Finnian blinked, and the large, glowing ring of thread pulled inward and back to Ruelle, bisecting everything it touched.
He was forced off his feet. The souls caught in it were thrown back. His storm of crystals slowed and fell.
The ground cradled the back of his head. His vision flickered. The crystal lodged in the canal of his right ear came loose, and the transition was sharp, cutting off all sounds as it fell out.
He swallowed, and something tightened around his throat.
“Finnian!” Cassian bellowed.
The call was not audible in his impaired ear.
He coughed, choking for breath.
My hearing aid.
Fright burned through him. He went to lift on his elbows and quickly search for it.
Something tugged against his nape.
He cringed and settled for looking over his cheekbones.
The blurred silhouette of Ruelle’s heart-shaped face and auburn strands came into focus.
She strutted across the field towards him, the syringe secure in her grasp, a thread in her other hand, balled into a tight fist.
The thread glinted in the sunlight and Finnian followed it, his fingers tracing over his Adam’s apple to feel the thread burrowed deeply in his skin, mangled and severing through flesh and cartilage.
One harsh pull from Ruelle and he would be decapitated.
She slightly raised her arm. The thread carved deeper into his throat. Pain wailed down in his shoulders and into his chest, crushing cells and atoms like they were arils.
He cried out, but the sound got lost in the blood filling his esophagus, dripping copper into his lungs.
His eyes flitted up to the Land’s vast sky gazing down at him.
You deserve this.
The itch screeched in the depths of his skull, aching behind his eyes.
You ruin everything—everyone.
He blinked, and a face appeared, hanging their head over him.
“Father is dead because of you,” his thirteen-year-old self said, sickly pale and with shadowed eyes.
Finnian’s heart accelerated at the thought of death.
A life-force blazed in him to move, get up, fight. He could feel his bottom half already beginning to reattach.
His muscles spasmed as he attempted to rise again. Agony rippled up into his skull. Blood clotted in his throat. He choked on the taste of salt and iron filling his mouth.
“You are weak.” His younger self glared down at him. “Always have been.”
The thrumming rang louder in his mind, the vibrations of it splitting through his system. He clenched his teeth against it, but a whimper escaped him.
Ruelle came for him in a slow and maleficent stroll, knowing she’d already won.
“You cannot win this,” his younger self said. “Give up.”
