“Superman! Superman!”

Xelan must be dead or dying. His brain had gifted him with a delusion too sweet to abandon. Safe inside this place with Rayne, he could ignore the pain and damage throughout eighty-two percent of his body. His subconscious begged him to stay here.

Four-year-old Rayne swung as Xelan plucked her from the ground, her Mary Janes the last things off the black empty floor. “Tiny General,” he said with a salute.

Rayne grinned and saluted back. Her little fingers immediately located and twirled a strand of his black hair. “You saved us again.”

“Us?” Xelan asked.

The next Rayne was older and dripped with attitude and challenge. About twelve-years-old. Those years were rough. “You were there again. In time.”

Xelan smiled at the pre-teen girl who had less sense than fearlessness. He said, “I’m always there to save you.” He bounced itty-bitty Rayne. She giggled against his shoulder.

“Not anymore.” The familiar voice filled Xelan’s veins with ice.

He scowled, lowered the smaller girl down, and pushed her behind him. As pre-teen Rayne reacted to the woman’s voice in fear, Xelan signaled her to join the smaller girl.

Celindria stood in his delusion much like she did in the Spire: regal, magnificent, and utterly unaffected by anything. Behind her, the events of Xelan’s self-destruction played on a screen. The last image showed Rayne dragged through the window, the lines of her face drawn in distress.

Xelan had saved her. He survived. He would find her again.

Celindria said, “No, you won’t.”

The light in the destruction consumed all the surrounding Icari. As Xelan had hoped it would. There was no Nox in sight.

Xelan snarled at Celindria. “Couldn’t grow a soul in the last eight thousand years?!”

“This will be the last time you save her.”

Xelan’s mind begged him to ignore the screen beyond Celindria.

The girls trembled against his legs, and he growled, “Stay away from her!”

An awful voice came through the screen, “Mostly dead and still giving orders, little brother?”

No. NO!

Nox appeared on the screen, looking directly into it.

Beyond him, Korac whispered, “He’s healing so fast. Like a Tritan.”

No… They’d survived.

Pain suffused Xelan, and he fell to his knees. His nerve endings regenerated without asking for permission. The two girls rubbed circles on his back as he roared in pain.

Nox drew closer. Korac remained behind. An emotion was cast on the Silver General’s face outside of Nox’s line-of-sight. It was one Xelan had never expected to see again. It was filled with so much sorrow it brought more tears to Xelan’s eyes.

His brother’s silken baritone assisted in the torture, being trapped in his disabled body as it healed. Icy fear lanced through Xelan as Nox said, “I’ve had eight thousand years to think about what I would do to the brother who’d betrayed his people. Betrayed me!” He pounded his fist to his chest, a kind of mania in his eyes this close to victory. “I thought I’d torture you for the next eight thousand years. Force you to watch as I reduced the planet you forsook us for to ruins. As I defiled Rayne.”

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NO!

Xelan glared at Celindria, an accusation in his eyes. The two girls left his side and wandered to hers. “Save her!” Xelan screamed between gasps for air.

Celindria shook her head, swiped her hand in the air, and the two apparitions of Rayne disappeared. “Rayne must learn to save herself.”

On hands and knees, Xelan knew defeat. He hung his head as Nox continued his summary for execution. “But you know, brother. I’m in the mood for instant gratification, so I think I’ll finish what I started all those millennia ago.”

Nox’s fist punched through the knitting flesh of Xelan’s chest. The sternum had not yet healed to prevent the invasion.

Atramentous looked different for every Icarus. Nox’s transformation was unusual, even among their people. As he plummeted through his only living family’s brain stem, Nox’s wings flushed open. His eyes were like chrome, reflecting Xelan’s gory and abysmal physical state back to him. Without skin on his face, without eyes, Xelan managed to appear forlorn, grief-stricken, and finished.

“Who will save… Rayne now?” Xelan asked.

Nox leaned in close, a breath from Xelan’s lips. In three layers of the deepest, most shocking rumble, he answered, “No one.”

