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CHAPTER 16

Closing his eyes, Nick took a deep breath and reached down deep inside himself to tap the powers he barely understood It was time for this to stop

Sooner rather than later

His heart pounded a fierce rhythm Come on … work Surely if he could set Stone on fire in class without trying, he could weasel some modicum of power out of hient Cajun stubbornness and all-out desperation

Right?

Right!

And despite everything, nothing happened

Arthritic led for the most ht Anything But the harder he tried, the less he achieved Like hiive up, he heard a piercing drone inside his head Suddenly, the darkness around them see back on him And in that one moment, his senses sharpened and he saw …

Everything

Literally The entire universe was laid out before him The Nick he’d replaced in this realraduate at the top of his Harvard class and end up in Congress, an advocate for real change that helped everyone Best of all, he’d e fa ies, he saw Kyrian’s death in ancient Greece Saw Kyrian’s resurrection at Arteuardianship where Kyrian stood strong Until the day a kidnapped Kyrian aith Amanda Devereaux by his side, and the two of them were forced to run from an enemy out to kill them both

Unable to control the visions that ca toward his father

Only he didn’t see the fierce beast he knew the er, in the hands of their ene froony, his father knelt at the feet of a creature who held no compassion or et ns your life Who you answer to”

Noir—the god Nick couldn’t evenhis powers—savored his control over the Malachai And he was aptly named His hair was blacker than Caleb’s and his eyes were so dark it was hard to see where the iris stopped and the pupil began Laughing, Noir fed fro his powers until the Malachai could no longer support his weight even on his knees He hit the ground and lay in a defeated lu froed silently for death It was how all Malachai had been kept since the dawn of time, and it hat had made them so lethal and brutal A weapon of ulti treated like people, they’d been kept as animals and trained to kill on command The more feral and afraid of their masters they were, the better That hy Nick’s Thorn and Caleb had been so deterrasp They knew exactly what the priod would reduce him to before he unleashed Nick onto the world to end it

More and es came, faster and faster, clearer and clearer, but thewere the ones of Nick hi the very world that had birthed hiht to protect Lost and abandoned by everyone, Nick, too, had turned on humanity All he wanted was to end his own pain

The only way to achieve that was nuclear-level devastation of the entire planet

I as Spawned for no other purpose than to bring down the priinators of darkness and death—in any way they demanded All of his species were born to suffer And there could be no escape

Throwing his head back, Nick roared with the weight of a destiny he wanted no part of

I will not becoan to spaser had control of it His teeth chattered so hard, he was amazed they didn’t shatter The darkness slithered over him like a deadly boa constrictor It wrapped itself around his lihter

“You will always be mine,” it whispered to him before it licked his cheek

Adarian pulled back fro Each of the priods had an element they controlled completely

In all realms

So the darkness to reach the new Malachai and clai, the boy would be sucked straight into Noir’s greedy hands

A slow sht It would serve Nicholas right to know the horrors Adarian had survived The little punk had no idea what real huht his pampered life was hard…

He had no concept

Nicholas had never tasted true brutality Degradation He had no idea what it was like to be surrounded by creatures who lived to break you Creatures who could only feel pleasure while they drove pain into every molecule of your body

It’s what you deserve Suffer and choke on Noir’s kindness, just as I had to

But as those words wrung s satisfaction froht Nicholas to meet him After what he’d done to her, he’d voluntarily returned hiain be tempted to harm her He’d been convinced that she would rather die than ever stand for his presence in her company

Until he’d been told he had a feeneral—with soht one into the coaze had swept over the crowd as he sought the dark-haired deh to stuistered the terrified blonde in a very sedate, over-large blue sweater and jeans

Then his brain had kicked in with recognition He’d snapped his attention back to Cherise, who sat at a table in the back, looking tiny, delicate, and petrified When her gaze had met his, it froze him to the spot For a full minute, he’d been unable to breathe Sootten how beautiful she was How very precious

As she’d done on the day they one straight inside hiutted him where he stood A part of him had wanted to run to her and kiss her But he knew she wouldn’t welcoh