The flaming thundervein whip lashed across its body, and it screamed.
The moment the crackling metal met its hide, it split the fleshapart, unlike the corroding arrows, unlike every other attack that had melted away into nothing. My voice strengthened the weapon, and the wound stayed, deep and gaping, though writhing as if something inside it was trying to pull the pieces back together.
Blake staggered in front of me, armed with nothing but a dagger.
My song shifted to a scream: “Blake, no! You don’t have any magic or thundervein left. This is suicide!”
But he was already moving, slipping past the Starved’s claws. He wove through its attacks, slashing, dodging.
I won’t lose you. Please, Blake, stop—I tried to reach through our connection, but it was gone.
Then, with one devastating thrust, Blake drove the dagger deep into the demon’s chest just as I sang a single sharp note, my voice raw with desperation and grief and tears.
Somehow it penetrated.
The creature shrieked again. The moment the dagger pierced its chest, the Starved convulsed, its body twisting in agony as the blade drank deep. A sickening, hollow wail escaped its mouth as its essence unraveled, siphoned into the hungry metal until nothing remained but a shriveled husk, crumbling to dust at Blake’s feet.
The Starved was dead.
My breath came fast, uneven. Then my gaze fell on the blade in Blake’s hand. Black as the abyss, gleaming with an unnatural sheen.
Shadowsteel.
Relief rushed through me even as my vision darkened.
Blake swayed on his feet, barely upright, his face pale with exhaustion, his body trembling, but he still managed to smirk at me. “I’m never unarmed, remember?”
I laughed, the sound weak, wet and full of tears.
The poison burned in my blood, curling through my veins like wildfire. I collapsed, unable to stand any longer.
Blake was there suddenly, hands on my face. “Rubi, stay with me—”
Voices.
Flame desperately licking at my hand.Get up, get up!
“Blake, I lov—”
“Don’t. You will be okay,” he commanded, violence and grief boiling in his tone.
“But nothing can heal a wound created by the Starved.”
The world went dark.
55
I was burning alive.
A flood of images crashed over me. Faces swirled in my mind; people I had once known and memories—all crashing over me like a never-ending wave.
Someone was screaming, the sound raw and desperate, filling the air.
Is that me?
The world tilted, and I was falling into an endless void, unable to stop.
—
