Osrik appears beside me. With his massive strength, he bands an arm around me and hauls me back, while simultaneously reaching down to fling Lu up and over.
I fall backwards a couple of feet away, while Lu lands in a heap beside me. Osrik hurries over and yanks us back to our feet and we all back away.
My pulse is on a rampage, breath panting as I look out at the landscape. Or…whatusedto be a landscape.
Seventh Kingdom looks like a split seam. Where the bridge was, the ground has torn away in a line, stretching all the way to where we stand. The void has made a V, stolen the bridge, the castle, maybe a couple miles’ worth of land across the edge.
The seam grew narrower as it reached toward us, but it still extends with a quarter of a mile gap right here at its end. Seventh’s land stretches precariously to my left and right, and I see just how fucking lucky Lu and I are. We were a step away from being sucked down into the void.
Just like all the fae soldiers were.
“Fucking hell,” Lu pants beside me, her hands visibly shaking. She glances over. “Thanks for catching me.”
I nod numbly, and she looks at Osrik. “Thanks for pulling me up, Os.”
He doesn’t reply. He’s searching the sky, watching the circle of timberwings. Some are chasing down the riderless birds, snatching up their reins to bring them back.
I turn and look at everyone on the ground, counting heads, finding faces. There are too fucking few. We walk furtheraway from the edge and gather together, and I start cataloging everyone as the timberwings land and we all converge.
Digby with Rissa. King Thold, but I only see two of his soldiers with him, and both are bloodied, their green-clad armor stained with spatter. Queen Kaila lands with a dozen soldiers of her own. I count only twelve men from Second, some of whom are grievously wounded. No fae stand with us.
My chest hammers like it’s being pelted with hail. “Judd…” My voice is thick, my jaw tight.
Lu meets my eyes, hers red-rimmed as she shakes her head and says the most devastating words. “He died in my arms.” Her voice is broken, misery punching straight through.
He died, and then his body fell into the void. We don’t even have his fucking body to bury. Osrik lets out a roar of anguish, knees hitting the ground, head hanging in fury and grief as his fist hits the snow.
Misery and shame strangle me.
Judd died because he was saving me. Cutting me off that timberwing because I was stuck. It would’ve been my chest that sword had stabbed through if he hadn’t come over to help.
And now he’s dead. Gone. Fallen away with the disintegrated land.
Rissa rushes over to Osrik and kneels with him, arms wrapping around his bulk, her head nestling against his side.
Emotion thickens in my throat.
“It’s over…” Queen Kaila says from the back of her beast. Her face is pale. Eyes haunted, but her voice holds hope. “The bridge is gone—our worlds severed. The fae have actually beendefeated.”
King Thold’s grim face looks at the broken land, at the wounded soldiers. “At great sacrifice.”
The threat of the fae, the one thing that was driving me forward, has been wiped out in sudden seconds. Yet while the others are reeling with bittersweet relief, I’m just reeling.
Yes, the fae are defeated. Yes, Orea is safe.
But…the bridge is gone.
Which means there’s no way for Slade, or my mother, or Auren to comeback.
CHAPTER 58
SLADE
The moment my dragon’s wingsnaps, I jolt with excruciating pain that radiates down my arms. The sensation steals my breath and overloads my mind. I’m stuck in shock for a moment as we begin to plummet from the sky.
The ground rushes up faster and faster as my dragon roars in agony, but at the last moment, I manage to take hold of the spike in front of Auren to brace around her.
“Hold on!” I shout.
