Page 116 of The Darkening (The Darkening)

“She let go of my arm.” Dalca spits the story out between Izamal’s attacks. “I told her to hold on. I promise. I never would have let her go. She let go because I was slipping. She didn’t want me to fall with her.”

“Don’t lie to me!”

“She was the best of us.”

Izamal roars. Dalca has to fight back to survive, and all those years of practice make him light and strong. Izamal’s fury-given strength falters. His rage makes his attacks vicious, but there’s no follow-through, no plan.

They have to stop. I search myself briefly for a pen, before taking in the ash. I begin to draw an ikon on the surface of the platform, but the ground shakes and I’m thrown backwards, off the platform stairs.

The breath gets knocked out of me as I hit the ground. I gasp, blinking the blurriness from my vision as something pale moves toward me. A hand touches my shoulder, and Cas’s frowning face comes into focus.

The rumbling worsens, and the ground breaks apart under me. An earsplitting crack comes from above, a sound like a thunderclap. Fractures appear all across the pyramid, letting in slashes of red light and sudden jets of black water.

Cas grabs my hand and hauls me to my feet.

He staggers, clutching his side. He looks like he’s been thoroughlychewed up and spat out; blood seeps from his side and from a cut over his ear, coloring his hair red. I put an arm around his waist, and he leans on me, trembling against my side.

He murmurs into my shoulder, “I’m s-sorry. I couldn’t stop him.”

I drag us both through the waist-high water to the base of the platform. Cas drops onto the stairs, catching his breath. Drenched, panting, I climb to the top.

Dalca has a half-human Izamal in a chokehold. He squeezes until Izamal grows limp, then throws him to the ground. “Why can’t you hear me?” Dalca’s eyes gleam. “I thought of you as a friend. We were, weren’t we?”

The water rises to the top of the platform, lapping at Izamal’s skin. There’s only hate in his golden eyes as he speaks in a purring, gravelly voice. “Oh, Dalca. I hated you from the moment I met you. How could I not? You have all the power in the world—and you only use it to save your skin.”

“Iz—” Dalca frowns, shaking his head, disbelieving.

It’s the Storm—it has to be—some part of Iz may hate Dalca, but it’s not all of him.

Izamal smiles. “No, prince. I was never your friend.”

The light leaves Dalca’s eyes.

Dalca stands over him like a wrathful god as the black pyramid shatters into apocalyptic light. When he speaks, his words crackle with unforgiving fire. “In honor of the memory of your sister, a far finer Wardana than you could ever be, I spare your life. But from this moment, we part ways. If you manage to find your way out of the Storm on your own, take care not to appear in front of me. I won’t show mercy twice.”

Izamal spits. “I don’t need your mercy.”

A coldness I’ve never seen before comes over Dalca, and he smiles. “Then you shall not receive it.”

My body moves before my mind catches up, and I grab Dalca’s wrist. He’s far, far stronger than I am, but he stills. “Please.”

Dalca’s gaze bores into me. I search his eyes for the Dalca I know, the one who wouldn’t be this cruel. I do know Dalca—don’t I?

Dalca breaks eye contact, his gaze darting over my shoulder. I turn, dread sinking my stomach.

Izamal stands, silhouetted against a massive wave of black water. He turns, meeting my gaze. His golden eyes are his own, perfectly human. Some immense emotion swells within them, something I have no hope of naming.

A thousand golden eyes blink open within the darkness of the wave. The wave crashes over Izamal, enveloping him, dragging him into the deep.

“Iz!”

Another sharp crack sounds, and under it comes horrible laughter, echoing in a hundred voices. The top of the pyramid falls, and I leap into the water, out of the way.

I open my eyes underwater, seeing everything in layers of shadow. Pale bubbles rise through the darkness, glossy black hunks of stone sink down into the depths, and through it all winds a ribbon of white. The serpent.

I kick forward. A hand breaks the water’s surface between chunks of stone, and I swim toward it, making out the rest of Iz in a slant of red light filtering through the water: wild hair haloing a drawn face, golden eyes open wide but unseeing.

I swim toward Izamal, but the serpent is faster. She slithers throughthe water like a bullet, opening her jaw wide and swallowing Izamal whole. She dives into the dark, taking with her a man who couldn’t escape his hatred, a man who was once my friend. A scream escapes from me in a bubble.