Xelan’s nacre separated easily into the villainous Icarus’ palm. He held it in front of Xelan’s face between his fingers, dripping with the cerulean blood of his family. With no vocal cords to scream, Xelan’s mouth gaped without a sound.

Behind Nox, Korac looked away. Well, at least that was something.

All cells stopped regenerating reporting around seventy-five percent completion. Xelan was too far gone. He was never going to make it. His heart beat against his skull. Sluggish and heavy. He had no fingers to curl into a fist and rail against death. The strange urge to swallow hit him with no tongue to assist.

Inside his head, Celindria watched the screen.

Tears streamed down his face. Xelan had lost.

But they got away.

He’d helped them get away.

Tameka and Sagan could look after Rayne. Kyle, too. He got her out of the tower. They could find Tumu and still escape Cinder—

Celindria denied him again, “No.”

“I would rather die alone than you be here!” Xelan cried into his imagination. How terrifying was that?

On the screen, Nox took the pearl and shoved it into his pants pocket, saying, “General Korac.”

The distraught Icarus behind him answered without his voice betraying him, “Yes, sire.” Ever the exemplary soldier.

Nox ordered, “Retrieve the girls. Throw the traitor in the dungeon.”

No. The traitor came with them to Cinder? It must be—

Celindria shushed him, waiting to watch the rest.

“Yes, sire.” Korac made to take flight. He glanced back, asking, “Do you require any further assistance?”

Nox ignited an Icarean fire stick. “I will honor my brother in the royal tradition with a proper requiem.”

Then he set Xelan on fire.

“It’s our turn to save you.” The two younger Rayne apparitions reappeared. They touched Xelan’s shoulders where he shrieked in pain on his knees.

The burning vanished.

Celindria watched the screen as Xelan burned. Nox watched, enraptured, his expression empty.

“Don’t look,” pre-teen Rayne whispered to him.

The tiny one kept her little hand on Xelan and put her face in his. “It’s time to go! Time to go!” She skipped a little as she repeated herself. The sweetness of her voice belied the trouble he knew her to be.

“Where?” Xelan croaked in a voice hoarse from screaming, crying, and dying.

“Home.”

“We’ll look after her. All of them. We’re strong,” pre-teen Rayne promised. “You made us that way.”

“But you need to sleep. To rest is to heal.” The little girl wrapped her arms around Xelan’s neck and clung on. “Superman needs to heal.”

Pre-teen Rayne knelt in front of Xelan as little Rayne made a mountain out of him. The twelve-year-old said, “You saved us. Let us save you. Leave with us. We’ll take care of you.”

The little one said, “Close your eyes.”

Xelan looked to either of them. After almost three million years of existence. This was it. At the hands of his brother, with his charges at risk of capture and ruin.

How could Xelan just let go?

His heartbeat slowed to nothing. There were five minutes between each pump. It was so hard to let go.

Tameka.

Rayne.

Cinder.

“I’m scared.” Xelan choked on the words.

“Wingmaster.”

Older. This Rayne was older than now.

Xelan looked up, and Rayne in her twenties stood in front of him. Decorated in weapons, standing at attention. His heart burst with pride at the sight. His Rayne. Alive. And dangerous as hell.

Sagan and Tameka flanked her. Both beautiful. Both fierce. Both alive. His Tameka a powerhouse of fury.

Sagan assured Xelan, “You need to sleep.”

Tameka grinned. “I’ll be with you when you wake up.”

Xelan sucked in a ragged breath as the three most important people in his life assured him of their safety to end his suffering. Trust. He needed to trust them. His heart ached as he waited for Rayne.

Xelan needed a sign to know it was acceptable to lie down his sword. That she would forgive him for leaving her without killing Nox, himself. To show him that when this was all over, she would be all right.

In his last moments, at the time of his last breath, Rayne opened her eyes. As Xelan looked into them he knew…

“At ease, soldier.”

…Rayne would be all right.