Page 76 of House of the Iron Reaper

It happens faster than I can blink.

Like a puppet with his strings cut, Deimos goes slack and crumples to the ground.

Urgency fills my footsteps. I’m no longer smiling. Something is terribly, terribly wrong.

Deyanara reaches him first, skidding to her knees beside him.

“Deimos?” She shakes him.

He doesn’t respond. His eyes are glassy, staring at nothing. Deyanara shakes him harder, panic crawling into her voice.

“Deimos?”

Ronan comes to a dead stop several feet away. His mouth hangs open.

I sink to my knees. Deyanara keeps shaking him, keeps calling his name but she gets quieter as the ringing in my ears gets louder.

I don’t need to look at him. I can’t look at him.

The way he fell… I will never forget it. Deimos was gone before he hit the ground.

Chapter 34

Deyanara

A man dressed in grey-green talks. Or I think he talks—his lips move but the words slip past me. Copper dragons in Reaper masks march past. One of them is Meris. Her shoulders are bowed, the fabric of her mask shuddering with each breath.

A body wrapped in cotton is lowered into the pyre.

I watch, grief lodged so deep in my chest, I cannot reach a full breath. I have cried more tears than I have water in my body.

Briefly, I wish I had never come to know Deimos so I would be spared this kind of pain.

Chapter 35

Deyanara

Two days pass.

A Baidu sombrely announces Deimos of House Copper died from an overdose of bahk, taken just before his fight. I expect the news to hurt. It does not. The Baidu could slide a knife between my ribs and I expect I would feel nothing.

Ronan, red-faced and snarling, curses out the Baidu. Novalie, spitting venom, turns on Aythora and demands to know how she can accept the cause of death.

Aythora lays a sympathetic hand on Novalie’s shoulder and says, “An ugly truth is still the truth.”

I say nothing. Does it matter? Truth or no, my friend is still gone.

I dig a fingernail into my palm. Nothing. The only thing in my mind a hollow silence.

Chapter 36

Deyanara

A day passes.

Chapter 37

Deyanara