"Deidre!" Gabriel nudged her again.
The bloodied woman in his arms didn't respond. She was growing pale, her heartbeat slowing while she continued to bleed out. She wore the ring he'd gotten her thousands of years ago, a simple silver band with filigree.
"Stay with me, sweetheart," he whispered, shaking her to try to wake her once more.
She'd been willing to die for him. Until the moment, he never thought her capable of living for anyone but herself, even when she tried.
"Stay with me," he said more urgently, fear, panic and anger coursing through him.
A gust of wind knocked him over, and he rolled with her to keep the storm's long arms from snatching her. Laying her out carefully, he shifted to his side and brushed her hair from her face. The underworld was crashing down around him, his longtime love dying in his arms. For a moment, he wasn't able to think straight or quiet either of the screaming voices in his head stemming from his bonds to the underworld and his mate being under duress.
The woman he'd loved and hated his entire life, the one who made his blood race and quieted his thoughts, was dying before his eyes, this time for good. He wasn't able to raise someone whose soul was outside his reach. The idea of losing her forever was one he'd experienced more than once. As frustrating as their relationship often was, he couldn't escape the simple fact that he wasn't able to live without her. He'd loved her as a goddess, and he loved her more as a human struggling to figure herself out.
Flying debris knocked him onto his back, and he stared at the black hole, almost fully over the palace.
Gabriel rolled back beside her placed her hands over her wound and pressed down, fury and heartache boiling over.
What good was being a deity, when he kept losing her? What good was being human, when his pain immobilized him? Which part of him took precedence: the one that served the souls or the one suffering heartbreak?
"I am a fucking god!" he shouted into the wind. Blinded by rage and hurt, he rose and raised his hands to the storm. "You can't have either of them!" Cool power swept through him, and he turned to face its source, surprised at the green fog racing towards him from the direction of the Lake. The magic of the souls sang through him in billions of tiny voices, their unified chorus conveying power that made the palace beneath him quiver.
A man-sized tornado broke away from the storm and landed on the rooftop, tearing across the expanse, tossing dealers from its path as it made a beeline for one person in particular: Harmony.