Page 142 of On Brutal Thrones

“I'm getting you out,” he says.

“You can't.”

“Watch me.”

He takes another step.

The sky erupts.

Lightning slams into the ground so close to him that black rock bursts into the air. Thorian staggers back. Fenric grabs his arm, and another bolt crashes down between them.

“He's playing with me!” I scream. “He's going to kill me. He's just making you watch first.”

Thorian goes completely still.

I wish I could take the words back. Not because they aren't true, but because of what they do to him.

“Nyx,” Talon says, and I've never heard his voice sound like that.

I look at him, then Fenric.

Gods, I love them.

I don't want their last memory of me to be this. I don't want them standing here helpless while Valtor burns me alive one strike at a time. And I don't want everything we've survived to end ten minutes from the fucking Spire because a spiteful god couldn't stand losing.

“Go win.”

Fenric's face crumples. “We're not leaving you.”

“You have to.”

“No,” Talon says.

“Lyra is waiting.”

Another bolt hits behind me, and I scream as rock explodes against my back and legs. All three of them surge forward.

Lightning answers instantly, a blinding wall of it ripping across the mountain.

“DON'T!”

They stop.

Tears blur them until I can barely tell one from another.

“Please.” I swallow hard. “Don't stay here for this. Go to the Spire. Win. Get Lyra out.”

Thorian shakes his head again and again. “I can’t.”

“There's nothing you can do.”

The words destroy him. I see it happen.

His mouth opens, but nothing comes out. His eyes stay locked onto mine as if looking away might be the thing that kills me.

And suddenly, I see what Valtor has done. Thorian has already lived this once. He loved his mother, and his father took her from him. He was a child then. Powerless. Helpless. Forced to survive a loss he could do nothing to stop. Now he's standing on this mountain with all the strength he's spent a lifetime building, and it still isn't enough.

Because this time it's me. The woman he loves. The woman he asked to build a life with him. The woman he finally let himself believe might still be there when all of this was over.