Deep breath.
I opened my eyes, my memories evaporating into the reality around me.The screams, the blazing fire gorging itself on everything in its path.
I searched for King Zaricor again, saw the side door hanging ajar.I struggled to my feet and clutched the bow in my hand, nocking an arrow to the string as I ran after him.
Ran after vengeance.
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Valeris
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SMOKE CLOUDED MY VISION, my ears deafened by a mind-numbing ringing.My back seared with pain, my body draped across the wreckage of the broken dais.Flames licked at the corners of my vision, smoke billowing above me, clouding the air with confusion.I worked my jaw, an ache building at the back of my head.
The ringing dissipated, replaced by screams that reverberated off the walls.
I rolled over onto my side, jerking as Zandyr’s eyes stared into mine.
Zandyr’s lifeless eyes.
Blood poured from a gash on his head.
“Zandyr!”I sat up, pulling him to me, fear rising.“Zandyr!”
He didn’t move.
I stared in shock.I had just been standing by him seconds ago.Had seen him take one of his last breaths.
He was gone.
Sorrow stabbed through me as I placed a finger on each of his eyelids and drew them closed, hiding him from this brutal scene.From the devastation encircling us.From the anguish building within me.
I lifted my eyes, watched someone descend from the heavens like an angel of death, falling through the smoke.The glint of the arrowhead.We had been standing on the stage, and I’d tried to rush everyone off.Because I knew there was danger and that was when, that was when—
The explosion.
The angel of death charged through the smoke, her long blond hair flowing out behind her as she disappeared through door the guards had rushed my father through.
I looked behind me at the dais, the flames eating it alive.
What had she done?
I struggled to my feet, stumbling after her to stop whatever she had planned.
