Grayson…My pack.

They were here too.

How was everyone here? Were the Dread wards down?

Azazel twisted to the side, and I heard the wet whoosh of his blade cross another throat.

“Cora!” Azazel called.

Cora was back?

Azazel kissed my temple, and then he threw me.

I arced through the air until I made contact with something, and then the world splintered.

I materialized outside the gates to the voralex.

Cora grabbed my shoulders and squeezed, her face a mask of fury. “Don’t you ever fucking do that again.”

I gave her a weak smile. “So, my plan worked.”

“What?”

“For you to go get help.”

She frowned. “You planned this?”

I grinned through the sting of my knitting wounds. “No, but that would have been a cool plot twist, right?”

“Bitch. I hate you.” She hugged me.

My wounds zinged as they finished healing, and power flooded my limbs. “We have to get back in and help.”

Cora helped me up, and we ran toward the gates.

We never made it.

A flash of blinding light shot down from the sky, striking the earth between us and the voralex. The force of the impact threw me back several feet. My ears rang shrilly, and the rest of the world was a muffled place.

“Cora?” My voice sounded far away. I blinked against the dark spots, hands out searching for my friend. My fingers brushed someone’s hands.

“Cora?”

“Fee?”

The spots shrank, and I could see again. But Cora wasn’t looking at me, she was looking at the sky.

I followed her gaze to see armored wings, fiery spears, and blades descending on the voralex.

The Righteous army was here.

“Looks like the cavalry finally arrived,” Cora said. “Are we going to let them have all the fun?”

My scythe appeared in my hand. “Like hell.”

The Righteous army were relentless, cutting down Dread with their armored wings, slicing down into the fray, and spinning until heads flew off.

We were simply backup, and it wasn’t long before every Dread that hadn’t made it through the voralex was dead.

We stood, bloody and exhausted, in the midst of embers and ash. The Righteous army left one by one, launching themselves back into the air, all except one.

I recognized him as he drew near.

Cassius. The Dominion who’d shoved me out of the Beyond. The one who’d told me to forget about Uriel.

Azazel and Grayson flanked me as the celestial approached. Thank God Uriel hadn’t come to help. Keon stepped in front of me, blocking Cassius’s path. He hissed in warning.

Cassius frowned and looked around the Blade. “We need to talk.”

“It’s okay, Keon. I need a word with him.”

Keon stepped out of the way.

“You took your time,” Azazel said. “I would have thought you’d have shut the voralex down.”

“We tried,” Cassius said. “It was taking too long.” He pressed his lips together. “The voralexes have been tainted, and celestials are working on shutting them all down. There are Dread in the Beyond who we will now have to hunt.” He narrowed his eyes. “If you’d done your jobs as reapers and regulated the Dread threat, then this would never have happened.”

Was he fucking serious? “Regulate a threat that you placed here? One that you lied to us about.”

He blinked sharply. “Uriel was hiding you. You have him, don’t you?”

“Yeah, I have him, and he stays with me. You tortured him just to keep your disgusting secret.” I stepped up to him, rage a hot kernel in my chest. “You feed off human souls. You burn them up and spit out what’s left into purgatory. You fucking make me sick. Don’t you dare stand there and try to put the blame for this on us. Maybe if you’d been upfront about the Dread, we’d have had a chance to preempt their plan. But it’s all about the power for you guys, isn’t it?” Heat pressed at the back of my eyes. “You just fucking burned through my Aunt Lara!”

His lip curled. “You think this is just about us?”

“I don’t see anyone else using souls as batteries.”

His jaw ticked. “If not for us, humanity would have fallen into darkness a long time ago.”

“What are you talking about?” Azazel asked.

“The Beyond and the earthly realm are irrevocably entwined. If the Beyond falls, then the earthly realm will unravel too. We did what we had to in order to save both realms.”

I didn’t buy it. “You’re lying.”

“Celestials can’t lie,” he said.

I looked to Azazel, who nodded. “He’s telling the truth.”

“With the voralexes down, the Beyond will fall,” Cassius said. “And when it does, all this”—he waved an arm to encompass our world—“will follow, but then I guess all great civilizations must come to an end someday.”

