“No,” Aya rasped, the sound broken. The taste of iron flooded her mouth, blood thick on her tongue as she shoved herself up, her arm weakly trying to push Will out of the way.
But that hand at her shoulder was back, forcing her down.
Her mother was at her side, her brown hair blowing in the vicious wind that howled as the realm rebuked the gods’ presence. And yet her voice was soft, gentle, as she said, “It is not your sacrifice to make,mi couera.”
A shadow fell over Aya and Will—Pathos and Saudra, hand in hand. They stood united before the goddess of wisdom, cut free by Will’s sword, which lay abandoned on the ground.
“For what you took from us,” Saudra said, her voice echoing across the mountains.
“For what we allowed,” Pathos said, the earth trembling with his anger.
They latched onto the goddess, their power rallying around them.
The wind howled its rage, the very earth groaning beneath the weight of it all. But Aya was still anchored to the veil—still caught in a tangle of gods and power and life and death.
She didn’t know how to undo it.
She didn’t know how tocontrolit.
“Aya,” Will breathed. His eyes were searching hers frantically, his body still bowed over her, ready to stand between her and the unmaking of the world.
It’s okay,mi couera. You can let go.
“Fight with me,” Will begged.
Let go, Aya.
She raised a trembling, blood-slick hand to Will’s cheek.
“No matter how far the fall,” she rasped.
Let go.
She did.
A deafening roar ripped across the mountains.
The last thing Aya saw was Will, haloed in light.
72
The Conoscenza says that death does not come without life. That in the undoing, there is creation. And yet as the deaths of three gods rip across Eteryium…across other realms, across that which lies Beyond…no one can say for sure what was unmade and what was created.
A veil.
A crater in the peaks of the Malas where two lovers lie.
A world where the gods cannot interfere.
A new world where perhaps, they still can.
73
Liam had never much considered the end of the world. He’d learned long ago that focusing on the worst-case scenario never did him any favors, and so, he’d tried to keep his attention on the present.
Perhaps he should have spent more time contemplating it. Perhaps it would have prepared him for what he was seeing now.
This wind…it was as if the Ventaleh had become a living thing, and it was intent on making its wrath known. It tore through the mountains, brutal and terrifying, its howl more of a scream.
