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Pulse in her mouth, Elena was ready for Illium.

Bloody from the spray when he’d cut off Lijuan’s arm, his blue-tipped black hair matted with sweat, he came down hard. One of his wings was almost fully black at this point, the infection gaining ground with every second that passed. Elena touched her hand to it even before he’d caught his balance. Wildfire sparked over her skin in a protective glove but none passed from her to him.

“Cut it off.” Illium handed her his other sword, the edge a deadly gleam. “Stop the spread. Now Ellie.”

Elena set her jaw and took the blade. There was no point in arguing. His wing would grow back. He wouldn’t survive if the poison reached his bloodstream. Using one wildfire-gloved hand to hold the blackened wing away from his back, she sliced. The blade was razor-sharp, went through the feathers and bone and tendon like they were butter.

Illium’s spine went rigid, but he didn’t cry out. Elena didn’t cry, either, even as she excised off half of one of the most beautiful pair of wings in the world. She made sure to cut as close to the inner edge as possible, removing a clear two inches of healthy wing to ensure none of the poison would get into his bloodstream.

The blackened and dead wing fell to the rooftop.

He incinerated it with his power.

“You’re bleeding,” Elena said as she returned his sword.

“It’ll stop soon.” His face was pale but marked by lines of determination. “Slice off the healthy wing. I can’t fight with it pulling me off-center.”

It was harder this time, because there was nothing wrong with that wing, his feathers a vivid blue edged with filaments of silver, but she knew why he was making the choice. Illium was lethal with a sword in the air or on the ground but a messed-up center of gravity would make him clumsy, easier to kill.

“Done.” Her voice came out a rasp.

Shifting to face her, his eyes dilated but his resolve unshaken, he touched his fingers to her cheek. “Wing loss is a foreseeable battle injury, Ellie. They’ll grow back. I’ll just have fluffy duck feathers and be grounded for a while—I’m very strong. It won’t take long.”

He incinerated his remaining wing, as if able to tell how much it hurt her to see it lying there, severed from his body. “Not sure if this’ll make you feel better, but the first time this happened, my feathers grew back even prettier.” A wicked grin.

“No.” She poked him in the chest. “That does not make me feel better.” But weirdly, it did. He’d been so much younger then, and he’d come through fine.

His back was a mask of blood when she checked again, but the first wound had already stopped bleeding and there was no sign of any further infection. For a second, she thought she saw a faint glow, similar to what happened with Raphael’s wings when he was feeling lethal—or when he was overflowing with power.

Then an entire squadron of Lijuan’s fighters landed on the rooftop and they had no more time. Elena brought up her crossbow, Illium sliced out with his sword, and they exchanged grins before diving into battle.

Elena was on the edge of the building, having just brought down an enemy angel when she saw one of Lijuan’s poisonous bolts drop down directly at Galen, who was in the air on the far side of her roof. She was beside him before she realized it, shoving him out of the way. The bolt hit her instead, punching all the air out of her lungs.

Her entire body erupted with wildfire, encasing her in light.

Lijuan’s bolt dissipated.

Handy, but it used power. She flew back to her rooftop just as Illium finished off the last assailant. Grabbing a crossbow from a fallen enemy fighter, he took up a shooting stance beside her, and they aimed up. Not far from them, she saw Michaela deliberately put her body in the path of a bolt that would’ve otherwise hit and disabled Jason.

The Archangel of Budapest shrugged it off and kept going, flying to take on a general who’d pinned down a squadron. Turned out some people’s true colors were hella surprising. She’d never again look at Michaela the same way.

Elena saw Raphael hit Lijuan in the fucking center of the chest, the wildfire turning her veins electric, but not only had the damn immortal monster healed devastatingly fast from Illium’s heart blow, she remained able to turn noncorporeal. When she appeared by Michaela this time, neither the archangel nor anyone around her was able to interfere before Lijuan disappeared—taking Michaela with her.

She reappeared less than a second later only a meter from the edge of Elena’s rooftop, hovering over clear air with Michaela in her grip.

“Fire! Fire! Fire!” Illium yelled and all the shooters unleashed their arrows or bolts or guns at the Archangel of China.

Several hit Michaela, but Elena knew an archangel could survive those. If they didn’t disengage Lijuan from her neck however, she’d be dead or close to it very soon. Not that Michaela was taking this lying down—she’d created a collar of bronze energy around her neck that appeared to be repelling Lijuan’s attempts, and she was trying to swamp Lijuan in her bronze fire.

