The priestess herself is quickly slipping into it, still clutching the Tear to herself with stubs of fingers, her screams mangled in her agony.
I try to focus my shadows enough to grasp her and keep her from falling, but they don’t obey, just whipping across the square in frantic waves.
“STARK!” I call urgently through our bond. He’s already responding, tendrils of his own shadebending power wrapping around the woman’s torso and wrenching her high into the air.
“Sorry about this,” I hear him say aloud to Cratos as he hauls the woman over to his direwolf until she’s slung over his back in front of him.
I urge Anassa next to Cratos and reach over to pry the Tear from the priestess’s hands. The shining gem burns hot in my hand. For the brief moment that I touch it, there’s thepullof magic through it, stretching down into the square and causing the storm in the earth beneath us.
Hastily, I wrap the Tear in my sleeve before yanking my pack open and dropping it inside. Hiding it away makes no difference, though.
The land continues to shake and move, the quakes increasing with every breath.
Anassa’s front paws keep slipping forward as more and more cobblestones come loose from their foundation, tumbling down into the endless black pit forming where the statue once stood.
“We need to get out of here!” I cry to Stark and Anassa.
“Do we bring the priestess with us?”Stark sounds steely calm in my mind, reflecting the intense focus he’s using to keep his shadebending steady.
I might not be happy with her right now, but if she’s going to give us any information, she needs to stay on Cratos’s back.
“Yes—in case she knows about Killian’s plans,” I call, bracing myself as our wolves scramble and jump. Maybe he’s figured out that there are only seven at this point, and that I’ve found one on my own, or maybe he’s still searching for something that doesn’t exist. If she can give us any insight, it would help.
My heart is in my throat as Anassa struggles to stay out of the yawning pit opening up before us, stone after stone falling away under her feet.
We’re jolted back and forth, Anassa and Cratos careening in random directions, avoiding the spreading destruction. It moves faster now, ripples moving through the square and a violent wind starting to pick up.
Finally getting solid purchase beneath her paws, Anassa springs from the melting ground to a patch of solid cobblestone. Cratos is close behind us. We don’t waste another moment before racing away from the square.
The path of destruction follows behind us.
“It isn’t stopping,” I say grimly to Stark.“Even though nobody is wielding the Tear anymore, somehow the magic is still going.”
We pause halfway down the next block, wheeling around to take in the scene of destruction. Nearly the entire city square is now an inky black pit, and it just keeps spreading outward.
“We need to get as many people as we can out of here,” Stark tells me.“Let’s split up. Meryn, call for reinforcements?”
I open up communication with Noemi and Venna. “We have the Tear,” I tell them, “But now we have bigger problems. The magic did something to Linsfall, and it’s collapsing or—I don’t know, but something’s destroying the city. We need to get people out. Can you help us?”
Venna’s response is swift.“Coming now!”I sense them both spring into motion. They must have been waiting on my word in case they were needed.
Now what? I rise up on Anassa’s back to see as far as I can. The ripples of destruction are approaching our resting spot fast. Next to the square, a stone tower of a small temple shakes and leans, then crashes violently into the ground.
Dust rises up from the stones and bricks and wood smashing around us, and for a moment, it’s so thick that we can’t see anything but gray.
I cough, and my eyes stream from the gritty air.“When the air clears—you turn left, I’ll go right?”
I feel Stark’s mental nod and then his farewell, like a brush of ghostly lips against my cheek.“Be safe, my queen.”Our minds separate so that we can focus on our tasks.
I wipe my eyes on my shirt, tears mixing with grit on my face, and then point Anassa down the broad avenue. We skitter around the corner to the right, racing at top speed.
The city is groaning and screaming as if it’s a living being. Patches of ground are thrown into the air as buildings and streets tilt and crack and sink into some dark oblivion.
My heart twists as I contemplate how many people may have already lost their lives to this madness.
The quiet of the hour has been smashed as thoroughly as the city’s heart. Screams and sobs erupt from every corner as Linsfall’s residents flee their beds. Some race toward the gates while others stand in the street staring at the buckling horizon in muted horror.
I somehow find my voice. “Linsfall! Awake and evacuate!” Desperation lends me power, and my words ring out across the rumbling of the earth beneath us.
