She moved like lightning, flashing in a violent blur of fury that left gouges in the ground, and when he looked, her explosion had left a crater in the ground.
They could do nothing to help her, nothing to protect her as they had all sworn secretly to do. They were helpless, and they all hated it.
A terrified scream had come from Letari, fear and desperation to help her sister, and it had been the distraction Anubis had needed.
Her need to protect her sister had drawn her attention away from the threat, and he had moved for her, blocking her view and her body had jerked.
Her magic snapped off like a cut string and she stood frozen, her lips parted, and brows drawn down in a look of child-like confusion. She didn't understand what had happened, but they had all seen.
They saw when he thrust his fist into her, her blood splattering his chest and arm. They saw it all with a terrible, agonising clarity.
He felt it inside himself then, as Anubis had closed his fingers around her heart. He had felt her weakening, the same weakening he felt when she was starving or injured. She was dying, and they couldn't stop it.
She had looked down as the God had done, and the flash of surprise, and then understanding, had crossed her face. She knew in that instant what he had done to her.
He said something they could not hear, and her face registered her terror.
Kai and Letari started screaming the moment the God pulled her heart from her chest, and a part of Versalis vanished, the part that was a sense of her existence. A light inside him that snuffed out, her fire doused in water.
She stood there, her body too confused by the finality of it to move, and they realised her magic had broken, the ice had melted and Versalis was moving.
Skidding on the grass, her body fell, and he caught her before she could touch the grass, eyes closed and face relaxed, her head limp over his arm.
His fingers felt dirty and ugly against the perfection of her skin, and they trembled as he touched her, knowing she was already gone where he couldn't reach her.
"You bastard!" Daemon raged, but Anubis had already slid sideways through reality and was gone, taking her heart with him.
"Come back…" he whispered to her, stroking her cheek, but she couldn't come back to him. She was gone, and he knew the God had taken her heart with him for a reason.
He couldn't feel her in The Nameless Place. She was not there, nor was she in the spirit world. She had not died, really; she had simply been ripped from her body.
"Please…" he begged her, little drops of liquid patting down onto her throat and trailing down along her jaw.
His fingers stroked back her hair, smooth as silk and soft as a feather. She would have come back to him if she had been able. But she was not able. She was gone and this time he didn't think she would be coming back. It felt different, and that scared him.
Someone was standing nearby. The two linked to her were screaming bloody murder, and there was a terrible kitten crying coming from the cat Goddess.
"Etani!" Versalis screamed, his head bowing over her as he lifted the empty shell of the woman he loved against his chest.
She was gone, and he couldn't reach her. She was gone and none of them would be able to find her again.
She was the love of his life, the love of all their lives, and the dog God had stolen her away and left them all alive in a sick joke. It would have been better if he had of killed them all, merciful even.
"Bring her back!" Daemon screamed at him. "Bring her back right now!"
He couldn't bring her back. She wasn't in The Nameless Place, and even if she was, he could only guide her back when she wanted it. But she wasn't there, and he couldn't access The Nameless Place without her.
"Bring her back!"
"I can't!" Versalis roared, drinking in the perfection of her pale face. "She's not in The Nameless Place! She's not anywhere! I can't reach her!"
"Fuck!" Daemon howled, a wounded dog who had been kicked one too many times and was begging for mercy.
"Don't leave us…" he begged her as he pressed a kiss to her forehead. It was a kiss she wouldn't feel. That was not her. She had left. "Don't leave me..." he breathed, but he knew she had already gone.
***
They did not move until her body had disappeared into that same black dust that it always vanished into, leaving nothing but her clothes and the earrings she insisted on wearing, and that ring.
He scooped them up, considering throwing the ring into the lake, but then he clenched it hard in his fist, determined to shove the thing down the Hunter's throat.
Folding her clothes neatly with shaking hands, he slid the small silver hoops onto the top of his pinkie finger and stood, clutching the fabric to himself as though that would be enough to bring her back.
"Where is she?" Daemon demanded, getting in his face.
"I don't know. Anubis took her."
"What do you mean 'Anubis took her'?"
"She isn't fully dead. She is still somewhere."
"He trapped her?"
"He stole her heart," Dirdos said softly, and they all turned on the giant, his shoulder slumped in a terrible grief they all understood.
"What?" the demon snapped.
"Do you remember the story of the Winter queen who stole the heart of the Summer king to spite the Summer queen?"
Evidently, no one did, and the dragon sighed.
"There once was a Queen of Winter who fell in love with the Summer king. When he did not return her love, to spite him, she stole his heart and kept it in a box. It continued to beat, and he was trapped inside it, unable to be with his love until the heart was destroyed. It ends with him killing the Summer queen when he learns she replaced him, but you get the idea. Anubis is the weigher of hearts. He took hers. She is trapped inside her heart, and he is probably sticking it in a box."
"She hates those wooden boxes…" Bast whimpered.
She did, ever since she saw the box of hair that Neah had kept. She had thrown out all the wooden boxes and replaced them with little glass bowls instead.
"Let's hope it's not wooden then," Dirdos said. It was not a joke; she would be terrified.
"Can you feel where it is?" Daemon demanded.
Versalis thought for a moment, his mind lingering on her image and her name. He got an odd sense of wrongness, and he frowned, trying to figure out what it meant.
"I don't know how to explain it. But I feel like… it's wrong. Like that feeling you get when you're being watched by Cat when he's about to try to chew off your foot. Something is wrong but you can't tell what it is."
"Fix it," the demon snarled, enraged at his own impotence as much as Versalis' lack of power.
"How? How the fuck am I supposed to fix it, Daemon? Don't you think I would bring her back if I could? Don't you think I would call to her? You're not the only one who loves her!" Versalis snapped, infuriated with the man who would have others do his job for him. "You're the one who is supposed to protect her!"
The demon was incensed, yellow-gold eyes snapping to a gold glow in an instant.
"We all were," Dirdos said to calm the demon down. "We were all supposed to keep her safe."
Turning to see Kai and Letari, Hunter was dragging the screeching woman from the water, and Jaia was trying to contain his violently writhing twin.
It had been like this before, that agonised screaming that hadn't eased until she had opened her eyes in The Nameless Place. They were so completely connected to her, so tightly linked that their connection was shredded with the loss of her, and all they could do was scream.
They stopped being functioning creatures at that point, and they just screamed. Nayishma would be screaming too, and he could imagine the beautiful Adella trying to calm her wife, who couldn't hear her. All the others she had returned to life would be the same, and like Kai and Letari, they would be tucked away to wait for her return.