All I know for sure is that she’s vulnerable, and the shadowy forms working on the bough above her…
My eyes widen.
They’re cutting the branch.
The heavy bough screams louder as it splits halfway, not yet fully severed. The end of it drops toward Thyra, stopping only a few feet above her floating body.
If it falls on her, it will crush her.
Punching my fist forward, I try again to break through the force, pushing against it. I heave with all my might, my muscles tensing until they threaten to tear.
My heart thumps in my ears, straining within the cage of my body. Blood fills my mouth, but Iignore it.
“Thyra!” I angle my shoulder and ram myself forward, trying to make ground.
Another scream shatters my ears.
The bough drops further.
The memory of Thyra’s voice echoes back to me through my fear. The moment she asked me: have you ever grabbed hold of the bough of a tree and forced it to bend until it splits?
She told me she saw this landscape in the blade vision she experienced when she read the Chronicle. She told me she could hear a sound like screaming. She couldn’t see what was causing it.
This tree.
These shadows.
Her vision.
The bough drops even farther, and now the branch is hanging on by threads.
I’m pushing and pushing, and the harder I push, the more my chest feels like it’s tearing apart, the more my mouth floods with blood, choking me.
Ripping me apart.
I don’t fucking care.
I won’t let anything hurt her. Never again.
Roaring through the pain, I tear through the barrier.
As it breaks, I finally comprehend that the barrier wasn’t outside me.
My chest cracks open.
A crimson-red thread shoots from my pounding heart, spearing toward Thyra, the same thread I once tried to cut.
Even as pain threatens to crush me, I run toward her, the thread streaking ahead of me, striking her heart, faster than I can reach her.
I close my hands around the cord because, as fast as I am, I won’t get to her in time.
All I can do is pull on her sleeping body as the branch comes crashing down?—
Chapter Twenty-Three
Stellen
Cold fingertips brush across my lips, trailing ice to my jaw.
