Chapter 73: Chapter 73

AVERY

My gaze caught the red eyes of my mate as she glided through the air high above our army on her amicus, a black silhouette against the pale sky. But there was no time to linger any longer.

Suddenly, Devas and Evangeline rushed toward me, their steps heavy from the flight they’d been on. Aidan called out to them briefly, reporting the situation in short words as he pressed armor into their hands.

Devas’s muscles flexed under his armor as he strapped it tighter, his breath coming in short bursts, as if preparing himself for the inevitable. Aidan gave him a questioning look as he stood beside him, his brows furrowed.

“Better late than never,” Devas said dryly, with a touch of sarcasm.

But then we all stiffened. The forest trembled in front of us.

Trees tumbled like downed giants, their wood groaning and splintering as if they themselves were screaming in pain. With each crash, each thud, Devas flinched, his fist gripping the hilt of his sword so tightly that his knuckles turned white.

“My forest…” he hissed between his teeth.

But the worst was yet to come.

Out of the tangled mess of falling trunks, a front formed—Abaddon’s army. Creatures of the night, grim and sinister, lined up, their glowing eyes staring back at us.

They didn’t move. They were waiting.

Then the crowd parted. Like a living stream, they split, receded, almost bowed, and cleared the way for the lords of darkness.

Abaddon and Belial strode before their army, their mere presence causing the air to tremble. Abaddon’s horn crowned him like a crown of thorns, while Belial’s smile was sharper than any sword.

They stood there as if our world already belonged to them.

Abaddon looked over our army. Even though we had thousands of warriors, his force was twice as large.

His mouth twitched into a victorious grin as he looked over my soldiers’ faces. Until his eyes fixed on Evangeline.

He glanced over her face, down her body, until he caught sight of her sword. Abaddon drew his sword, presenting it to me.

I gulped as I recognized it—Father’s sword. My heart tightened in my chest.

“Avery…I’m with you,” I heard Iris’s voice through our bond.

But Abaddon knew exactly what he was doing. He poked at my weakness, reminding me how he murdered my father.

Of all the friends I had lost in that battle. He smiled. A disturbing grin told me he’d already won this war.

Abaddon wanted to scare me, to make me weak before the battle even began. But I wouldn’t let him.

Not this time.

Abaddon looked to his brother, who was staring at Evangeline.

“Give me the sword,” he commanded Evangeline, “or I’ll slaughter you and drag you to hell…”

Devas’s face was painted with rage, his protective instinct over his newly won mate immense.

“Don’t get cocky…I know I don’t look dangerous to you. But why don’t you try me? I could be dying and coughing up blood…But I’ll drag you right down to hell with me as I’m falling…Abaddon, you worthless piece of shit,” Evangeline yelled back.

Devas’s head snapped to his mate. The pride in him was so big he started to laugh.

“And who are you?” Belial asked Evangeline.

“I am Evangeline of the great ones, the daughter of Chamuel, the Archangel of Love…commander of the armies of High King Avery,” she replied to him without fear.

My eyes met Devas’s as she raised her chin proudly. The army behind me whispered—but now it was no longer a murmur, but a fervent, greedy whisper.

They’d seen her wings. Fragments of the truth, hints of the power that slumbered within her.

But nobody thought it was true. Not really.

Until now.

She exposed herself with a scream that tore Abaddon’s name into the air like a declaration of war, and revealed herself. Not in hints, not in riddles.

With flaming, unbearable clarity.

Her wings spread, large and strong, as she stared at Abaddon and Belial. And the army awoke.

A thunder erupted. Voices merged into a single, wild battle cry, and then Evangeline looked back.

Her gaze slid over the sea of faces. Over men and women who shouted her name.

Not as a commander…but as one of us.

Antaris’ people, for whom ~she~ would fight, now stood behind her. Then she glanced from Devas to me.

And in that moment, something inside her broke. Not in ruins… in freedom.

Recognition that nobody had ever given her. Pride that she had never been allowed to feel.

Confidence she breathed like air for the first time. And then she smiled.

