Page 216 of Lana Pecherczyk

“You abandoned me,”Cloud whispered from the darkness.

River’s head snapped up, eyes narrowing.

Nothing. No movement. No further sound. He must be hearing things.

Another step. The floor sloped downward, descending deeper into the earth. His knees buckled, but he caught himself.

This time, the pain felt…

Off.

Too much of a burn.

“You weren’t strong enough,”the voice continued. “Too afraid to suffer. Too afraid to save me.”

River pushed onward.

“Coward.”

The rusted tunnel stretched endlessly, branching into smaller passages. Every inch was agony, every breath a struggle.

“You’ll fail her, too.”

The pain and emptiness morphed, turning thick and heavy like mud slowing his steps, dragging at his ankles, knees, and thighs. Soon, he was wading through it, sinking with each lurch.

“Blake,” he pleaded.

The mud tried to engulf him, his identity, his power, his past. It all dissolved in the void—the hungry thing.

“You call yourself a Guardian,”Cloud taunted from somewhere. “You call yourself a protector of the weak, but when it mattered, when I needed you, you turned away. You watched me fall and had the nerve to tell me I wasn’t alone.”

The tunnel walls rippled.

“But where were you?”

River saw himself standing on the airship’s edge, watching a figure plummet overboard into darkness. Not Cloud. Not Rory.

Blake.

Her rainbow hair streamed upward as she fell, her hand outstretched. Through her billowing hair, he glimpsed glassy eyes and the terrifying truth. She felt betrayed, forgotten.

“No!” River lunged for the vision, but his fingers closed on empty air. Too late. Always too fucking late.

The hallucination shifted. The Ceremonial Lake materialized around him, vast and turquoise, steam coiling from its surface. Three crow shifters stood at the jetty’s edge. Them, when they were younger. When they had other names.

“You’re asking us to trust you with our lives,” Cielo said.

“You’re sure about this?” Nikan muttered.

“No,” Manfri laughed.

“Of course you aren’t.”

River whirled around, searching for Cloud in the darkness. That sounded like he was here—an adult.

“Get over yourself.”

Now it was Ash.