Horsemen's War (The Rebellion Chronicles #3) - Steve McHugh Page 0,120

stone of what had once been the citadel, and I tried to remember how to talk. The memory of the pain that had racked my body was fading but still felt like it could come back at any moment.

“It’s a shame you can’t heal yourself with that,” I said, sitting up.

Lucifer’s eyes were closed.

“Lucifer?” I said, already aware of what had happened. “Goddamn it,” I whispered with a lump in my throat.

There was no way I was going to leave his body there, and when my mum’s head appeared over the hole above us, she dropped down to the ledge of rubble where I was and helped me carry Lucifer’s body up out of the mess. When we were out, I saw the devastation that had happened to Atlantis.

“Anyone else hurt?” I asked my mum as Lucifer’s body was carried away by the dwarves.

“A lot,” she said.

A hand was placed on my shoulder, and I turned to find Hades. We embraced, grieving over the loss of so many of those we had loved like family.

I removed the bracelet from my pocket and passed it to him, but Orfeda snatched it out of his hand. “This is where they went?” she asked, clearly concerned.

I nodded. “They both wore one. Judgement has the other. You know the destination?”

“It’s the same runes that were inside all of these buildings, or at least the buildings I’d seen inside of before they collapsed. It goes to Shadow Falls.”

“There were monsters in there,” Judgement said. “Arthur told me. Tens of thousands of monsters that had once been human. Hera’s experiments. All to go to Shadow Falls and destroy it.”

My memory flashed back to what I’d fought in Kilnhurst. “We need to get to Shadow Falls, now,” I said. “My daughter is there.”

“We’re already working to get the realm gate destination changed to get to Shadow Falls,” Hades said. “We have to hope that the humans and those we left in Washington can help deal with Arthur and his cronies. Once we’re done in Shadow Falls, we can go to the Earth realm. Everyone is waiting at the realm gate for the second it opens; we’ll stop whatever Arthur has planned.”

“Selene is in Washington,” Orfeda said as Hades walked away. “Layla and Jinayca too.”

I closed my eyes and sighed. “We don’t have time for all of us to go to both places.” I spotted a bloody and battered Tarron as he walked down the remains of the street toward us. There were two shadow elves beside him; both looked unsteady on their feet. I called him over and told him everything that had happened.

“You want me to make an elven realm gate?” Tarron asked me. “There are a lot of us; it will take time. It will take time to get so many of us to move to one place. It would have to be done in batches. And then it would take time to get from the mountain down to Solomon to help with whatever is happening there.”

“How many dwarves are working on the realm gate?” I asked Orfeda.

“Zamek and a few hundred more.”

“How many are in that prison?” Hades asked.

“My people were imprisoned, beaten, tortured, starved; they’re in no shape to do anything to help.”

“If we don’t get that gate open, Shadow Falls will die,” I said. “And everyone in it. I’ve fought these things, and they will not go easy.”

“I’ll see what I can do,” Orfeda said.

I turned to Tarron. “Any chance you can work with some of the dwarves and elves we found here to make this realm gate much, much quicker? Maybe boost its power or something?”

“We can try,” Tarron said.

Orfeda paused and stared at the sorcerer’s band on my wrist. “Nate, you’re human?”

I nodded. “And a fun time was had by all.”

She lifted my hand to look at the bracelet. “There’s no lock on this. You can just remove it.”

I stared at the band. “Seriously?”

“Yes, haven’t you studied it?” she asked.

“A building literally collapsed with me inside,” I said. “Not a lot of time for reading.”

Orfeda lifted my arm and looked closer at the band, reading the runes. “This says that if you remove it, everything around you dies.”

“Yeah, we got that bit,” I said.

“Nate, this isn’t like a normal band,” Orfeda said. “Normal bands, the magical power inside them goes inward, toward the victim. This goes inward and out. This is a serious scorched-earth-policy kind of band.”

“So Arthur put a band on me I can remove at any time so