Carwyn had both hands spread, holding two of the pillars at the entrance to the temple, his massive frame straining even as his feet began to slip. She saw more seawater coming from the harbor and didn’t know who was calling it.

“Help me!” she yelled at Kiraz, but the girl was already running toward the door, abandoning Carwyn’s protection and taking her chance with the Alitean guards.

“Hold back the fecking water!” Carwyn roared. The current was above his knees.

Makeda tried her best, but there was too much of it. Was it Laskaris or Kato?

The two water giants were locked in battle. Far from the spears of water Emil Conti had commanded, Laskaris and Kato emptied the harbor. Maybe they were pulling from the sea itself. The two immortals threw walls of water at each other, knocking pillars from their foundations and tossing lesser vampires into the air.

Makeda planted her feet in the water, shoving it back in any way she could, trying to keep Carwyn free to hold up the ceiling as vampires fled screaming.

“Can’t… hold— Aaaaaargh!” Something overhead gave a giant crack, and Carwyn heaved and stretched, his hands gripping the pillars as two pieces of the temple pediment flew into the air, launched toward the distant walls of the fortress. As the weight of the massive overhead block left, the pillars beside Carwyn stabilized, but the roof was beyond hope. Plaster and wood fell in burning chunks that turned to soaked cinders when they hit the water-drenched floor.

Carwyn’s eyes swept the battle. “Someone is here.”

“Makeda!”

“Lucien!”

Lucien walked through the piles of marble, his arms sweeping the rubble to the side as he strode toward her. He grabbed her and kissed her hard, shoving her face in his neck and squeezing her so tightly she could barely breathe.

“Are you all right?”

“Laskaris infected them all!” she yelled. “The whole city. They wouldn’t listen. They think they’re gods. What are we going to do?”

“Where is my mother?” he shouted over the crashing temple.

Makeda pointed toward the center of the chaos.

Lucien’s eyes went wild, then he shoved Makeda toward Carwyn and yelled, “Get her out of here!”

“What? No!”

Carwyn grabbed Makeda around the waist and lifted her off her feet, running past toppled guards and headless vampires. Running away from the rumble of the smoking volcano and toward the harbor. Makeda struggled in his arms, watching Lucien walk toward the heart of the battle, his shirt torn in shreds and his eyes locked on the burgeoning hill rising where the temple had once stood.

“Lucien!” She lost him in the smoke and falling water. She struck Carwyn’s shoulders. “Put me down!”

“Sorry, dear girl, I can’t do that when the world might be ending.”

Pure rage was all she felt. “Lucien!”

“Carwyn!”

She heard her sire’s voice and turned. Baojia was helping people into the boats they’d brought from the yacht, shoving them toward the gaping portal to the open sea.

“Give Makeda to me!” he yelled.

“No!” she yelled. “Don’t you dare! Put me—”

Carwyn tossed Makeda toward her sire, who caught her in his arms and immediately ducked, shielding her from a piece of flying rock. It clipped his head and blood spurted from his temple.

Carwyn shouted, “Both of you, take shelter. Head to the boat.”

“Lucien!”

Lucien ignored his mate’s cry, knowing his mother was on the edge of destroying everything. It was Axum again. He could hear the cries and smell the blood.

If Saba chose to abandon reason, the whole of the island could be swallowed in a massive explosion. It could sink into the sea as others had before, leaving nothing but rubble at the bottom of the ocean.

Lucien could feel Sofia’s amnis batting at the edge of Saba’s wrath. Sofia, Laskaris’s mate, who was once seen as the wisest and most moderate of the Alitean council, was screaming in rage, blood dripping down her face from the cuts and slices of the marble rocks flying around her. A stone hand reached up from the ground and gripped her in its fingers. Cracks formed in the gray marble only to seal up almost immediately. Water and mud swirled around her in a massive cyclone from Laskaris and Kato’s struggle. Lava and sparks flew across the night sky where Arosh and Eris battled.

Saba stood, staring at the blood-soaked rock at her feet. The earth rose and rippled around her like a giant flexing his shoulders beneath the earth. Tears streaked her muddy face. Blood poured from cuts on her skin. She was a bleeding angel resting in a hurricane of destruction.

Lucien walked through the chaos and knelt at his mother’s feet. “Emaye.”

She looked at him, her forehead creasing. “Yene Luka, what are you doing here, my beautiful son?”

He looked up. “You must stop, Saba.”

Pain and disgust curled her lip. “He has infected them all. His own people. His own mate. Everyone.”

Lucien had smelled it as soon as he reached Alitea, the scent of pomegranate only growing stronger as immortal blood spilled in the water. He knew what Laskaris had done with the remaining Elixir. He’d infected the whole of his island and his people, a suicide pact of his own choosing, condemning all of the island to die if he was going to lose his seat of power. It was madness of the most evil kind.

“But you can cure them, remember? Makeda and I found the cure.”

Saba shook her head. “They must be cleansed.”