Chapter Forty-Seven
Andros let Addie go and stepped back. Adelaide turned to the site of the destruction and took in the rubble that remained of the first fifteen feet of the narrow bridge.
Her eyes felt like they would pop out of her head. She couldn’t believe what she was seeing, what she’d felt coming off of Nicholas just before he’d jumped and destroyed the bridge. It had been fear. Resignation. And regret.
And she’d known at once what he was planning.
He’d told her that Nightmares possessed the ability to pull souls into themselves. They had this ability in order to bring sweet, painless relief to those souls trapped in bodies that caused them great suffering. It was a part of what a Nightmare was – an incubus. Incubi needed to bring people pleasure, and according to anyone who had ever suffered greatly, there was no greater pleasure than the cessation of pain.
Nicholas was planning to use this ability. The difference this time was that he wasn’t going to use it to bring someone pleasure. He was going to use it to trap the Entity inside his body… and then destroy himself.
Addie’s eyes moved to the chasm on either side of the destroyed bridge. It dropped off into deep, unfathomable nothingness, just as Rachel’s vision had predicted. And she knew it was an eternal nothingness, not just a fall off a steep cliff. This was the edge of the Duat, a place so filled with nothing, it caused anything and anyone inside it to cease to exist. Living or dead. Gone forever.
This is how he will do it, she realized. Then she spun to face her companions. “You have to do something! You have to stop him!”
“I think I can fix the bridge,” said Dannai. She moved forward, taking a backpack off her shoulder, and dropping it at her feet. “But it’ll take me a few minutes.”
Addie nodded at her. “Thank you.” But then she looked up at the Vampire King. “Is there anything you can do?”
“I could fly you across individually, but I don’t think that’s a good idea. It’s the Entity we’re talking about. For all we know, we could hit something halfway and go tumbling into the nothing.” He looked at her long and hard. “You know as well as I do that Nicholas was allowed across for a reason.”
Addie swallowed hard. Her throat felt very tight. Her chest ached. “What about the bridge?” she asked. “Can you help Danny fix it?”
He shook his head. “Warlocks are unfortunately far better at tearing things apart than putting them back together.”
Andros and Minnaea looked at Adelaide, and the expressions on their faces were tight to the point of being terrified. Addie racked her brain.
“Why can’t I transform like him?” she asked.
Minnaea shook her head. “You’ll change when the time is right,” she said softly. “Now must not be that time.”
Addie screamed in frustration – and it came out louder than usual. The walls shook. Everyone looked up. Addie heard herself breathing. Her breaths were coming quick and short. She was panting, on the verge of an all-out panic attack.
Andros moved toward her, but when she held up her hand palm-out and narrowed her gaze at him, he stopped and lowered his head. “My queen, we will figure this out. I promise.” He looked stricken, even more frightened than she felt. Which was impossible.
Wasn’t it?
Wait. It makes sense, she told herself. Nicholas is his king. He’s the man that Andros was created to protect, and he isn’t doing so.
No, there’s more to it, she thought even as her heart hammered and her head spun and she simultaneously tried to figure out how to force herself to grow fucking wings so she could fly to Nicholas and keep him from doing what he wanted to do. That crazy, crazy thing he fully planned on doing.
There’s more. She looked from Andros to Minnaea, who had started to very slowly walk toward Adelaide. There’s more – and it has to do with them. It wasn’t just that they must protect Nicholas. It was that when this fight was over… they would cease to exist.
Minnaea stopped in her tracks and bit her lip. Andros turned to regard his wife. Minnaea looked from Addie to her husband, and her forehead creased with hard resignation. Her eyes filled with all of the sad endings of history. This confrontation would mean the end of them, and yet they were driven by the fates that made them to make certain that it happened.
Except… Addie shook her head. “No,” she said, speaking to Minnaea. “Not this time.”
It wouldn’t end for them this time because Nicholas didn’t plan to kill Nero. Addie felt it in her gut. No, she felt it in her soul. It was that thing that was wrapping around and squeezing tight and sending her heart into a frenzy.
He planned to kill himself instead. And take the Entity out with him.
A fantastic rush of pain flooded Adelaide, and suddenly she looked down to find that she was several feet off the ground. Shock moved through her, hot on the pain’s heels. She heard something beating steadily. Was it her heart? No, it was too slow. She glanced to the left and saw a wing hit the air, a wing filled with soft brown and blonde feathers, an enormous wing, strong and beautiful. She looked to her right. Another wing.
They were hers.
She didn’t look back to see the stunned but proud expressions of her Preceptors – her Preceptors – because she had only one goal in mind. It was what made her change in the first place.
Save Nicholas. Nothing else mattered.