of Dark Ones, surrounding a legion of my dead brothers. Hades was nowhere to be seen, and I knew he was keeping his word to protect my mother—Deimos, too. Perhaps that was for the best. I did not wish for my father to see what I was about to do.
I looked at the crowd of fallen PC, obsidian feathers extended toward them. Weapons that could wipe them from existence permanently. My anger pulsed through my veins.
“Kaine!” I shouted, drawing his attention. “My debt to you was paid by saving your life at the Hallowed Gates. To spare you once more, I will offer you and your army a chance to leave now.”
“Or what?” he asked, amusement in his tone. “What will the Princess of the Underworld do if we do not comply?”
I felt the corner of my mouth curl, as Oz’s so often did. “She will get very, very angry.”
The leader of the Dark Ones smiled back at me. He delighted in something he found staring back at him.
“Good,” he replied, “I am counting on it. Now, come closer, Khara.” With the snap of his finger, his army began closing in around my fallen brothers, wings extended toward them in a show of power. To my dead brothers’ credit, not one of them flinched, even in the face of their eternal demise. Amongst them I saw Drew, looking as confused as he had the day he had first arrived in the Elysian Fields.
My heart lurched in my chest.
Then my rage overwhelmed me.
The fire and lightning and vengeance once again ran rampant in my veins until I could no longer contain them.
“Khara,” Oz said, stepping closer, “Khara, you need to—”
I erupted before he could finish his sentence, flame and lightning shooting out from every part of me, aimed at everything and nothing.
“You will leave here now, Kaine, or you will die.” My voice rang out like a choir of a thousand demons, its omnipresence a foreboding omen. The Dark Ones stilled, as though they had only just understood the weapon in their presence.
Once again, my eyes fell on Drew.
“Khara?” he called, eyes narrowed and focused and full of confusion.
“You cannot kill me without losing him in the process,” Kaine said, taunting me as he placed an obsidian feather to Drew’s throat. The rest of the Dark Ones raised their wings, targeting my dead brothers. With one word from Kaine, they would attack, and though my brothers had once been the deadliest in the land, they would not survive.
I took to the air to hover over the Acheron, its roaring waves of fire growing bigger and wilder in my presence. So, too, grew the darkness within me; the void that had long been there, deep down, begging to be filled.
“I do not need to, Kaine.” I stared down at him and his army and smiled wickedly. “The Dark Ones will not move,” I boomed before turning to my dead brothers. “Fallen warriors of the PC, return to the Elysian Fields now,” I said in Drew’s commanding tone. “RUN…”
As the ghostly PC obeyed without question, the power I had absorbed from Drew giving them no choice, the Dark Ones struggled to go after them. Once my brothers were out of harm’s way, I flew into the center of Kaine’s army and turned slowly to face them all.
“You should have listened to me,” I told them before I exhaled long and hard, then sucked in a breath that tugged at the stolen souls that inhabited the Dark Ones around me. I kept that breath going until, one by one, bodies began to drop to the ground, limp and as close to death as Oz had once been, lying on the couch of the Victorian. The horror of realization that plagued those standing frozen, awaiting their fate, warmed me in a part of my soul that I had not known existed. A part that loved to punish. A part that craved justice for those who had dared to harm the ones I loved. I stoked that fire with every soul I freed...because stealing what had been stolen was exactly that. Justice.
Soon only Kaine remained, a testament to his stubbornness and strength, if nothing else. But I could feel it waning—his hold on his captured soul growing weaker by the moment. I stepped closer to see the fear in his eyes as he sensed death courting him.
“Perhaps it would be kinder to impale you with obsidian, as you did Oz,” I said, leaning in close to