“You will all die!” screamed Abaddon.

My army fell silent as Abaddon’s beasts began to snarl. They screeched, a hellish noise that cut the air—claw-wracked shrieks, howling throats, the crunching of teeth scraping for our flesh.

Abaddon let them run riot. He wanted us to shiver.

But I… I heard something else.

The Tree of Power whispered in my ears, and suddenly I saw them before me. Father’s furrowed smile as he handed me the sword for the first time.

Mother, waving to me as she went off to battle—not knowing she would never return. Iris’s parents, who loved their children so much that they died for the two of them.

And my friend Alvar. His laughter echoed through me, while Elian’s hand still rested in his—even in death.

“Don’t let him fool you.” The words echoed in my head.

My father’s voice. Not a reminder. A warning.

Suddenly, a sharp tug at our mate bond yanked me back. Iris’s hand clutched at Alatus. Her breath hitched.

She’d seen them. I felt it even before I met her gaze—the way her heart clenched under the memories we shared.

Her pulse raced through our connection, a wild drumroll of pain and longing. Her fingers trembled, as if she were standing in the shadow of her lost childhood for the first time in years.

“~They…~” Iris’s voice in my head broke.

Through our bond, I felt the image of her parents reverberate within her—the familiar smile of her mom, the determined strength in her father’s eyes. For a fleeting moment, she was not the steadfast warrior, but the little girl who had desperately reached for their hands… and never found them again.

Through our entwined souls flowed a surge of emotions, the bittersweet warmth of memory, the biting pain of loss, and something new…

Rage. Not an impotent rage, but a fiery, focused steel.

Our parents weren’t just dead—they’d been taken from us. And this thought burned through our bond like a blazing fire.

Iris’s grip tightened.

When she looked at me, there were no tears in her eyes, only cold clarity.

“They’re here,” she whispered. “Not just inside us. Everywhere.”

Abaddon thought he was terrifying us. But he had just woken all of our spirits.

The air trembled as my voice thundered over the battlefield.

“Arise, fighters of Antaris!… Tonight there will be swords shattering and rivers of blood flowing!” I shouted.

My own sword flashed in the gloomy red twilight, a silver lightning against the darkness.

Evangeline yanked her sword from its sheath—the metallic hiss was the signal that the front ranks followed.

Dozens of blades awoke at once, a deadly chorus of ringing steel.

Behind me, I heard Aidan’s sharp orders to the defense.

“Archers—SPAN!” he called.

My eyes shot upward to where my mate circled above us in a blood-red glow.

Her aura pulsed like a second moon. Her determined nod spoke a thousand words.

Until death.

“Forward!” I ordered.

My scream cut through the silence as I gave Eyon the spurs.

“FOR ANTARIS!”

My army’s response was a single, deafening war cry that shook the earth.

“FOR ANTARIS!”

The battle cry echoed like thunder across the field, bellowed by a thousand throats over and over again until the air shook.

At first we slowly began to move, a huge, menacing colossus of steel and rage.

Then the flood broke loose.

Warriors on amicuses surged forward, their hooves striking sparks from the rocky ground.

The dull roar of countless footsteps turned into an infernal thunder as the mass gathered speed, a living river that carried everything with it.

I felt the rhythm of the apocalypse beneath me.

The first ranks thrust forward with their swords.

Bows sighed, arrows whizzed.

And Abaddon, unimpressed by us, only raised his hand before balling it into a fist.

“Kill them all!” he yelled angrily.

Two deadly storms rushed towards each other—our thunderous stampede against Abaddon’s black tide.

The earth shook under the force of our footsteps, the air trembled with the shrill war cry.

Then… we collided.

Like two oceans that collided with the fury of ages.

Swords clashed against shields, blades sparkled in a bloody dance.

Steel ate its way into flesh. Bones splintered under furious blows.

The world shrank down to this one blood-soaked moment.

Every strategy crumbled to dust. Every thought drowned in the metallic taste of war.

All that was left was chaos, a living, howling beast that took us between its teeth.

“For Antaris…”