he stares down at me with loathing.
I try to shove past him. “Toreon!” I call, needing to get to him, to at least see him, but the stupid bastard brutes press in closer together, blocking him from me completely, and my rage soars.
I open my hand and call to my scythe, completely done with this shit, but Delta calls my name, her voice laced with such agony that I immediately turn to her.
I whirl around and take in Delta’s horrified face. I follow her stare and find that all six of my sisters’ mates are now holding vicious daggers against their throats.
Morax has moved closer to Delta, a hand on her arm, and I notice she’s called her scythe too, like she was getting ready to jump in to help me, but once again, Morax anticipated our every move.
“Step away from my demons, Annulus,” Morax says smoothly.
I grit my teeth, my entire body tense, my arms ready to swing. I can swing faster than he can speak, I tell myself, seething anger as my grip tightens on my scythe.
As though Morax can read my mind he declares, “They were compelled long before you arrived here. They know to take their own life if you or your sister tries to scythe me or any of my demons...or if you refuse to do as you’re told.”
Frustration courses through me. “If you’re destroying all of Hell, what does it matter?” I spit back. “We’re all dead anyway.”
He lifts a finger to stop my train of thought. “Ah, but if you behave, then I will let you three and your sisters’ mates pass through the portal with us. I will let them live.”
Morax’s words feel like a slap across my face, and it takes me a moment to recover from the sting of it. My lips press into a hard line. He’ll let my sisters’ mates live. Just not mine.
“What about my mates?” I demand, my stomach tying in knots.
The Ophidian raises a brow, his expression contemplative. “So you have more than the Gatekeeper?”
Finally, something he doesn’t know. I refuse to answer him, and he shakes his head. “Then, I suppose you have a choice on your hands, don’t you?”
A choice.
An impossible choice.
Delta’s gray eyes widen as she looks at me. “Please,” she mouths, her face terrified, like she thinks I’ll go for Toreon anyway. After all, what must she think? I’ve never even met her or Medley’s mates before. I only just met her. What are any of them to me? And I see that in her face—that flicker of uncertainty. The doubt about who I’ll choose.
If I were a selfish person, maybe I’d say to hell with it all. Maybe I’d scythe the demons at my back and run to heal Toreon anyway. We’re all going to lose in the end, so why not choose myself just this once? Why not let my scythe do what it was made to do? Because I could. I could do it right now. I could fight my way to my mate, cutting through as many demons as possible. I could give him my blood, save him, at the expense of it all.
But...that’s not who I am.
I’m not just a mate, or a demon, or an angel, or an Annulus. I’m a sister too. I always have been. So even though it kills me, kills me, I...can’t make that choice. I can’t go to Toreon. I can’t willfully let my sisters’ mates be killed.
All of my raging frustration slips out as a scream rips through my throat, and I slam the blade of my scythe down against the dull ground, the metal slicing through dirt and rock like it’s a visual representation of my heart.
Rabid, wild hate swirls through me like a cyclone as I lift my gray eyes up to the Ophidian.
He’s won.
He’s won, and he damn well knows it. He’s got Delta and me right where he wants us. Medley is lost to the control over her mind, and there’s no hope that she can dig herself out. She was always more susceptible than I was. The Seven Sins were outsmarted, played against their own willful arrogance. Morax even has the damn Devil struck down from his pedestal.
A tear drips down my cheek as I rip the scythe out of the earth and let it hang at my side.
“Good girl,” Morax purrs.
“I hate you,” I reply, but my declaration is met with nothing but unimpressed deprecation.
Morax looks past my shoulders. “Wonderful, the portal is