My bones rang like struck crystal.
My blood frosted like red mercury.
Glacial fractals burst from my fingertips, turning the churning water stark white.
I was the cold between stars.
The silence after extinction—
But then, the mountain rejected me.
My head cracked against the rocky chute.
Something punctured my ribcage, stabbing straight into my lung.
Water poured in through the hole in my body.
And with a final bite, I plummeted into the mountain’s belly...
Chapter Forty
AGONY TORE ME APART.
Three kinds, all at once.
The first detonated in my chest—fissuring through my soul where Rook’s heartbeat lived inside my own.
The second came with fangs—teeth driving into my shoulder.
The third came with lightning-bright pain—my skin cracking as if I’d been roasted.
My body broke with a ruin of ruptured veins and torn flesh.
A loud growl echoed in my ear as the fangs in my shoulder drove deeper, wrenching my attention to the fact my protective, lovable panther was currently eating me alive.
“Whisper.” I choked on ash. “What...What are you—?”
He snarled like a monster and got a better grip with his jaws.
Agony exploded as he hauled me upward, my ruined body scraping over stone. Every inch he dragged me, my chargrilled skin tore even more, leaving my nerves exposed, my muscles uncovered, dragging me from the crater I’d chosen for my grave, all while doing his best to shove me into a different one.
I was dead weight—just a hunk of meat being pulled from a battlefield by something that refused to let me die.
But I wasn’t dead.
How wasn’t I dead?
I’d reached the crux.
I’dfeltit.
After endless hours doing my best to cool down, I’d lost.
The fire had taken over.
I’d burned—
Grumbling under his breath, Whisper deposited me on the dry pool’s edge and kindly removed his fangs from my fissured flesh.
