“Are you challenging me?” Lazza asks on a snarl.
“I’m challenging this decision to hurt my mate all on the word of some chit—”
Out of nowhere, Ryn charges Lazza. I’m frozen, stuck watching it like it’s in slow motion, completely torn about what to do. If I jump Loa right now like I want to, Treno will know the truth. It’ll gut him. But if I don’t help Ryn get out of here somehow, they’re probably going to kill him, and I can’t let that happen either. I’m fucked no matter what I do.
I take a step toward Loa-Raquel, who has her back to me as she watches Ryn charge the Syta of the Avowed. There’s so much space between them that the attack seems futile, but Ryn moves so fucking fast. His body readies itself for attack and starts to morph into his gryphon. I focus on my hand, willing it to partially shift and extend my fingertips into claws.
Lazza’s eyes widen and then narrow as he snarls out,“Tamod hurvas aeyo!”
Nothing happens, and Ryn slams into Lazza like a freight train, his size and form still changing. Treno sprints in their direction, and then we all freeze as pain filled screams fill the air all around us. The awful, soul-scarring sound wraps itself around me and rips out my heart while also stealing my ability to move or think. I feel a foreign buzzing in my body that doesn’t hurt but steals the air from my lungs. I grab at my throat and watch horrified as Ryn rises off of Lazza slowly. His shift stops and his feet lift up off the floor. He’s suspended in the air, clawing at his throat and turning purple.
Manic laughter bounces around the crystal walls and ceiling, and Lazza stands up, his eyes crazed and his hand outstretched like he’s somehow choking the life out of Ryn.
“You forgot,old friend, what I’m capable of,” Lazza snarls, spittle and madness spewing from his mouth as he does. “Did you think you’d be immune? That I wouldn’t bring you to your knees just like all the others?”
Ryn’s clawing at his throat and struggling to stop whatever Lazza is doing to him slowly becomes more sluggish. Tears streak down my face, and black dots form at the corners of my vision. Movement to my right calls to me, and I look over to find Treno bent over, taking pain filled little gasps of air and staring at me, with pure shock and betrayal bleeding out of his gaze.
He knows.
The connection must be forcing him to feel a measure of what I am, and I’m suffocating just like Ryn is. My heart breaks from the pain and confusion I see in Treno’s eyes, and I wish I could reach out and steal it all back. I look away and watch Ryn’s fight slowly turn into twitches as his body accepts the inevitable death.
Pigeon is slamming into me, keening and lamenting. I can feel her begging to take control, to put a stop to all of this. Lazza is laughing. Loa is staring, her eyes filled with excitement and horror, like she can’t decide if watching her brother being murdered is fun or fucking awful. Fire starts in my chest as I internally scream for all of this to stop.
At first I think it’s my soul being ripped to shreds, but slowly the fire spreads until it’s consumed all of me. It reaches out to the borders of my body like each lick of flame is searing something into the individual cells that comprise...me. It fucking hurts, but it releases the invisible hold on my throat, and I gasp in a lung full of air as the molten heat suddenly condenses inside my chest again like it’s ready to explode. Ryn’s legs give a final twitch as he hangs in the air, and I turn to Lazza.
I want to shred him. To make sure that no one has to stare into those evil eyes again and face death. I open my defenses to Pigeon. I clear the way for her to take over and do as much damage as she can before they kill us, but it’s not Pigeon that surges through me and out into the room. I scream, pain and rage pouring out of me, as a shockwave of purple explodes out of me. It moves through the room, obeying my will and slamming into everyone, blowing them back.
I gape and stare down at my hands as if somehow they belong to someone else. What the fuck was that?
Ryn drops to the ground with a sickening thud, and it snaps me out of my shock and confusion. I stare at him for a beat, but he doesn’t move. Dread tears me apart as the wordstoo lateecho around my head. I rush over to him and place my fingers at his throat and watch his chest. I hold my breath as I try to find the right spot on his neck, the one that will thump rhythmically and give me hope. Tears continue to stream down my face, and they drip onto the filthy shredded tunic he’s wearing. Halos of guilt, worry, and pain dapple the fabric as my emotions drip out of my eyes and all over him.
Relief punches through my chest as I finally feel a faint slow rhythm underneath my fingertips. I let out the breath I was holding and watch his chest as if my exhale should become his inhale. My scalp lights up with pain as someone fists a hand in my hair and drags me away from Ryn. I shout out and scramble to try to get to my feet, reaching up to stop the hand from ripping any more chunks out than they already have.
I expect it to be Lazza that I catch in my peripheral, yanking me around, but it’s not. It’s Loa, and from the brief peeks of her I’m getting, she’s well past the edge of enraged.
“Do you see now?” she screams, her voice triumphant and furious.
She swings me around violently, and suddenly I’m facing Treno as he gets to his feet about ten yards away from me. He takes me in, and fear and anger flash in his face. My stomach drops at the rage I see there, and I don’t know if there will ever be a way that I can make any of this right.
“Do you have your proof now? That she’s one of them...just like I told you she was?” Loa screams at him, and I can’t miss the hurt little girl that seems to bleed out of her voice.
I scream for Pigeon, but it feels like she’s buried in my head somehow. I can feel her frantically trying to dig herself out and get to me, and I realize I need to buy her time. I focus on my hands and force my talons out.
Loa laughs maniacally next to me, and Treno’s face loses color and his eyes go wide with terror. I just spot Lazza out of the corner of my eye nodding, but my attention is ripped away when Treno releases a horrified, “Noooooooo!”
Confused by his reaction, I freeze. Instead of taking a swipe at Loa, I spend a split-second trying to figure out why he wouldn’t want me to hurt her.
I realize too late that his anguished scream isn’t because of what I’m doing, but because of what Loa is about to do.
17
Warm metal touches my neck. I don’t even have time to process that it’s a blade before Loa slices across my throat with it.
Pain explodes in my throat, and then I can feel warmth gushing out of me. I try to gasp, but the sound is a sick gurgling that hammers home the reality of what just happened. I press my palms to my slit throat, terrified by how quickly they’re covered in blood. I press at the wound and watch as Treno falls to his knees, his large hands clutching his own neck.
The realization that he’s experiencing some fucked up echo of what I am flashes through my mind as I press at my wound and wonder how the fuck I’m going to survive this. I blink slowly, and it’s as if the world around me has exploded. It’s hard to focus, because my mind seems to only want to be aware of the fact that I’m bleeding to death. I feel like I’m moving underwater as I try to comprehend what’s happening.
Panes and shards of shattered crystal come raining down from above me, and I fall to my knees, unsure if they are too weak to hold me up anymore or if the strong burst of wind in the room shoved me down. I feel pieces of things fall on me, but all I can really focus on is trying to press the escaping blood from my throat back into my body. I fumble for the skirt of my dress and shakily bring a wad of the fabric up to my throat and press it there.
