Page 76

Annhialation

As Horus disappears from sight, Scoria shows up before us, but the king sends darkness punching through her. The giantess collapses to the ground with soldiers from all the armies scattering to get out of her way and the upheaval of sand that fills the air.

Did he kill her?

He can’t, can he? Not like that. Not so easy. She’s immortal.

Reven suddenly appears from wherever he’d taken Eidolon to before. I feel him before I see him. A swirl of darkness surrounds him, holding him up, and even from this angle and through fuzzy vision, I can see there’s not a mark on him, unlike the king.

He throws his arms out wide, and the shadow soldiers on Horus lift their heads on a collective, eerily silent scream before they disappear without a sound or a trace.

“No!” I choke out around Eidolon’s grip.

Reven was too late.

Horus is on his knees, blades made of darkness impaling him from all sides, propping his body upright. Reven’s pain lances through me, only adding to my own.

The weapons turn to haze, evaporating away, but Horus is still there, still kneeling, eyes on me.

Eidolon jerks me closer, contorted face in mine. “You’re next.”

“No,” Reven snarls, shadowing so close, I can feel his breath. “She’s not.”

He grabs Eidolon by the shoulder and they both vanish.

And I fall.

I have enough sense to pull sand up to meet me, slowing and softening my descent to the ground. When I land, I roll, but even as I’m gasping for breath, I push to my feet and run to Horus.

As I reach him, he collapses to his side. I yank sand over the top of us, flash heating it to form a dome of glass that’ll keep the shadow soldiers off him. We can’t last long in here, though. Not if we want to keep breathing.

“Horus.” I scoot around to where his head is. “Horus, please.”

His eyes flicker open as something strikes the glass.

I ignore the sound. “I’m here,” I say. “I’m here.”

He opens his mouth but makes no sound.

Trying with everything in me not to cry, I take his hand in mine. “You have earned your honor this day, Horus of the Lazuli Wanderers.”

I think maybe his face eases. Just a little. “Lana?” The word comes out strangled, barely recognizable.

I nod, knowing what he’s asking. “I will provide for your sister. You have my word.”

He swallows and tries to speak again, but even as that last try burbles in his throat, his face goes slack, eyes empty.

Gone.

He’s gone.

I drop my head to our joined hands, grief rocking through me as I see my lost friends’ faces in my mind. Tziah. Vida. Horus. Maybe Scoria.

All gone.

I can’t stay here with him. I know I can’t. But how can I leave him?

A hand wraps around my ankle and jerks me down, dragging me under the glass, away from Horus’s body. We pop out on the other side, and I flip over to find a shadow fighter.

I don’t get a chance to bring my power forward, though, before he disappears and I pause.

Scoria is standing over me, one hand to the hole in her side, chest heaving like she’s having trouble breathing, even though she’s made of rock. “Get up, young Imperium,” she demands, even as she’s picking off more shadow soldiers around us.

I push to my feet and start to do the same. Just to get them away from us. But they’re coming faster and faster. We can’t keep up.

“We need Allusian,” the giantess says without looking at me.

“What?”

“The goddess of death,” she reminds me. “If anyone can handle this many, it’s her.”

Not if she doesn’t get the pieces of her heart back from the Devourers. “She’s a little busy.”

I pick off another shadow, jumping back as I do. We’re a little busy, too.

“I don’t care how you do it. She can fix this. All of this.”

How? Which is when it hits me. The only thing holding Allusian back. I think I can bring it to her. The Devourers have to be close, have to have felt their goddesses.

But our glass walls are keeping them from traveling the Hyades River to the Sea of Terra that the city of Oaesys sits on.

“Hold them off me.” I don’t wait for Scoria to agree before I aim everything I can of my own power into the skies.

The distinct snick of glass cracking reaches my ears.

The glass borders around the entire dominion that Aryd built many millennia ago to protect us from the Devourers in the oceans are impossibly high and have no reflection. Consequently, we’ve never known if they go straight up and stop, or if they formed a dome over our heads.

Now I know for certain it’s the second option.

Another snick sounds. When I first learned how to build portals in the Shadowood, I swear that sound got lodged in my ears.

I yank on my power over sand as hard as I can.

But pulling at it’s not enough. I close my eyes, and like I did with the amulets, I picture reversing the process—turning the glass back to tiny grains of sand.

I just need to weaken it. The weight will bring it down once it goes.

Scoria grunts, but nothing has gotten past her yet. I try to work faster, to force the walls to fail faster.

“Come on,” I whisper.

“Let me help.” My eyes flash open to find Aryd beside me. She reaches toward the heavens, then yanks downward. The protective glass shatters with an explosion of sound, like the skies themselves splinter and fragment.

Aryd goes eerily still, her eyes glassy as if she’s seeing something I can’t. “Wildernyss,” she whispers.

And then she’s gone.

It takes me too long to realize that Aryd didn’t turn the glass of the dome back to sand. It’s coming down on top of us in massive, razor-sharp shards that glint with deadly intent in the sunlight.

I starburst my hands and pray to the mother goddess as I turn as much of the glass into sand as I can. It pelts us hard, and most of the human soldiers raise their arms to protect their eyes.

I know I didn’t get them all when a fragment of glass the size of a sacred tree lands in front of us, only a meter away, stabbing into the desert like a dagger in the heart of the dominion. A few more glass pieces hit, splintering, and spraying all around.

Oh goddess. What did I just do to the dominion?

I draw my fingertip over the flesh of my arm, awakening the sparkling lines of my bond to Reven.

Letting the warm fizz of that sensation sink in, I close my eyes and call out to him through it. “Find me.”

Nothing happens. Given that he tackled Eidolon to some shadowy realm or other, I’m hoping he’s not answering because he’s also busy.

I’d feel it if it was something worse. Wouldn’t I?

“Find me,” I call again. “We need to help Allusian. She’s the only one who can stop the shadow army.”

With no warning, no answer, he’s suddenly there. The brief glimpse I get of him before he wraps his arms around me and shadows us away, I can see he’s still unharmed.

When the darkness dissipates, we’re back in the city, and I suck in a horrified breath at the destruction the goddesses have wrought. The throne room and all of the palace-temple has been leveled to the point that I can look across my city from where we are and see where Tyndra’s meteorites struck. My city is burning, made worse by Wildernyss’s winds.

It’s a wasteland.

And Wildernyss lies unmoving in the middle of it.

The land undulates under our feet so violently that Reven and I are thrown to the ground. Before we can get up, vines shoot into the space so fast it’s like watching a den of snakes. Tropikis isn’t anywhere I can see, but these are from her, that much is obvious. They cover the entire area that used to be the throne room and wrap around Allusian, Wildernyss, and Aryd so fast, only the shoosh and creak of the vines and the surprised shouts of the goddesses tell me it’s real.

Only, with a burst of power, the vines turn to ash and drop to the ground.

Allusian.

I’m getting shakily to my feet when Reven appears in front of me. I don’t even get the chance to blink before he shoots out a hand and grabs Eidolon, darkness still swirling around him from shadowing, by the throat.

“I don’t think so,” Reven snarls, all things fury.

They disappear again.

A single breath later, something grabs me by the ankle, and, for the second time, I’m dragged away.

“Not again, you bastards!” I shout.

I fight with sand and shadow and everything else I can, even as they drag me out of the palace—the same way Reven did what feels like ages ago when he thought he was kidnapping the new queen of Aryd.

A hundred faces with vague features that still manage to look bloodthirsty, the lust of death in their burning eyes, surround me, come at me, pull me.

That’s when a shadow flashes by overhead.