Page 118 of The City Of Fractured Memory

“It’s—going—to be—okay,” she chokes out. “I—I love—you.”

Her eyes close and her hand goes limp in mine.

My vision blurs. My heart fractures.

Please, no.

If she goes, I will tear this world apart with my bare hands. If she dies, I will feed every last shred of myself to magic until nothing is left. Her blood stains me, sears me, anchors me. My breath breaks as I feel her slipping into death, and in that moment I want to give up everything that I am, everything I have been, to keep her here.

Stryx, stay. Please. Stay.

I can’t lose her. I won’t.

Her wound finally closes under my magic, but I can feel it’s only surface level. The cut was too deep, too much blood lost. It might already be too late to make a difference.

I hear a dark chuckle and look up to find Xavier standing over us. One look in his harrowing eyes instantly tells me that the man I thought was my friend is no longer here.

He’s gone. They’ve actually done it. The ritual is finally complete.

And that’s when I realise, I can’t feel my Shadow’s presence anymore in the back of my mind, no dark morass looming in my periphery. The emptiness I’m feeling—it’s him. If Xavier completed the ritual, then he must have siphoned the fragments of the Faceless God from us too. I’m free.

But the cost is too much.

Xavier stands amid the ruin of the cavern, dust curling around him like smoke from a battlefield pyre. The Faceless God rises in Xavier’s stolen skin, and I swallow hard. This is what true grief tastes like, what love tastes like, when you’re too late.

My best friend is about to die and there’s nothing I can do to save her. And now, the man I knew, the friend who once swore he’d take a blade for me, is gone. His eyes drag down to meet mine and there’s no warmth, no spark of recognition, only an abyssal flatness that chills my blood. What’s left of him is a shell. A vessel. A puppet with its strings pulled by something ancient and hungry. And now it’s staring at me like I’m its next meal.

My breath catches in my throat.

“He’s gone…” I whisper, my voice breaking from the horror. “Gods, Xavier’s gone.”

Riven inches closer to me, but even he seems hesitant, shaken. When I glance at him, I freeze. His face is white. Like someone sucked the colour out of him.

He looks at me, and then I feel it. The same thing that’s made him catatonic. The world itself feels like it’s shifted, an invisible shiver rolling through the cavern, through the earth, through me. The air presses in, thick and wrong, like gravity has splintered and reformed at a crooked angle. Something vast and cold brushes against my skin, insurmountable danger rising to suffocate me.

My lungs seize.

The hairs on my arms lift.

It’s as though the entire city just inhaled, and forgot how to exhale again.

Riven whispers, voice hoarse and barely audible. “Octavia…”

Xavier slowly takes Vesper and Amari’s hands in his. “I’ve changed my mind, brother.” His voice sounds so different, so wrong. “Prison is too good for you.”

Then, as one, they disappear like smoke on the wind. The last thing I see is his cruel, twisted smile before we are plunged into absolute darkness. Then Xavier’s ominous voice echoes through the dark.

“Feed.”

A deep, menacing growl reverberates through the cavern, the noise chilling me to the bone.

Forty-Eight

“What did he mean feed–”

Another growl cuts me off. I keep one hand firmly on Stryx, and grasp for Riven in the dark with the other. “Riven?” I breathe. “What was that?”

A growl sounds from behind me this time, making me whip round, but I can’t see a thing in the dark. I hear padded footsteps slowly surrounding us, and the growls and snarls become louder, closer, accompanied by ragged, animalistic pants.