I punched him once more in the groin.

The idiot obviously hadn’t learned to protect himself there. He doubled over and I grabbed his shoulders, pulling him down as my knee went up and connected with his face. He screamed and fell backward, his eyes bleeding to black as I turned and jumped into the jungle to the sound of him tearing after me.

My lungs strained. One eye was swelling shut. My face was being cut by every branch and leaf I darted past. Llyran tackled me from behind and I went facedown in the dirt, suffocating. His hand gripped the back of my head and pressed, holding me down, shoving my face farther into the soft soil, and he was laughing.

My arms and legs flailed, but it didn’t matter, none of it mattered if I couldn’t breathe. My lungs sucked dirt into my nostrils and down my windpipe. I choked, tried to cough, but there was no air. Panic had my heart pistoning like a steam locomotive. The strain and burn in my chest was unbearable.

Eventually I stopped fighting. My heartbeat slowed. My mind became hazy. At least Pen had the ring. He’d take it to Liz like we planned and Aaron would be saved. Llyran’s “cause” was gone without the power in the ring to raise the star. He’d lost, and he didn’t even know it.

The wild boar sound coming through the forest again. Raging, growling. So close.

A split second of nothing and then an “oomph.”

Llyran’s hand was suddenly gone from my head. I pushed myself over onto my back as air poured into my lungs. I wheezed, gasped, and coughed up dirt to the sounds of snarling and curses. And I looked over to see glowing red eyes.

Brimstone?

I pushed to my elbows. No, no, no …

Fuck. No.

Emma. She’d sent him. The baying in the streets. She’d sent him to protect me.

Llyran’s shock wore off and he tore the hellhound from his shoulder and flung him into the artificial jungle.

Oh, Em. Why did you send him?

Llyran appeared above me, bloodied and heaving and furious. He threw his hands skyward and yelled at the darkness. I couldn’t see it, but I heard it: Brim’s high-pitched scream as branches snapped. Piercing. Terrified. And I knew. The darkness had him.

Satisfied, Llyran snatched my ankle, turned, and dragged me through the undergrowth. The back of my head banged over the choppy landscape. My hands flailed, trying to find something to hold on to. Just as Llyran stepped down onto the stone pathway I saw it—a juvenile Throne Tree. Once he got me back onto the path my chance would be over. I reached and grabbed, snagging one of the thin branches and then letting the momentum of Llyran’s pull snap the twig.

The back of my head cracked against the stone as he dragged me onto the path and outside to the terrace and the waiting sarcophagus.

Dawn had broken.

The chasm in the darkness was lit up by orange and purple and the tiniest shaft of sunlight over the horizon, the beauty of it shattered by horror as a flash of movement drew my attention. Brimstone, wrapped in darkness, then tossed like a stuffed animal into the open air beyond the terrace, one last cry echoing from him as he fell.

My fingers flexed on the twig as that distant cry tore into my heart and buried there like a venomous thorn. Hot tears leaked from my eyes, and for a moment I wanted to give up.

Llyran dropped my ankle, turning to loom over me. He leaned over to grab my wrists. My arms were still straight above my head from the drag, making him bend over my body to snag my arm, exposing his chest.

One shot that might not mean anything at all. But I had to try.

As his hands reached for mine, I gathered my last ounce of strength and made my move, jerking down my hand and then shoving the Throne Tree branch into Llyran’s heart, using my other hand to push, rising from the floor and screaming in pain as I did, using everything inside of me to make sure it reached the very center of his black, rotten organ.

He gasped, straightened, and then took two steps back and sat down. I collapsed back, breathing hard and teetering on the edge of unconsciousness.

His hand curled around the twig. “Nice try, Detective.” Beads of sweat broke out on his forehead and his irises became blue once again.

“Throne Tree ink is deadly, didn’t you know?” I forced out through gasps.

A painful smirk spread his lips. He pulled the twig out. “Nothing can kill me.” His throat worked with a hard swallow. Thin lines of sweat ran down his pale face. Was it working?

“Your star will never rise,” I said. “And the ring will be destroyed. You’ve failed. And all those people you killed … may they haunt you into eternity.”

Llyran’s eyes darkened. With one last surge of strength he rose, still gripping the branch tightly.

At the same moment a piercing, bestial cry rent the air and shook the tower. Pendaran’s great black body shot up in a spiral past the rooftop, soaring high into the sky where his great black wings unfurled. He turned on a wide arc, the abalone shimmer flashing as a shot of sunlight hit the underside of his wings. And then he dove for the tower. In his talons was the small body of Brimstone.

I was frozen in place by the sight, but Llyran paid no attention. His mouth moved. The darkness slowly began to close in around the chasm of dawn as another shaft formed and shot after the dragon. The great Druid King swooped toward the terrace, his wings sending a gust of wind flying across the rooftop as he released Brimstone six inches from the ground. The hellhound landed on all four feet, body coiled, lips drawn back in a fearsome snarl, and eyes bright. As soon as his paws hit, he was running, fixed on Llyran.

The darkness wrapped about Pendaran as he soared out over the terrace, but it disintegrated as soon as Brim hit Llyran. They went down in a tumble of screams and snarls and blood. Brim tore out a huge chunk of Llyran’s shoulder.

Enraged, screaming, knowing his goals were so far out of reach now and determined to take out his vengeance, he shoved Brim back, his face red and straining and gripped with bloodlust. He pinned the hellhound to the ground and stabbed him in the belly with the Throne Tree branch, over and over and over, lost in a murderous frenzy.

An icy scream ripped from Brim’s throat, propelling me up even as my insides curled in revulsion. I crawled to the side of the tomb, ignoring the pain firing hot, achy signals through every part of me, and pulled up, catching a glint within the sarcophagus.

No, not a glint—a fucking shining-ass sword.

Without thought, tears streaking down my face as Brim breathed his last breath, I grabbed the hilt of the sword, crying out as flame shot up my fingers, searing a path higher and higher.

The sun broke over the horizon, poured through the hole in the darkness, and bathed the rooftop in white gold.

I turned, raised the divine weapon, and brought it down with every last drop of will and strength in my body. It sliced clean through Llyran’s skull, going all the way down to his groin, cleaving him in two and leaving fire in the wake of the wound, one that spread outward and engulfed him.

Gasping, and nearly blind with pain, I dropped the sword, my arm hanging limp at my side as I shoved one half of the burning Adonai aside with my boot and then fell to my knees in front of Brim.

The stupid hellhound had given his life for me.

Hot tears streamed down my dirty face as I gathered him to me using my good arm and cried out in denial. In frustration. In hurt. At the injustice. Everything inside of me, I screamed out into the dawn as sunlight beamed bright and white over us, and as I shut my eyes tightly and prayed. The light behind my eyelids became white, almost painful. Almost as painful as my heart.

I wouldn’t lose him. Wouldn’t go home and tell my kid he was gone.