with the Destroyer? Had he always been working for her? Some part of her thought that he must have been. And that made it all the worse. This man had been right under her nose, and she hadn’t had any clue.

Once Merrick was through, the portal zipped closed behind him. The silence after it shut was all-consuming.

The goddess held her hands up and breathed in deeply. “The scent of war. It strengthens me like nothing else. I have been waiting for this moment to come.”

Vera stepped to Cyrene’s side. “Tread carefully.”

“I thought she was contained,” Cyrene hissed to Vera.

Tension hung thick in the air.

“She must have grown to a strength to conceal herself while we were gone,” Vera whispered. Her jaw was set. “I should have known.”

The goddess looked straight to Cyrene. Cyrene couldn’t see her under her long cloak, but she could feel her looking at her. Could sense that her attention was fixated on Cyrene.

“I have come to reclaim what is mine,” the Destroyer announced.

“Who are you?” someone cried boldly.

The goddess stepped forward. “I am the goddess of destruction. The Destroyer, in your tongue. I have lived longer than your puny brain can fathom. I have power that you could never comprehend. And, now, I am here to wipe out the abomination my sister, your Creator, made all those years ago.” She swept her arm out across the crowd. “Humanity.”

“You can’t have them,” Cyrene said. The words ripped from her throat, and she heeled her horse forward a step.

“Cyrene, no,” Vera said.

But Cyrene wasn’t listening. “Humanity is under my protection. You no longer hold dominion here. And, if you don’t leave, then you’ll answer to me.”

“Cyrene,” the goddess said. “The great savior. I called you. You could have come to me then. Saved them then. But you never used my token, and they will all suffer for it.”

“Your token was damnation and ruin. You are smoke and shadow. I do not fear you.”

“You should,” the voice sang. Then, she raised her hands heavenward. “Come forth, my generals. Show your faces to the world. Merrick of the Nokkin, my first creation.”

Merrick took the position on her right. Cyrene’s stomach dropped. Merrick was a…Nokkin. He had been within the castle walls all that time, leeching magic from anyone he passed. She had no idea how he had gone so long undetected. The Nokkins Cyrene had encountered were lethal. They had drained all her magic once and left Avoca in a coma.

“Kael Dremylon of the Blood Cursed.”

Cyrene’s eyes snapped to Kael across the distance. He was working with the Destroyer. Just as Viktor had worked with the goddess two thousand years prior.

Kael stepped forward. His steps were rigid as he moved to the goddess’s left side. He stood frozen beside her. She could almost guess that he didn’t want to be there. But, if he didn’t, then…why was he working with her?

“Wara of the Braj.”

A woman stepped out of Aurum ranks, dressed head to toe in silver armor. She shed her helmet and revealed the mottled face beneath. The face she had carved off of another woman after her kill and worn as her own face. She withdrew her wickedly curved blade that Cyrene knew from experience was laced with a deadly poison. She confidently stood at Merrick’s side. An assassin with her moment in the spotlight.

“And, finally, my alpha,” the Destroyer announced, “Ahlvie of the Indres.”

“No!” Cyrene heard Avoca shriek from behind her.

Cyrene wheeled her horse around, prepared to stop whatever was about to happen. To take him down before allowing him to succumb to whatever the goddess would do with him, would force him to do.

She met Ahlvie’s golden eyes, wide with pain.

“I’m sorry,” he ground out.

Then, the shift took him. So effortless. No trouble at all. As if all that training with his Indres form in Kinkadia had shed him of any resistance he’d had to the change. The Indres and the man were one in the same. And, now, the beast had taken him over. And he was in the goddess’s control.

Ahlvie began to lope toward the Destroyer, but Avoca raced after him.

“Stop! Ahlvie, stop! You don’t want this. You don’t want to work for her. You can end this. Shift back. You are mine. You belong to me.”

But Ahlvie seemed unable to hear her.

Dean rushed forward then, grabbing Avoca around the middle. “She’ll kill you.”

“I’ll kill her!” she shrieked back. Avoca raged as he padded toward the goddess. Suddenly, one of her ice-white blades was in her hand, and she sent it sailing straight for the goddess’s heart. It was a perfect throw, perfect form. It arched through the air, ready to make its landing. Then, the goddess waved her hand at it, and the blade dissolved into smoke, missing its target by a hairbreadth.

Avoca slumped in Dean’s grasp.

Ahlvie stepped up to his place next to Kael.

Her generals were all in position.