The land where the bridge was starts to give way. With booming cracks, the ground begins sucking down into the void, like it can no longer stay up. Like whatever force just destroyed the bridge is going to destroy the land too.
The stone castle starts to crumble, and in a second, disappears entirely in a rush of dust and snow.
I blink in shock, mouth gaping, fear galloping through my chest.
It’s like I’m watching an invisible mouth gnawing at the earth’s crust, biting it off chunk by chunk. And it’s spreading.Fast.
Osrik suddenly bellows, “Run!”
It snaps me out of my stupor.
Lu and I leap to our feet, and we turn and start sprinting, just as the whole fae army tries to do the same. Everyone runs, screaming as the earth breaks away. There’s nothing but pure panic in our shared consciousness, as if we’ve become one giant herd.
“Digby!” Osrik roars, and I look over as Digby launches Judd’s timberwing in the air with Rissa clutched in front of him.
Rissa screams, reaching down for Osrik, horror on her face and his name wrenched from her lips.
But they fly up, just as more timberwings scatter. “We need a bird!” I shout, but the beasts are panicked, some taking off without a rider.
We have none to get on.
The threat of mortal danger licks at our backs like frenzied flames, singeing us with the promise of our own peril.
Snow and fog churns from the earth that rips away, the collapsing land polluting the air with the ghost of the ground. My lungs burn, my heart feeling like it’s going to burst, but I keep running as everyone else flees too.
But I hear it closing in on us. Hear hundreds of screaming fae start to succumb to the fall.
The rumbling gets louder…closer. The ground shaking harder.
“We’re not gonna make it!” Lu shouts desperately at my side.
It has to fucking stop. It won’t just keep disintegrating all of Seventh Kingdom—all of fucking Orea…will it?
The bridge is obliterated, but what if it obliterates everything else too? What if thereisnowhere to run?
Fear cuts into my heart and starts draining me dry.
The land just behind me starts giving way. People fall in. Terror overwhelms me when I feel the ground beneath my own boots start sinking.
This is fucking it. This is it. This is—
Lu trips.
I spin to catch her, hand snatching at her arm as she falls with the dropping land. Her body jolts as I catch her, but the ground cracks beneath my feet, the snow giving way for me too, and our eyes meet in horrified acceptance.
And then. It…stops.
I stand frozen while Lu hangs over churning air, held up only by my grip.
I pant, eyes wide, staring past her down to the abyss. The void swirls with fog and snow and darkness, carrying the echoing screams of thousands who’ve fallen.
It’s like I’m in a dream, or a daze. I can’t move. I just keep staring.
“Pull me up!” Lu screams frantically. “Ryatt! Snap out of it andpull me the fuck up!”
I blink and wrench my attention to her. But I’m scared to fucking move, scared the ground beneath me will crumble if I dare.
“Ryatt!” Lu yells again.
