The silence after the storm was worse than the chaos had been. Dante held Selena against his chest as the last echoes of thunder rolled away across the fractured sky, his breathing ragged, her flames reduced to guttering embers that barely clung to her skin. The obsidian platform beneath them was shattered into a thousand jagged pieces, each one reflecting fragments of the transformed sky half still gray and oppressive, half now roiling with the natural fury of unfettered weather.
They had won, Selena thought distantly. They had broken the chains, freed the storm. Dante was alive, and the Gate's attempt to strangle him with his own power had failed. It should have felt like victory.
But the air had changed.
