Page 29 of Edge of Stars

Shoves that are too sharp to blame on the wind.

They’re getting some significant help. Rousing shouts erupt beyond the thick wood, backing up my theory.

Still, I yank Kara closer. The hollers are too muffled to identify as our security squad or more of Hecate’s factions.

The doors bow in once more. Out. In. Unknowingly, my lungs start synching to their ominous breathing, down to every splintery rush. If, by some craziness, this is the goddess’s auxiliary team, they’re fumbling big-time on the back-up assault. Unless they still think that Hermes has the scene handled and nobody’s bothered to give them the update. A depraved part of me actually wants to watch as the assholes barge in and behold their haughty lieutenant as his queen’s iced-over afterthought.

But the fantasy is ripped from my mind as the doors finally give in, bursting open with a whomp of wild air and a charge of angry water.

I’m aware of it all, but not. Even the storm’s raging ramp-up can’t dissuade my grinning focus from the wide aperture at the back of the room—and the figure who’s boldly paused there.

Regina Nikian has never let me down—and clearly didn’t plan on starting now.

She takes half a second to nod my way before striding forward. Her leather-tied cornrows bang at her steel shoulder braces. Her elbows, positioned like forceful wings, support the hands she coils hard around her battle sword hilts. Though the weapons stay sheathed in the scabbards that hang from the thick leather belt between her molded breastplate and tasset-covered skirt, she’s more than ready to draw them. I know it simply because I know her.

But while I wish, more than anything, for the chance to give the high sign for doing so, we have a bigger picture to worry about. With her entrance alongside the other three Olympian guards who’ve been maintaining a security perimeter on the hill throughout the day, a much bigger stress.

No.

We’ve got stresses. Multiple.

And terrifying.

The trees that formerly formed our welcome bower are now marauding invaders, sucked into the chapel with their branches stretching like talons. But after we all clear from their path by scrambling up the altar, there’s no one left to target. Not even in a metaphysical sense.

“Oh my God.” Kara’s rasp is frightened and desperate.

I wish I could deny any responsibility for it, but it’d be a lie. Especially because I’m enduring the same stuff. More so as I join her to watch the surreal scene across the sanctuary.

The human and Olympians we love and respect the most, stiff as postmortem clay, are washed off their pew posts and into the torrent that’s taken over most of the sanctuary. With the exception of the raised planters along the walls and the altar that’s now our island, the chapel now looks like a storm channel alongside a graveyard.

“Bloody bollocks.” Reg’s double-decker idiom confirms that the scene’s as bad as my gut tells me. “And this whole time I thought that if we were headed for a cock-up, it’d be out on the perimeter.”

And her slang pile-up goes on—which means the big picture is worse than even my instinct understands.

And by now, it’s scoping out a lot of the applicable angles. Or so I think.

How much more of this nightmare is there? What are we not seeing here?

More crucially, how much more can I expect Kara to handle?

As soon as I think it, my mind ka-booms into its typical skirmish over it. How many times has Kara declared, and then proved, that she’s tougher than I assume? That she can handle the hard stuff? That by thinking she’s as frail as the fire pixie she resembles, I’m boxing her in just like Veronica always has?

But right now, Veronica’s floating on her side in an eddy of drenched hymnals.

I swallow hard. It hurts like hell.

And am pretty certain the hard stuff never covered insanity like this.

A conviction solidified as soon as Kara shudders in my arms. And emits a sound of such loss, it’s like a grieving animal. Low, lonely, agonized.

“They’re dead. All of them. They’re…they’re…”

“No.” Hecate says it as if we’re back at Iremia and she’s affirming the tea kettle is still warm. “Of course they’re not dead, sweet one.”

Kara goes stiff again. She shoves away, bracing on her own feet. Her arms drop, weighted by the taut coils of her fists.

“You mean not yet.” Her seethe brings a violent blast of wind at the goddess. I still can’t tell whether that ability is spontaneous or summoned, but neither does Hecate, and that’s all that matters. “Because you can save them and you’re not. You can return their autonomy, but you’re—”