Face icy in fury, Lijuan went to put her hand directly over Michaela’s heart.

Taking a breath, Elena paused for a split second, exhaled . . . and shot. Her bolt went through Lijuan’s eye, causing her to rear back, both her hands flying up to her face.

Raphael hit the injured eye with wildfire at the same time, getting it directly into Lijuan’s blood. Lijuan shimmered then reappeared and Elena thought they’d got her. But she disappeared fully the next second . . . even as Michaela fell, fell, fell. There was no one in her path who could catch her, nothing to stop her catastrophic impact with the city street far below.

Trusting Illium and the others to hold off enemy troops, Elena retracted her wings and jumped off the rooftop, only reengaging her wings when she was nearly at the ground. She was beside the fallen archangel mere seconds after the impact. Michaela looked stunningly beautiful even now, with her legs broken under her, bones piercing her bodysuit to gleam wetly in the light, and her neck at a sickening angle, her arms like matchsticks someone had snapped into tiny pieces.

Blood spread from beneath the fan of her hair, a scarlet carpet on the asphalt.

But even worse was the creep of black that was a growing sun around her heart. “Lijuan got her poison into you.” At point-blank range.

Cat green eyes held Elena’s. Flickers of fire lit the archangel’s irises.

Elena looked up.

The sky was aflame above them, as Neha unleashed the flip side of her ability to create ice. Even from so far, it felt as if the heat kissed Elena’s skin through her clothes.

“My son,” Michaela whispered and it was barely comprehensible. “The healer . . . he will be kind.”

“Keir? You want Keir to be the foster dad?”

“Yes.” Rattling sounds in her throat. “Tell him . . . tell him . . . I did not mean . . . to leave him. My . . . son. Protect . . .”

“We will.” Elena wanted to close her hand over Michaela’s, but the archangel’s bones were shattered. When she looked up again, to see if Raphael could help, she found him in a pitched battle against Lijuan.

Fires continued to burn in Michaela’s eyes when Elena turned back to the archangel. A sudden fierceness lit them. Her voice came into Elena’s mind now, the feel of her a sensual perfume. But the words she spoke were hard with resolve—though her voice, it was faded there, too.

I need you to lift my hand and bring it to my chest, above the infection. A cough that bubbled blood. Once I do what needs to be done, take me to a safe place.

Elena had no idea what the hell Michaela was talking about, but she lifted one shattered hand, not flinching when the bones rattled, and placed it in the correct spot. “You’re about two inches from the top of the infection.”

Bronze fire erupted from Michaela’s fingers.

Elena closed her eyes reflexively against the sudden brightness. When she opened them again, Michaela’s eyes were closed, her body limp . . . and most of her chest gone, cut out by her own power. Elena could see the gleam of bone, the spongy texture of one lung.

And blood, so much blood.

Stomach roiling, Elena nonetheless looked carefully at the massive open wound. No sign of infection, all the black cut away. Along with most of Michaela’s ribs and internal organs, part of one hip, a section of pelvis.

“Ellie.” Dusty black boots slamming down beside her, Jason’s wings in her vision. “I’ll carry her to the infirmary.”

Elena nodded jerkily. “I think her neck’s broken.”

“No,” Jason said after crouching down to examine Michaela more closely. “It’s not broken. It’s almost severed from her body.”

Swallowing hard, Elena said, “She was talking.”

“She is an archangel.” He gathered Michaela into his arms.

Elena didn’t ask him if Michaela would survive; as long as none of Lijuan’s infection remained, the Archangel of Budapest would come back. Given her massive injuries, however—injuries that had come on top of having given birth not long ago—it might take a long time.

She flew escort for Jason until they were in friendly territory, then he went onward and she flew back to the battle zone. The sky remained full of fire. Neha was attempting to burn Lijuan’s troops out of the sky.

She thought suddenly of Laric, scarred by his time caught in a fire sky. She hoped he was deep in the infirmary far from any windows. And she hoped the flames didn’t bring nightmares to Caliane and Raphael.

As she got closer, she saw Aegaeon was right next to Neha, appeared to be protecting her so she could focus on her fire. In the orange-red glow, his wings appeared as pure blue as Illium’s. As she watched, he razed an entire squadron with a scythe of sea green power.

“At least the bastard is useful,” she muttered before firing a crossbow bolt through the wing of an angelic fighter who was about to thrust his sword into Andreas’s gut.