He sounded weary, as if he was done with it all.

It was a defeatist attitude. “There has to be something we can do.”

He smiled wryly. “We need human souls, and the voralexes were the last of their kind. With them gone, we have no means to siphon and convert souls to energy, and all the energy stored in them has been corrupted. Once we shut down, it will be swallowed by the ether.”

“Then we find another source of energy.”

He snorted. “I suppose I should applaud your optimism.”

“You’re saying there is nothing else that can power the Beyond?”

Something passed across his face. A knowledge that he tried to bury. But why? Why would he want to hide a solution from us?

“You know something.”

He looked torn.

“Cassius,” Azazel said. “If there is any hope, however slim, we must pursue it.”

“There is something I heard a long time ago. A rumor. I’m not sure how much truth there was to it.”

“I thought celestials couldn’t lie,” Cora said.

Cassius pursed his lips. “No, but we can make mistakes.”

“What did you hear?” Azazel asked.

“When the divine left, when we realized what was happening to the Beyond, a small group of Powers were sent to the Underealm. I have no idea why, but it’s said they never returned.”

Azazel frowned. “You think they went in search of a power source?” He shook his head. “No, if there was such a power source in the Underealm, then we’d be aware. I’d be aware.”

Cassius sighed. “I don’t know. All I know is that after this unit failed to return, the Righteous settled on the only option we had for fuel. Human souls. It’s the closest we can come to the divine energy that forged us.”

There was something in the Underealm. A solution possibly. “Can you dig up more information on this mission? Corroborate its existence?”

Cassius looked up at the sky, churning and seething in a storm that would soon swallow us all. “I’ll petition the Righteous council. It can’t do any more harm than has already been done.”

Now that their secret was out, he meant. Now that the Beyond and the earthly realm were on the verge of ending.

“I’ll find out what I can,” he said. “But you mustn’t let the news of what’s happened here spread. If the humans find out, there will be panic. We will either prevail, or we will go silently into the night.”

The end of the world as we knew it…The end of humanity and celestials…Oh God… My gaze flew to Azazel. “If the Beyond falls, then the celestial connection the fallen and their descendants need to live will be gone.”

Cassius’s smile was wry. “You finally understand.”

Azazel cursed.

What had the Dread done? In their attempt to go home, they’d kickstarted an apocalypse clock. “We will figure this out.”

He was looking at me with a strange expression on his face, as if he couldn’t quite figure me out.

His eyes narrowed, and then he nodded to himself as if coming to a decision. “You have a loved one in purgatory.”

My throat tightened. “Yes?”

“The core of the pure souls is sent to the Edge. A part of purgatory with its own rules. They feel no pain, I assure you.”

“That doesn’t make me feel any better. My Aunt Lara and all the souls trapped there deserved better.”

“I know,” he said softly. “If we fall, purgatory will fracture, and these innocent remnants will be devoured by the malignant who reign there. Our worlds will become prey to the depraved, and then…Who knows how it will end.”

Why was he telling me this? My question must have shown on my face.

“I want you to get innocent cores out. Use your scythe and set them free. It’s the least that can be done. Some retribution to possibly balance the scales.”

“What do you mean?”

He closed his eyes. “Your scythe can act as a conduit to the ether if you wish it to. You can draw the cores to you and set them free.”

They could have done this all along, but that would have meant telling us, the Dominus, the truth. It was a tangled web they wove, and now it was all coming undone.

“You can free Aunt Lara,” Cora said, squeezing my hand lightly.

“Mal is a purgatory reaper, and he isn’t here. We have…issues to deal with in the Underealm.”

Cassius’s smile was tight. “You don’t need Malachi. You need a celestial, and I believe you have one.” He turned and began to walk away. “I’ll petition the Righteous for information on the Powers’ mission.”

“How long?” Cora called out after him. “How long until we lose power?”

He turned to face us, his expression grim. “Weeks. Maybe a couple of months, if we’re lucky.” His wings unfurled with a metallic snap. “Let’s hope fate is on our side.”