Their hate is consuming, biting and bruising
Eating and rotting and writhing and oozing
“When twilight merges with stone’s crowned dawn
And something most precious is suddenly gone
It waits in the rafters, the corridors, the rooms
The fourth now a feast for malevolent doom
“Come fangs and mist, come balance and majesty
Follow the moth with its bonded ferocity
Thus starts the ending, the middle, and beginning
Of five towers falling, the darkness yet winning
“Come springtime and dreaming, come fire and madness
The towers need mortar to smooth shattered edges
They war for the breaking, they bleed for the broken
They still violent scales and grin while they’re choking
“A beacon, once sleeping, awakes in high places
A consort, once clawing, no longer encases
Their hate is consuming, biting and bruising
Gleaming and blotting and fighting and losing
“When nightmares are banished, no dark looming reign
And something is mended with gifts of white flame
It waits in the heartbeats, the landscapes, the ease
The realms cry their peace beneath star-blessed wings.”
With another great, cracking shudder, her power exploded from the center of her, sweeping all in attendance across the floors. All except Stennyx, fierce as he was.
“And now, I offer you one truth, Your Majesty. A way to test what I have said and take it to heart. It will be only Imperial Sons that you sire, and no female babe shall be born into the line of Bordoroth until this tribulation has passed. Prepare yourselves.”
There. The one honest moment she was allowed—eventual proof of her credibility, for all it would someday break him.
Endellion vanished as suddenly as she had appeared, returning to her vantage point on the frigid mountain peak, to the blessed sight of the shimmering mist below.
The last beautiful thing she would see for a very long time.
Panic threatened to devour her as she gulped the thin air, and Endellion cursed her knowing. The rest of her vision played out fromhisperspective, and she watched him tear through the invisible space of the world to get to her. A monster, coming to take her to her ruin.
The land shook with his fury when he arrived, his hot, scathing breath stirring the hair at her nape and spiking the blood in her veins. She blinked away the stirring tears, steeling herself for what was to come, and whispered a soft goodbye to her sisters.
With her hands clenched into shaking fists, Endellion turned and faced her destiny.