The squadron leader raised a hand in thanks before slicing out with his blades to remove the head of another winged fighter. Surrounded by battle, she couldn’t take even a second to search for Raphael in the sky, but she could feel him high above, exchanging blow after blow with Lijuan.

Lijuan, who could heal from any injury.

Fear tried to clamp its claws around her heart.

Gritting her teeth, she shoved it off, and fought on.

* * *

Sweat dripped down Raphael’s back, and dampened his hair. His wildfire was being rapidly depleted. He was going to need to draw from Elena again soon, but the second he did that, they were in the endgame. There was no more power after that and Lijuan appeared unstoppable.

He’d deliberately drawn from Elena before battle began—not the totality of what she held, but enough so their energies would combine to create the green-tinged wildfire. However, since feeding from two archangels, Lijuan seemed all but impervious to even that.

Not far in front of him, Caliane took a massive wave of poisonous strikes from Lijuan’s troops. His mother fell to a rooftop held by Raphael’s people, her wings badly mangled and her bones shattered.

Mother?

I will survive this, my son. But I am out of the battle. Her mind cut off on the heels of that statement.

Just as Lijuan went noncorporeal again. He’d done enough damage that she couldn’t seem to hold it for long, but even a second was too long. This time, she appeared close enough to Elijah to target him with her starlight obsidian.

The Archangel of South America couldn’t avoid it, but Raphael was close enough to slam wildfire into both him and Lijuan. Eli’s body jerked as the wildfire punched through to the poison in his system and began to fight it, while Lijuan’s eyes lit up with wildfire before she screamed and fired back at Raphael.

Galen caught Elijah as he fell, lowered him to a rooftop. A flash far below caught Raphael’s eye, Venom’s face outlined in heat as he blasted a flamethrower at a horde of reborn right on top of him.

Raphael had no time to check on Eli or help Venom—Lijuan hadn’t gone noncorporeal after wounding Elijah, and he blasted bolt after bolt at her. Her entire body burned the white-gold and blue of wildfire kissed with green, but she didn’t break apart. Instead, she ran from Raphael and directly toward Neha. The Archangel of India avoided her bolts, but her avoidance strategy put her under a massive hail of obsidian rain shot by Xi and another general.

Neha went down.

Aegaeon attempted to cut Lijuan with his sea-green scythe, but it only seemed to irritate her. He did manage to avoid being hit, which meant Raphael still had three other friendly archangels in the sky with him. Then a mind with a weight as heavy as Caliane’s touched his.

I am running out of power. Alexander, his words spoken in the instant between one attack and the next. I have never in all my existence come this close to the edge. Aegaeon will not admit it, but he must be the same.

Raphael got Lijuan once again, just as she readied herself to hit Alexander. Spinning around, she sent her power at Raphael instead. “You cannot kill me!” she roared as wildfire arced through her veins . . . and didn’t end her.

The hail of starlight obsidian she sent at him was a wall.

He threw up a wildfire shield but it threatened to buckle under the pressure almost immediately.

Archangel. Elena’s hand on his calf, the wildfire from her body entering his.

Using some of that power to dissipate Lijuan’s as Elena broke away to take position by his side, he saw the reason why he wasn’t under a secondary attack. A burst of violet energy had broken the sky to slam into Lijuan. A woman with hair of lilac, her gown pale green and her eyes impossible to see from here, was pounding Lijuan with blow after blow.

Another thinner figure joined her, and her eyes were visible to Raphael. What had once been brown was now liquid fire. As if the flame that had cleansed Favashi of infection had become part of her. Her Cascade-born power was rumored to be control over the winds, but it was liquid fire that she wrapped around Lijuan, trying to burn her down to the bone.

From the other side of the battlefield came another massive bolt of energy, this one holding the poignant beauty of the sea aurora.

Alexander fired at Lijuan at the same time, the silver of his wings brilliant in the blasts of energy lighting up the sky.

Raphael shot more wildfire at Lijuan, even as beside him, Elena used her crossbow to take down a flyer who’d come at them. He wanted to tell her to go back to a rooftop where it was safer, but no place was safe in war. And if this was the end, then they’d go into it side by side.

Then Lijuan managed the impossible and broke away from the combined attack.

Alexander fired after her.

Lijuan made an unpredictable move to the left.

Elena moved at the same instant to shoot out the wings of one of Lijuan’s generals who was raising his hand to fire at them.

The bolt of Alexander’s silver energy came straight at Elena.

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