I no longer had any control over myself. All I knew wasneed.
By the time I realized what was happening—that I was siphoning from my beloved dragon, that my reapers were doing the same, that we werekillingher—
The other dragons arrived then, having come to save their mages. They forced me and my reapers to scatter.
But Zeranthe—
The dragons had to carry her away, her ellixen all but gone, her vibrant blue scales turned a deathly white.
She didn’t fight back.
Why didn’t she fight back?
Our connection is gone. I can’t feel her anymore.
I think I
I think we
I don’t know if she
The mages are coming for me. They believe I’ve lost my mind, that the Hallow Stream’s magic has corrupted me.
Maybe it has.
Maybe it happened when I cracked the first obelisk, when the Stream’s power flooded me, when its rage filled me.
Maybe the Stream is the reason for my hunger, my desperation, myaddiction.
Maybe it drove my actions tonight.
Or maybe that was justme.
The mages will have figured out what happened by now, what I did, what my reapers did, and they’ll have rallied. I don’t know what they’replanning or how they intend to stop us, but Tephryn is smart, and she—they—
I won’t go down without a fight.
I won’t let them take this from me, from my reapers, fromus.
The hunger—it’s relentless.
I needmore.
They’re coming for me. Coming for my reapers. Tephryn is—
They’re here.
32
“Viri.”
“Viri, please—you have to wake up.”
“P-Please, Viri!”
Viri groaned as her eyelids fluttered open, her head throbbing so ferociously that she nearly blacked right out again—and would have, if not for someone shaking her, begging her to rise.
Not just someone. Viri knew that voice.
