And they both knew the worlds would not be kind to her.
Rune released Damascus.
She shot out her claws and dropped her fangs, and tears she knew would be tinged with red stung her eyes.
“Rune,” the witch begged. “Please.”
As Damascus started to fall, Rune fell with her, driving a claw through the witch’s heart, and decapitating her at the same time.
Her remains fell to the crowds below, and by the time Rune’s feet touched the earth, every piece of the witch had disappeared.
Her body had gone to the people.
Her soul had gone to hell.
Chapter Fifty-Two
“Rune!”
She hit the ground hard. When she landed, the impact shattered bones and caused injuries that were as familiar as they were painful.
And she began to heal immediately.
It was so fucking good to be complete once again.
To be her.
To be her monster.
Z reached her first and pulled her off the ground and into his arms. “Rune, Rune.”
She wrapped her arms around him and let her bloody tears flow.
“It’s over,” she said. “It’s finally over. The world is free.”
“You’re my world,” he said, his eyes bright. “I might forget, someday—”
“But today is not that day,” she interrupted. Then she lay against his chest, listening to the cheers of Skyllians and breathing in his scent. Wallowing in his love. Relishing the fact that for that moment, she was with Z.
Z.
There was no other place she’d rather have been.
“Rune.” She felt Z resist for just a second before he allowed Strad to pull her away from him.
“Berserker,” she said. “We did it.”
“You did it.”
“No. It was everyone I met along the way.”
“Like me?” someone asked, and she pulled away from the berserker to face a smiling Roma. The girl slipped her slingshot into her pocket and leaned forward to kiss Rune’s cheek. “I failed you. I will never fail you again.”
Rune laughed, then gave Roma a hug that nearly crushed her. “Shut up, you silly girl.”
Lex was next to arrive, smelling of smoke and sulfur.
“You became your demon,” Rune said.
Lex nodded, grinning. “And it felt almost as good as seeing.”
“Lex…I need to tell you something.”
But the people were celebrating and ecstatic and could not be kept from their princess.
Later.
Later she would tell Lex what she needed to tell her, and she would show the berserker his son.
Skyll contained a cheerfulness it hadn’t possessed in centuries. It was as though the sun had burst through black clouds that had kept the world dark and cold for too long to remember it any other way.
But they remembered, and they rejoiced.
Every spell Damascus had either cast or shaped or commanded her doctors to create was gone, and the change was in the air.
“Tell us what to do,” they begged her. “Help us start anew in this world. Be our queen.”
She shook her head. “This world belongs to you. Make it a world you want to live in.”
They could finally breathe.
“We’re free,” they shouted.
And they shouted as they went to bury their dead and clean up their shimmers.
The crawlers melted into the depths of the earth, and she didn’t think the people would see them again.
Not unless someone, over the years, managed to obtain the degree of power Damascus had wielded. Then, he or she might bring them once more to the surface.
If so, that would be a task for another time and another person.
It would not be for Rune.
“Blue,” Z yelled, and Rune stood back with the berserker, Lex, and Roma as Z hurried away to greet Blue.
Rune couldn’t help but smile, even though her belly tightened with fear. She knew exactly what was coming.
She’d made her choice.
“Mad Naddy?” Rune asked, when Z led Blue to her.
Blue shook her head. “She didn’t make it.”
Rune took Z’s hand and held it so tightly it surely hurt him, but he didn’t pull away.
She’d have to let go.
Eventually, she’d have to let go, but she’d hold on to him for as long as she could.
She didn’t find the remains of Snow’s mutilated body, and knew she’d have to empty the belly of every carricorn and crawler around to find the pieces of her sister.
She let Snow go.
“I have to go home,” she told Z. “I don’t want to.”
He nodded. “I know. You didn’t save the people of my world to allow the people of yours to die.”