For a moment that stretched on, we remained frozen, catching our breath until the shaking ceased. Reality suspended in the stillness, fear coiling around my stomach like a snake ready to sink its fangs into this perfect escape we’d created.
The first screams echoing through the palace stiffened my muscles.
Tol was already moving, pulling my dress into place and straightening his shirt before my heart rate had calmed.
I grasped his wrists, nails digging into his flesh. His eyes met mine, the terror coursing through my body plain on my face.
One moment, that was all we had before we faced whatever was drawing screams from our people, and there would be no room for fear. Tucked away in our haven as we were, it was easier to let worries sweep in.
Gently, Tol removed my hands from his wrists and pushed my weapons into them. The leather and metal were reassuring against my palms. He wrapped my fingers around them and the familiarity of the motion pulled me back to the present.
“Let’s go,” he whispered, pressing his lips to my forehead for one last lingering, scorching kiss. Desperate desire poured into it.
Then, he reached around me to open the door, and we left the wanting behind.
I held my breath and shut out every emotion threatening to overcome me, slinging Angelborn across my back. The noise built as we fled through the high-ceilinged corridors of the palace.
We burst onto the entrance stairs to a world clouded with destruction. Gray smoke spiraled over our beautiful, hopeful city, darkening the lilac sky to a vengeful violet.
“Is it the volcano?” I asked as ash swirled onto my shoulders. The Spirit Volcano hadn’t erupted in thousands of years.
Warriors poured across the palace lawn, thundering into the streets with aggrieved roars I didn’t understand.
“It’s not the volcano,” Malakai said as he approached. Cyph and Rina stood with him.
“What—” Through the smoke billowing over the winding city of Damenal, between the buildings carved against rock, I could make out the swirling black armor of the new Engrossian army. They’d ambushed us, attacked when we were distracted. There was no time to organize our fighters as they poured into the streets to defend our capital.
“How did they get in? We have guards surrounding the city at all hours, stationed in the passes. How—” The second my gaze met Tol’s horror-stricken eyes, I knew.
“The tunnels,” he said.
“We didn’t secure them.” In the flurry of our arrival and what the others had revealed, in the rush of Daminius, we’d left entrances directly into our city unguarded. This attack—the warriors screaming and bloodied—was our fault.
“Where’s the smoke coming from?” I growled, fingers tightening around Starfire, channeling that guilt into fury as best I could, trying to hold myself together.
I followed Malakai’s line of sight to the Sacred Quarter. Perched on the palace steps, I could see the pillars of smoke. Tol’s hand slid around my waist the moment before realization slammed into me.
And every scrap of control I had unraveled.
The cry that tore through my throat was piercing and raw, devastation wringing my bones until I could no longer hold myself up.
The smoke threatened to swallow me whole as I watched the space where the Sacra Temple used to stand swirl with dust.
The air suddenly didn’t only sting with smoke—it reeked ofdeath. Because I’d been meant to promenade to that temple to present the offering to Damien. I’d been late, but within those pillars?—
The Mystique Council. My father. They’d all been inside.
And Kakias had blown it up.
Danya, Larcen, Alvaron…all gone. The shoulders carrying the Mystiques through reconstruction blown to pieces.
And the ones that had supported me my entire life, the tawny eyes guiding my every move. I’djustseen them across the ballroom—the sheen of proud tears as he’d watched me.
Now, he was gone. Bacaran Alabath had been wiped from the world with the blast that rocked the mountains.
“No,” I sobbed, tearing down the steps, across the lawn, and into the fray.
Voices yelled after me, but I charged through Engrossians. Starfire sliced where I needed her to, not stopping to see what carnage I left behind.
