Chapter 199: Give Him a Different One

Seraphel

The wedding ended in the blink of an eye, and soon we were standing inside Luceriel’s war room.

It was smaller than I expected. I had imagined something enormous, all towering ceilings and banners, the kind of place where kingdoms decided the fate of the world. Instead Luceriel led us into a round stone chamber somewhere deep beneath the palace, barely large enough to hold all of us, with a single round table at its center and a map of Verolona spread across it that somebody had clearly been marking up for weeks.

It made sense, I supposed. Verolona had never once gone to war, not since the sins first came down into the human realm.

Pazuzu had not let go of Luceriel’s hand since the courtyard. He also had not stopped smiling, and every time Luceriel tried to pull away, he simply held on tighter and said something under his breath that made the tips of Luceriel’s ears go red all over again.

It was strange, watching the two of them behave like that. I had read their entire book back in my own world, had followed every argument and every reluctant softening of it on a screen at three in the morning, and seeing it happen in front of me in real time was easily the most fascinating thing I had experienced since arriving here.

"Husband," Pazuzu said, for what had to be the ninth time, "you are going to injure yourself frowning like that."

"Release my hand."

"No."

"We are about to plan a war."

"We can do both." Pazuzu finally let go, though only to pull out a chair and gesture at it with a flourish. "Sit down before you fall down. Your core is still knitting itself back together."

Luceriel sat, because for once he had no argument that did not sound like an excuse.

I stayed standing.

Azriel noticed almost immediately. He crossed the room, dragged a chair over beside me, and placed a hand on my shoulder.

"Sit," he said.

"I am fine."

"You are not fine, and you have been on your feet since the courtyard." He pressed gently downward until I had no choice but to lower myself into the seat. "Sit."

My hands would not stop shaking, so I folded them together in my lap where nobody could see them.

"Right." I looked around at all of them.

There were seven sins gathered in that chamber, alongside two gods of Elysium, two demons, one defector who had turned his back on his own realm, one shadow elf, and me. "We have a few hours. Maybe six, maybe less. So I am going to tell you exactly what happens, and then we are going to make certain that none of it happens that way."

Nobody interrupted. That alone was unsettling.

"Draca comes from above," I said, and set my finger down on the emerald cavern marked at the northern edge of the map. "He breaks the outer barrier first with a single strike. Luceriel, you will feel it the second it lands. You will think you have time to raise the wards again. You will not."

"How long?" Luceriel asked.

"Between the barrier breaking and the sky opening, about four minutes."

Lumiel let out a low whistle.

"After the sky opens, the seven lords come through first, and Draca comes last, behind the serpent." I moved my finger down across the map. "And here is the part everyone missed. When they arrive, their power strikes all of you at once. Not as an attack. Simply from being present. Every single one of you went down to your knees, and that was the moment the barrier broke and the fireballs came through."

"All of us?" Uriel asked.

"All of you except Pazuzu."

Every head in the room turned toward him.

"I am his son," Pazuzu said simply. "I have been standing inside that pressure since the day I was born. It means nothing to me." He leaned over the map and tapped it twice. "But there is a simpler solution than bracing against it and hoping. We raise a barrier and we hold it. Those of you who cannot withstand the pressure remain behind it, and you strike from behind that cover rather than standing exposed beneath the rift."

"A barrier will hold against that?" Taizel asked.

"A barrier built by three of you and reinforced by me will hold long enough." Pazuzu straightened. "There is something else you should all understand about my father, however. He can see fragments of what is to come. Not clearly, and not reliably, but enough. He will have glimpsed some version of this battle already."

The room went cold at that.

"Then he knows our plan," Lumiel said.

"He knows a plan. He knows the version of events that the mortal lived through." Pazuzu’s violet eyes flicked toward me. "Which means every single thing we change tonight is something he will not be expecting. The future he glimpsed was the one where all of you died separately. Give him a different one."

"That is actually a great idea," I said, sitting forward. "And it works with something else I have been thinking about. We are not going to fight him the way we did last time. Last time everybody went straight for Draca and got picked apart one at a time while the lords circled us." I tapped the map. "This time we ignore Draca completely and we go after the seven lords instead."

Thamiel leaned forward, frowning. "Then we do not stand under the rift at all. We disperse before it opens and come at them from beneath."

"We cannot," Solmira said quietly.

It was the first thing either of the deities had said since entering the room, and I watched at least four sins stiffen at the sound of her voice.

"Explain yourself," Luceriel said coldly.

"The lords will scatter the moment they land if nobody holds their attention." She stepped closer to the table, ignoring the hostility entirely. "You have one advantage in this, and it is that Draca has come here for a single objective. He wants the vessel." Her eyes moved to me, then down, briefly, to my stomach. "He will go wherever Seraphel is, and the lords will follow him. As long as you know where all of them intend to go, you know exactly where to lay the trap."

"You want to use my mate as bait," Azriel said, very quietly.

"I want to use the only leverage in this room that reliably predicts where your enemy will stand."

Azriel came out of his chair.

"Azriel." I caught his arm before he had fully straightened. "She is right."

"She is not right."

"She is completely right and you know it." I held on until he looked at me. "He is coming for me either way. That is not a choice any of us get to make. The only choice we have is whether he comes to a place we picked or a place he picked, and last time it was a place he picked, and you died for it."

Something in his face cracked at that.

"I am not asking you to like it," I said, softer. "I am asking you to let me be useful for once. I have already lived through this night, and if there is anything I can change about it, then I am going to change it."

Azriel frowned, gave me a long look, and sat back down. He did not agree, not really, but he took my hand and rubbed his thumb slowly across my knuckles, and he turned his attention back to the table as Lumiel spoke.

"So we choose the ground," Lumiel said, dragging the conversation forward. "Where?"

"Not the cavern." I pointed. "Here. The eastern terraces, outside the city wall. It is open, it is empty, and there is nothing out there for the fireballs to destroy. And there is this." I traced the long stone channel running along its edge. "Verolona’s flood aqueduct. Uriel, how much water is held in that?"

Uriel actually sat upright. "Enough to drown a small army."

"Good. Because we are going to need you to move a great deal of it very quickly."

"On whom?"

"On the lords," Pazuzu said, and he was smiling again, though it was an entirely different smile from the one he had been aiming at Luceriel all night. "Exactly as the mortal said. They are seven anchors, and my father’s soul is spread across all of them like a man standing on seven stilts. Break two and he begins to fail. Break three and his stolen body can no longer hold him at all."

"And a lord inside a borrowed corpse," Solmira added, "cannot regenerate. Their true bodies were destroyed long ago. What they wear now is dead flesh held together by nothing but will. Damage it badly enough and there is nothing left to repair."

Sariel let out a slow breath. "So we do not fight Draca."

"We do not fight Draca," I agreed. "Not at first. We ignore him completely and we cut his legs out from under him."

"He will not permit that," Taizel said.

"He will not have any choice in the matter, because he will be occupied." I looked at Luceriel. "With you."