He felt the hot trickle beside his eyes as tiny horn tips broke the skin. The pain barely reached him through his fury; he was closing on Viktor while Yunohana pressed the man back toward the bench.
"You used her brother to hurt her."
Kaiden’s voice carried a second, guttural resonance beneath the words. Viktor looked at the blood running from his temples, and his smile faded as he took in the horn tips.
Yunohana’s fan flashed toward his exposed throat, but Viktor caught her wrist with the hand Luna had broken. Bone clicked beneath his skin as red light burned through his shirt below the collar, and the tendons in his hand drew tight as he forced Yunohana’s fan away from his neck.
Kaiden felt the foreign mana a moment later, a suffocating pressure pouring through the portal into the mark on Viktor’s chest. His gauntlet prickled against his skin at its approach.
Viktor drew a deep breath. When he smiled again, the pleasure on his face was startlingly sincere.
"Ah... Thank you, my Lady."
He twisted Yunohana’s wrist outward and struck her beneath the ribs with his other palm. Alexandra caught her against a golden barrier as the blow threw her off her feet, and Kaiden lunged past her with his gauntlet drawn back.
His fist met Viktor’s palm with an explosion that threw water out of the pond. The man slid backward into the bench, crushing its broken frame beneath his heels, but his fingers stayed closed around Kaiden’s gauntlet.
’What the fuck...?’
Kaiden drove harder, Wrath burning through their locked hands. Viktor’s skin blistered against the metal, and still he leaned into the grip, looking at Kaiden with open delight.
"I’ve watched that punch more times than you could imagine. It really is better in person."
He hauled Kaiden forward and drove his elbow toward his face. Kaiden twisted aside, taking the blow across his cheek, and tasted blood as Viktor flung him toward Yunohana.
Yunohana gritted her teeth as pain tore through her ruined left shoulder, then forced that arm around Kaiden’s upper arm and turned with his momentum, keeping them both upright. Her fan snapped open in her right hand beside his shoulder while Alice fired at the hand Viktor was reaching toward the portal.
Viktor swept his palm upward. Blood rose from the wound in his side, spreading into a red shield that burst under Alice’s beam while he ducked behind it.
<He’s drawing that power through the opening!> Alice told Kaiden. <The mark on his chest!>
"The last convoy is clear!" a radio crackled from Viktor’s belt.
He pressed his palm to the portal’s rim. Red light stretched its lower edge down beside the bench until the passage beyond met the garden paving.
"Through you go," he called to his surviving fighters, turning to face Kaiden and Yunohana again. "I’ll follow."
"Kai, he’s forcing it wider!" Nyx cried. Blood welled beneath her nose as she fought the expanding opening. "I can’t close it while he’s feeding it!"
David’s escort broke toward the bench. One man dragged him by the collar while another fired at Nyx, trying to break her concentration.
Alexandra caught the shots against her barrier, and Aria sent a crescent through the caster’s legs. He fell screaming in front of Calypso, who buried her axe in his back before he could crawl after David.
"Darling, behind you!"
Kaiden turned as a fighter drove a shield at his spine. His gauntlet crushed its rim, then he shoved it aside and caught the man by the face.
"No! Wait-"
He drove the man headfirst into the paving. Bone burst beneath his fingers, and he was already rising when Alice’s beam tore through the next fighter trying to reach the portal.
Across the pond, Theodore’s companion seized his arm and hauled him along the walkway toward the same opening. By the time they reached the bench, Luna was coming after them in a streak of lightning.
"Let go of him!" she screamed.
She materialized beside Theodore and cut through the hand gripping him. His escort shrieked, but his other palm was already driving into Theodore’s chest, knocking him backward through the portal as Luna reached for him.
"Luna!"


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