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Chapter Forty

P ain.

The world is blinding, endless pain.

I choke for air.

I gaze at the balcony several stories up, see the way they shout for me.

“Vastianna,” someone says—not below but inside my mind. The voice is lovely and feminine, soft as a drop of rain. But I can’t talk to her yet. It takes all the strength, all the willpower I have left, to tilt my head just so.

I have to know if it worked.

Illian lies a few yards away, his body broken and bent at odd angles, his face pancaked into stone. Blood runs from him like thinned-out paint, soaking the nearby grass.

It offers me the modicum of peace I needed, even as I feel myself fade away.

I no longer try to hold on.

Letting go feels like a relief.

Breath leaves me.

Pain leaves me.

And I feel myself die.