Ythera's enormous eye stayed fixed on John a moment longer, and then, slowly, something in the impossible weight of her presence eased. It was the same way a clenched fist finally decides it doesn't need to hit anything after all.
'Very well,' she said. 'I accept the pull, John Wicked. Do not make me regret centuries of caution in the span of an afternoon.'
He crossed the last stretch of dark glass toward the nearest curve of her coil, taller than any building he'd ever stood beside, and pressed his palm flat against one massive scale. The pull didn't feel like effort. It felt like recognition, the same quiet click he'd felt with every Monster who'd ever chosen him back.
Light gathered, and the domain of dark glass and frozen stars folded away around all of them at once.
...
