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his head. “I’ll keep you with me for eternity, Andromeda. I’ll use you as a brainless puppet. Your body will live, but you won’t be
truly
alive—”
    You rotten fucking bastard!
    The shout rang inside her head. She shoved him out of her mind with a scream of rage. Tears still burned her eyes but not in horror and desperation anymore. Only fury remained—and she was done. Done, done, done. A puppet? He’d use that against her? It wasn’t even a threat. Even if Michael could hurt her, even if he ripped out her brain, that wouldn’t give him his body as he’d wanted. No. He’d only threatened that because it stabbed the most painful part of her, opened the wound that
never
healed and poured acid and salt into gaping flesh. And he’d known to do it because he’d been in her head, because he’d seen her little brother lying in his bed, his mind gone but his body still living on.
    Not a threat. Just deliberate cruelty.
    And if this was at the core of him, if this was his nature, then he wasn’t a Guardian—he was the kind of monster that the Guardians wanted to destroy. So he could have his goddamn body. Just as he’d wanted.
    She met his obsidian gaze, felt his triumph, and realized he’d pissed her off just so that she would give it back. It really didn’t matter anymore. He could have it, and stay here in Hell where he belonged.
    “Fuck you, Michael,” she said.
    She dropped his body out of her hammerspace and onto the sand behind him. Now he’d have to let her go to eat it, and she’d get the fuck out of here.
    But he didn’t move. And she hadn’t known that getting rid of his body would feel like this—her chest painfully tight, as if filled with sudden pressure. She stared up at Michael. Over her head, the grip of his fingers holding her wrists loosened. His arm dropped to his side but she didn’t fall back to the ground. The pain in her chest became agony. Blood spilled from his mouth . . . and she could taste her own. She looked down between them.
    Oh, God. A long spear impaled the symbol between her breasts, so deep that she couldn’t see the spearhead. Blood coated the steel shaft.
Michael’s
blood. The spear had stabbed through his back, then all the way through her chest.
    Khavi.
    Taylor couldn’t see the other Guardian behind him, only a familiar muscled form with dark bronze skin and lifeless limbs. His body from her hammerspace, skewered with them. So this had been the plan. No wonder Khavi hadn’t shared it with her. Khavi hadn’t just considered Michael’s nature—she’d known Taylor’s nature, too. Taylor would never have given his body to this dragon, not until he pushed past her limits with his cruelty, not until she was done with him and said her final “fuck you.” Khavi had known. And they’d both fallen perfectly into place. Now the spear connected them all. Michael’s body, his soul—and Taylor, who’d linked them together.
    A thrum resonated through the steel shaft. In front of her, Michael’s dragon form shrank again . . . but not shape-shifting. Held motionless by pain and shock, Taylor watched as he
melted
back, as if slipping along the bloodied spear—and was sucked into the symbols that Khavi had carved into Michael’s body on the day he’d transformed Taylor, on the day he’d sacrificed himself.
    His soul, returned to his body. And his life . . . ?
    His eyes opened. Amber. Human. His gaze locked on hers and his body surged forward on the spear.
    She flinched back and he froze. His hand lifted toward her.
    “Andromeda.”
    She wanted to tell him not to call her that, he knew she hated that name, but she couldn’t speak past the blood in her throat. But at least that had been his voice.
His
voice. A harmony. Michael was back. Why wasn’t she free? She felt him in her head, dark and protective, building up her psychic shields and pushing away the agony. His healing Gift slipped along the spear, still impaled through their chests—he