Page 220 of Lana Pecherczyk

“I can’t!” Cloud’s roar ripped from somewhere deep in his soul. Agony contorted his face. The cryptex trembled in his grip. “She begged me not to. The last thing she said—” He growled at himself. Clenched his jaw. Shook his head as if clearing his thoughts. “You don’t know everything. You were too cowardly to ask, too cowardly to find me when it mattered.”

“And lucky I was!” River adjusted Blake as she squirmed. “Otherwise, who would have cleaned up your piss and vomit while you refused to speak? While you screamed her name every fucking night, begging for her to stop hurting you?”

Cloud flinched.

“You think I wanted to become this?” He gestured with the cryptex at himself, at the preserved blood on his face. “You think I imagined this in my future?”

“I think you’re so lost in your grief?—”

“HATE!”

“—that you can’t see what’s right in front of you.” River shook his head. “Regardless of how you feel, she’s not coming back.”

The cutting truth showed in the play of emotion on Cloud’s face. In the way rage turned to despair, in how it switched to agony, how it faded to nothing. River stepped toward a large piece of debris, aiming to use it as a step up to a root.

But Cloud moved, blocking the way.

“We don’t have time for this!” River glared at the cryptex. “My mate, myalivemate, needs help. She’s in no condition to summon any kind of magic, believed or not.”

“It’s okay.” Blake’s weak voice muffled against River’s chest. “The Well made a mistake. It’s fixing it now.”

“Don’t say that.” His voice broke when he lifted her chin and found tear tracks down her dusty cheeks. “You’re delirious. You don’t know what you’re saying.”

“I’m the crack, hun.” A sad smile touched her lips. “The break that needed to happen. You can fill me with glitter now, make something beautiful.” Her gaze defocused and drifted past him, toward the sunlight. She reached for it as if it were tangible. “See? The razz is here to take me away.”

“No.” River squeezed her. “You don’t get to walk away!”

Cloud still blocked the passage. River saw it then, the same desperate terror reflected in his eyes. The two of them were the same, just at different points on the timeline of loss.

“If you want to stop me,” he growled, “you’ll have to claim the debt I owe you. You’ll have to use my apology against me.”

A tendon in Cloud’s jaw worked. He seemed to consider the ultimatum, but River knew better. He wouldn’t do it. For decades,centuries, he had every chance to claim Ash’s debt from when they’d rescued him. But unless they’d kept it a secret, Cloud left it untouched.

Just as River had.

Cloud’s chin dipped, but not in defeat. He gestured at the fake pipe tunnel and snarled low, “You’d cross the wasteland, face that pain for her. But not for me. Not to help me save my”—agony flashed on his face—“to save Rory.”

“You neverasked.” River flared his eyes. “Sure, I might not have listened, but you never fucking asked anyway!”

“I shouldn’t have to.”

“You said it yourself.” River shifted his mate’s weight. More feathers scattered. “I wasn’t ready for the mess.”

“But now you are, because of her?”

“Because ofus. All of us.”

The words hung between them for a long moment. River honestly thought he’d have to carve his way out, but then Cloud’s leather-clad shoulders sagged. His dark wings drooped, rustling as the primaries brushed the ground.

For a moment, River saw not the monster who’d rained lightning on innocents, who’d betrayed Elphyne, but the best friend who’d saved him from drowning.

Another blue-tipped feather spiraled to the junk-littered ground between them.

Pity filled Cloud’s eyes as he tracked its descent.

“Go,” he said, stepping aside.

River crouched, ready to launch, but then a shadow fell over them. Power. Thick, ancient, and twisted. It came in hot and harrowing, filling the pit and shattering the atmosphere like broken glass.