Utter,suffocatingsilence.
The world blurred at the edges as my pulse pounded inside my skull. Everything slowed, except him…falling.
The sound when he struck the ground was wrong. Like the gods had dropped him from the sky and broken something on impact.
A breath caught in my chest before Nezra fell next.
Her body jerked forward, collapsing beside him, an arrow quivering from her hip. The raven launched upward, wings frantic, beak open in a scream the world refused to let me hear.
Elva’s shriek was muted. Callum’s orders were only shapes of panic. Ford’s barrier flared, silver light cutting through the haze.
I heard none of it. But I felt everything—the magic recoiling like a wounded beast, the heat leaving my body, the exact second the world decided to take from me again. My veins burned, a fever trying to break free, remembering it was made to destroy.
Ronan’s smoke spilled from his fists, streaks of shadow writhing through the air, brushing against my skin until it shielded me.
Elva’s screams at last tore through the stillness, cracking something sacred as she dropped beside Wells. Light erupted from her palms, flooding his chest, her hands slick with crimson that refused to yield. His tunic had turned to a river of blood, blooming outward in violent red.
Elysian was already there, blade drawn, his body a barricade before Ford’s already flickering shield. Both trying to protect her.
Wells’ eyes found mine, full of fear he didn’t deserve.
“It’s okay,” Elva whispered repeatedly, as if repetition could rewrite it all. “It’s okay, it’s okay—”
“I—” his voice was thin, a thread unraveling, “I can’t feel anything.”
A tear slipped from the corner of his eye. Blood followed from the corner of his mouth.
Elva’s hand shook as she swept his hair from his face. “I know,” she breathed. “I know. It’s okay. I’m going to fix you. Just…just stay with me.”
Magic flared from her palms, frantic. Not the radiant blaze it should have been, but splintered, a dying star gasping for one last spark. Still, she kept going, kept pushing her light into him, trying to seal the wound, to stop the river. But the shadows fought back. They leaked beneath her touch, wrapping around the wound, swallowing the glow whole.
She turned to me then. “Verena,” she choked. “What do I do?”
Shouts split the air, echoing through the peaks. Arrows screamed from above, followed by the hiss of enemy magic shattering against Ford’s shield. The barrier wavered again, thinned. His hands shook, his face burning red from the strain.
“What do I do?!” Elva screamed again.
I didn’t answer. I couldn’t. My head shook in denial alone. Sound refused when my lips parted, because I already knew.
Blood dripped from Wells’ mouth, trailing down the curve of his cheek, his jaw. His lashes fluttered as the light around Elva dimmed, her glow faltering to nothing as she pressed harder, whispering prayers to deaf skies.
My knees hit the dirt. “I’m sorry, Wells. I’m sorry. I’m so fucking sorry.” He didn’t hear me.
I felt the exact moment his heart stilled, the calm of it breaking through every roar, every breath. His chest sank once, eyes open, fixed on the horizon, then nothing. Grief cracked through the land, splitting stone. But it couldn’t reach him. Couldn’t touch what death had already claimed.
The realm trembled beneath my palms as my head fell back, and I screamed. It ripped through me, through the peaks, through the world itself. A sound that flayed the sky bare.
A sound loud enough to wake thegods and damn them all.
CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN
Verena
THE SCREAMING STOPPED, but the sound lived on in the cracks of my voice as grief became acquainted.
The world had taken him. The gods had ignored me.
So, I looked to the only thing still listening and whispered,Take them all.
