Azariah dragged her out of the way as the heart began to recede, sinking back into the ground. It swallowed everything in its path.
“No!” Cade screamed.
He threw his rifle and dove, reaching for the hilt of Gutrender as it sank with the heart.
His fingers grasped it, pulling him forward into the oncoming black as the ground shook, and Karr’s magic told him that soon, it would all close in.
Karr dove and grabbed Cade’s wrist.
“Let go!” Karr screamed.
Cade looked back at him, over his shoulder. His body trembled as he held onto the blade, still sinking slowly with the heart. “I must have it. I must havesomethingto take from this place.”
“You don’t need it!” Karr said, tears in his own eyes, his body shaking as he tried to hold onto Cade. His magic lashed out, trying to hold back the heart. But it was sinking, too quickly, too strong, the space no longer responding to his magic. Against the heart, he would always be too weak. “Just let go, Cade. Let go of it all.”
“I can’t,” Cade said.
His eyes found Karr’s and for a moment, he looked like his old self again. Before the job, before their parents were gone. Before Geisinger and Jeb… beforeeverything.
“I can’t let go,” he whispered. “But you can.”
Any further, and they would both be sucked beneath the ground with the heart.
Together, they would cease to exist.
“Please, Cade,” Karr begged him. “Please don’t leave me.”
“It’s too late.” Cade’s hand gripped Gutrender so tight his fingertips turned fully white. Karr’s fingers were slipping from Cade’s other wrist, no longer able to hold him, to fight back as the heart sank and sank and sank.“If you’re him… if you’re truly him,” Cade said. “Then let go, Karr.Live.”
With a final cry, Karr’s grip faltered.
“NO!” he screamed.
Cade fell, tumbling over the edge into darkness with the heart and the sword, as it swallowed them whole. The ground closed, swirling in on itself until it was solid again, the heart gone. Not even a mark to show that it had once been there inside the cave.
Gone.
Cade, and the heart of the planet… gone.
Chapter 43
LATER
Sonara
There was a Devil in the Deadlands, seated on the back of a once-dead steed as she rode towards the gates of Stonegrave, an army of freed prisoners at her back and a prince’s sword hanging at her hip.
The past many weeks had been like a bad dream.
But Sonara had never feared the realm of nightmares.
It was the world of the living she shied away from, for the people and things in it were tangible. And dreams were not.
Dreams, like the idea that she could bring home a Soreian prince who’d been stolen by a Wanderer ship.
The very same ship that had once come to her planet, bringing with it a boy who bore that prince’s heart. And inside of it, a piece of the very first Shadowblood’s soul.
Sonara looked to the side, where that Wanderer rode now. Not on a steed like her own, but on a two-wheeled machine. A ripper, he’d called it. A bike that he trusted more than any worthy steed. He’d taken it from the ship that now sat in the desert sand, a relic. The engine, melted by lightning.
