Page 202 of The Blood Rites

Kael looks at me, eyes so black that for a moment I lose myself in them. He smiles, weak but honest.

“You’re going to break yourself to save us, aren’t you?” he says, blood mixing with his teeth.

I put my hand over his. The shield falters at the touch, but it holds. “I won’t give you up,” I say, and the words come out raw and desperate.

He exhales, the smile barely holding. “I was doomed from the moment I laid eyes on you.”

Overhead, the death counter stutters.

Sixteen. Sixteen. Sixteen.

I won’t let it change again.

The Mother Shard’s voice returns. This time it is not a scream, not even a threat, but a low, broken sob.

“You could have been everything.”

The light starts to buckle.

I squeeze Kael’s hand, and he squeezes back. “You are everything,” he says, so soft it breaks me.

I brace myself.

The shield is going to fall.

The dome fails, not all at once but in a riot of cracks, each one splintering out from the last until the surface is nothing but a shell held together by the last threads of my willpower.

Kael’s shadows swirl at the cracks, trying to patch them, but it takes more from him than he has left, and he chokes, coughing blood.

Skeletal fingers push through the nearest crack, bones snagging on the light before stretching inwards. Then an entire arm, then a half-formed face, a stranger’s lips moving in a silent scream. Dozens of hands crawl over the surface, battering and scraping at the thin membrane, desperate to breach.

Kael looks at me, face wet with rain and sweat. He puts a hand on my cheek, gentle and final.

“Don’t” he says.

“Don’t what?”

He smiles, lips trembling.

“Don’t die for me.”

I try to say something, anything, but all that comes out is a ragged breath. My hands shake so hard I almost lose the last of the shield, but I hold it, just a second more.

A new fracture splits the dome, directly above us. A long, slow whine, like a spring pulled too tight. The cracks fan outwards, and I feel the pressure change, as though the world is holding its breath.

I glance at the red counter, then back at the cracks, then at Kael. “I’m sorry,” I say.

He shakes his head, drawing me close. He presses our foreheads together, the touch almost searing.

“I’ve been dead since the moment I was born,” he whispers. “But you make me want to live. Even if it’s just for you.”

The pressure in my bones is too much. The pain is blinding, and I know I can’t hold it much longer.

I make a choice.

I let the shield fall.

Not because I failed.