Silver light shoots from my palms like a blast, setting the masked attacker closest to me aflame. He screams and pushes me away, tearing at his burning clothes.
I manage to take a single breath before more of them jump on me. They pull me to the edge.To the pit.
I kick at kneecaps, scratch at arms and hands. I bite, not caring at all about my dignity or the foul bitter taste of sweat in my mouth.
I try to Veilstep, but they’ve caught on to my motions. Just as Kailorien warned me, the motion for the shift is a tell. Predictable. Observable.
Helpless to stop them, I shout Kailorien’s name in my mind.
I scream as they hold my hands against my side and throw themselves over the edge, taking me with them into the abyss.
Weightlessness.
My stomach drops into nothing.
Then pain.
Agony.
Something breaks.
Blood fills my mouth.
Above me—a spec of light.
But all around is only darkness.
I try to move.
Can’t.
My body won’t listen.
I close my eyes.
Curse my fate.
Void curse all of you.
Void take all of you.
Void rip all of you to shreds.
Zeera’s face appears in my mind’s eye, and I rue the day I met her. Hate myself for not burning her alive where she stood.
The dignified Sokâr disappears. Only I remain, and I do not have the tears to hold the volume of my sorrow.
Humiliated. Destroyed—just at the moment when everything mattered most.
I close my eyes, darkness taking me.
Just before it all disappears, I hear a voice…
“Auryn. Auryn!”
Furious. Pleading.
But I cannot tell if it is Kailorien coming to save me or the wolf howling to pull me farther into the abyss.
