looking down at him with a fierce glare. “Your coup for Hell is finally over, Morax,” Taz declares, his strong, proud voice easily carrying down to him. “You’ve lost.”
As soon as Taz says that, Morax’s Abdicated bolt. Male and female alike, they rush for the doors in the ballroom to escape. The Sins don’t move, and neither does Morax, but I watch, my adrenaline spiking, as the Abdicated try to wrench open the doors, only...the doors don’t open.
They quickly grow desperate. Some of them shove each other aside and try the handles on their own. Morax’s pawns try to rush the doors next, hoping to break them down, but they don’t budge even under the strongest, heaviest body.
“Can I kill them now?” Wrath asks, and I look over to see that her face is alight with excitement.
One of the Abdicated panics, running around like a mouse in a maze, while another group moves to the windows and tries to shatter them, but that doesn’t work either. I guess the Sins weren’t kidding when they said they had this place sealed.
“They’re trying to shift,” Delta mutters beside me, and I follow her gaze and see that she’s right, some of them do look like they’re trying to shift out, but that doesn’t work either.
“As if I would allow anyone to shift in and out of my own house,” Gluttony says with a roll of his eyes.
“Wrath,” Taz says under his breath.
The orange-winged female grins. “Finally,” she breathes.
In the next instant, she spreads her ginger wings out on either side of her and leaps off the balcony. Two gleaming weapons appear in her hands, a double-ended long sword in one and a wicked-looking chain mace in the other.
She lands on the ballroom floor with an ominous thud, and a wrathful, dark cloud appears around her like a vengeful aura. I swear, the very air changes as she unfurls, legs straight, arms poised, wings out. The hair on the back of my neck stands up, and the temperature in the cavernous room rises like a flame. Wrath isn’t cold and calculating. It’s a fervor of violent, passionate heat that feels like fire licking at my limbs.
And then, Wrath moves.
I can’t even track her completely, that’s how fast she is. I see her chain mace swinging and her sword glinting as she pounces. Running, flying, spinning, flipping, she starts cutting down the Abdicated with ruthless intent faster than the blink of an eye. It’s graceful. It’s brutal. It’s hard to watch but impossible to look away from.
I hear the screams and the heavy sounds of bodies falling, but my eyes and ears can’t keep up with her. All I can do is follow the trail of death left in her wake.
Within seconds, she’s slaughtered every single one of Morax’s followers.
And then it’s over, just like that. Not a single one of those Abdicated even left to sputter out a dying breath.
“Holy. Fucking. Shit,” Delta exclaims beside me.
I couldn’t agree more.
“Some of them might’ve been under compulsion,” I hiss over at Taz.
He looks at me without remorse. “They were not. They acted of their own free will,” he says. “And the Sins of Hell will always punish the sins of Hell,” he says, stressing the secondary use of the word.
I look back down below at the carnage, not sure how I feel about it. It should bother me, and yet for some reason, it doesn’t...but that bothers me. I feel Ire come up beside me, and I lean against him slightly, grateful that I have his presence to help ground me so I don’t look at my lack of reaction as proof that something is wrong with me. Blood and body parts are everywhere, and Wrath is drinking it all in, reveling in the punishment she just meted out.
The Sins on the balcony wave their hands again, but this time, instead of it making a mirage melt, they all suddenly get transported down to the ballroom, right in front of Morax, who still hasn’t moved an inch, even when his demons were being cut down all around him.
The Ophidian stands there, not even flinching when all Seven Sins suddenly appear in front of him. Delta and I watch from above, both of us barely breathing. My fingers curl into the stone railing.
“Where’s Medley…?” I whisper, my eyes dipping around the room as if she’ll suddenly appear. She doesn’t.
Taz takes an intimidating step forward. “Morax, we hereby denounce you,” he declares, and the finality of his