Lehabah still pushed. Still shook with terror. Yet she did not stop. Not for one heartbeat.

“My friends are with me and I am not afraid.”

The bathroom door tore open, metal curling aside to reveal Micah, glowing as if newly forged, as if he’d rend this world apart. He surveyed the library, eyes landing on Lehabah and the cracked tank wall.

The sprite whirled, back pressed against the glass. She hissed at Micah, “This is for Syrinx.”

She slammed her little burning palm into the glass.

And a hundred thousand gallons of water exploded into the library.

Chapter Eighty

80

Flashing red lights erupted, casting the world into flickering color. A roar rose from below, the gallery shuddering.

Bryce knew.

She knew the tank had exploded, and that Lehabah had been wiped away with it. Knew the nøkk, exposed to the air, had been killed, too. Knew that Micah would only be slowed for so long.

Syrinx was still whimpering in her arms. Glass littered the gallery floor, the window to Jesiba’s office shattered a level above.

Lehabah was dead.

Bryce’s fingers curled into claws at her side. The red light of the warning alarms washed over her vision. She welcomed the synth into her heart. Every destructive, raging, frozen ounce of it.

Bryce crawled for the front door, broken glass tinkling. Power, hollow and cold, thrummed at her fingertips.

She grabbed the handle and hoisted herself upright. Yanked the door open to the golden light of late afternoon.

But she did not go through it.

That was not what Lehabah had bought her time to do.

Hunt knew Lehabah was killed instantly, as surely as a torch plunged into a bucket of water.

The tidal wave threw the nøkk onto the mezzanine, where it thrashed, choking on the air as it ate away its skin. It even blasted Micah back into the bathroom.

Hunt just stared and stared. The sprite was gone.

“Shit,” Ruhn was whispering.

“Where’s Bryce?” Fury asked.

The main floor of the gallery was empty. The front door lay open, but—

“Holy fuck,” Flynn whispered.

Bryce was sprinting up the stairs. To Jesiba’s office. Only synth fueled that sprint. Only that kind of drug could override pain. And reason.

Bryce set Syrinx on the ground as she entered the office—and then leapt over the desk. To the disassembled gun mounted on the wall above it.

The Godslayer Rifle.

“She’s going to kill him,” Ruhn whispered. “She’s going to kill him for what he did to Danika and the pack.” Before she succumbed to the synth, Bryce would offer her friends nothing less than this. Her final moments of clarity. Of her life.

Sabine was silent as death. But she trembled wildly.

Hunt’s knees buckled. He couldn’t watch this. Wouldn’t watch it.

Micah’s power rumbled in the library. Parted the water as he plowed across the space.