His head drooped as blackness swept in, but seconds later, Brela was screaming in his face again.
“No you don’t, you stupid bastard,” she hissed, gripping his cheeks so hard it hurt. The gold light had dimmed around them but still held. Pale and livid eyes met his. “You donotget to sleep on me, okay?”
“Just… a few minutes.”
“Look at me, Cason,” Brela growled, baring her teeth through a sob. “You still have a throwing knife to win back.”
“I… I’m sorry, Bre. I… I lo—”
“Come on, Cason,” Brela said through a sob. “Ov qigri, my dragon, please. I’ll do anything.”
Pain finally lanced through his spine as tingling feeling ran down his neck. No, not tingling. Dripping. Distracting. More hisses came from outside the shield. Someone groaned nearby. Gold dimmed.
Brela choked as she looked around. Then, her lip trembled as something shifted in her body. In hereyes.
“I can…” She met his gaze with conviction. “I can get us out of here. Just promise me you’ll stay with me and I’ll give you that knife.”
That look… he knew what it meant. He wasn’t going to make it.
“Brela…”
“I know how to save all of us—I can saveyou—just… make this easier for me, please. Tell me how much I drive you insane. Tell me that I’m chaotic and infuriating and cursed. Glare at me and tell me how much you hate that I’m an assassin and Veil Worshipper and that you wish we had never met.”
Never.“I wanted you to come back to Aelstow with me.”
Fear flickered through her eyes. She let out a sob. “Please, don’t do this…”
“You are chaotic, ferocious, andbeautiful,” he whispered, vaguely aware of blood dripping out of his lips. Brela continued to shake her head between sobs. He lifted his hand with a groan and wiped a tear away. “Come back with me. Say… say you’ll come back with me so I can wake up and see your smile every morning.”
Her whisper broke. “Cason, please stop…”
“Brela, I love you.”
She pressed her forehead against his again, pale blue eyes closing as sobs wracked her body. Around them, the gold light was barely a shimmer, almost out of power. Cason knew the hallucinations were getting worse when he saw stars flickering inside the shield. He could have sworn Atuphe winked at him from the opposite cliff. It might have been snowing, or raining white ash. No, that was Ceirdephal shedding his crystal armor.
One of those things might have been real. It was probably Ceirdephal.
Brela released a breath against his skin, eyes still closed. He leaned into it, desperate for one last taste of her before he died, but she only whispered two words against his lips before she stood up.
“I’m sorry.”
Those were not the words he expected her to say.
When she opened her eyes, they were no longer pale or blue. They were glowing purple.
Brela was shadow-cursed, and he’d officially lost his mind to the hallucinations.
Jaw set, Brela turned and limped toward the middle of the landing. She sheathed her last throwing knife at her waist and tightened her grip on Night Carver.
Cason realized that with his final breath, he was going to watch Brela die too. Between one blink and the next, the golden light of the shield fizzled into dust. Noglida pounced at once, all aimed at the exposed woman in front of them.
They never reached her.
Shadows ripped out of Brela, out of the ground, and out of the sky, shredding the beasts just as darkness sucked Cason under.
* * *
One breath,Elias was terrified that Brela was going to reveal her magic to Cason at the fire, the next, he was staring at her from the wrong angle, shadows lashing around their camp.
