Page 66 of The Shard and the Serpent (Shard Daughters #1)

Carnage

Rayze

Aleksi’s body hangs limp over my back. Her weight shouldn’t be possible, not with my leg torn open and two broken hands, but I force the realm to carry her for me.

To carry us.

I’m a lot of things. I know I’m not perfect, that a lot of the pain tonight is my fault, but I’ll die before I leave Aleksi behind. I already had to let Sonya be taken, to let Warrick go. I’ve lost enough family for a fucking lifetime.

We move through the street shaky and bleeding, every step revealing further chaos in the streets. Warships dock across rooftops, pirates peering down on my city.

Then the lights go out.

Panic erupts. Screams bounce off steel, glass shattering and people running blind. Sirens whine and fizzle.

My arms tremble from the strain of holding Aleksi, but I keep going. I break through a bracket marking the edge of Synlon. Fang’s Edge sits dark nearby, my breaths ragged as I head through the open field at the club’s back and toward the base of the mountains.

Something shimmers, and a sliver of my hope restores.

Only visible to the Daughters is a backup portal. It’s set in an archway covered in vines, but it’s there and it’s shining.

Tightening my grip on the threads surrounding Ender, I suck in a breath and step into the portal’s warping black depths.

We slam down onto marble covered in ice.

My knees crack. Aleksi hits with a moan. We struggle to drag in solid breaths, her lashes peeling open for a moment.

“Rayze?” she murmurs.

“It’s okay. We’re almost home,” I promise her.

She nods feebly, and I stare up at the expanse of stairs carved into the mountainside. Snow drifts down, replacing the torrential downpour with our higher elevation. The marble steps are cracked, my coat sticking to the surface of the first.

I peel away and flip, nudging myself ass-first across the step and hooking Aleksi’s arms in the crooks of my elbows.

“Heave,” I breathe, and my magic stutters with the command. “ Heave !”

Threads pull throughout my field of vision, and I scream, dragging us up the stairs. Every breath comes out as mist. Every heft leaves a streak of blood. Tears freeze at the corners of my eyes, and time becomes as nothing as I feel.

Everything leaks away to exhaustion when I drag us over the final stair, breathless, until my next scoot across marble is met with red.

For a breath, I keep my back to Shard House.

I stare out across the mountains, at the storm far below and The Kraken warships floating along Synlon’s skyline. I try to imagine that it’s not what I know is beneath me, that the portals were only shut as a precaution.

I gently tuck one of Aleksi’s curls behind her ear, tears rolling down my cheeks and dripping to her forehead where they freeze. I press a trembling kiss there and gently slide her weight off me.

“I’ll be back,” I whisper.

Then I turn around.

Blood coats the steps leading up to Shard House, the mirrored frame of the front hall and its beautiful stone pillars splattered and scraped with gore.

I turn onto my stomach, the front of my home a dizzying blur of white marble and crimson streaks.

“Help,” I croak and lean my weight into my torn elbows. “Help!”

The doors are ajar, bloody hand prints painting their wrought-iron handles.

I crawl, elbows and shins, horror trembling down my spine as I break past the entry and find the first bodies.

I freeze, unable to look in any direction and not see carnage. Small girls. Young Daughters. Dead. Some of them naked or their clothes torn, their eyes staring lifelessly up at the glass ceiling.

Bile burns the back of my throat.

Then I see her.

The Queen of Fate.

She sits on her knees, one of her dead Daughters lying across her lap. Her silver robes are stained, tears carving down her cheeks. Around her, the darkness of her veil hangs like a dense, sorrowful cloud, and within, the stars weep.

“My queen,” I whisper.

She won’t look at me. “Is he dead?” she asks, her voice dark and all-encompassing. It wraps thick around me, dragging a sob from the place I buried it.

I bow my head, my forehead pressing into bloody tile, my shoulders shaking with every miserable breath. “Please. If I’d known—”

“Is Russell dead?” she shouts.

Her gaze finally slices toward mine as she slams up from the ground. The darkness around her shudders into dark spikes as lethal as her crown. The stars within turn their attention on me, their gazes just as searing as hers.

“Yes,” I choke out. “Russell Ivor is dead.”

“And the Blood Betrayer?”

“Broken. My power is once again mine,” I say, the words dark and poisonous on my tongue. Saliva leaks from my cracked, swollen lips. “The Kraken moves on Synlon. Everything is in place, but Aleksi needs help and Sonya was taken.”

“Look at me, Rayze Angeline.”

I suck in a ragged sob, meeting her gaze.

Fate’s wrath sinks into me, my stomach dipping at the full force of her magic gripping mine.

Her dark, scarred eyes comb my face, her lips curled with a snarl.

“No more games, Sin. I’ll take care of Ender.

I have the Daughters who survived helping the wounded in the labs.

” Her chest dips, her fingers tucking into tight fists.

“There’s nothing we can do for Slayer until Synlon is secured. ”

Darkness clouds my vision.

“These deaths will not be in vain. Do you understand me? I don’t want you back in this fucking house unless that city is won,” she seethes.

“My hands,” I whisper.

“Will heal. Take the time needed to do so but not a second longer. When you fall, harness the energy within the storm my being here has produced.” Her silver gown sweeps toward me before she kneels at my side, pressing a firm palm against my head.

She sucks in a short breath. “Your Bond is gone, my Daughter. I understand that pain, and I wish you never had to feel it.”

Time and space warp.

“But your mission is not complete,” she says, softer. She pushes my hair out of my eyes, the house shaking around us with her presence. “Chin up, my Angel of Sin. There’s work to be done.”

The bodies of the Daughters and the white of the hall dissolve as her magic thrusts me into a portal.

“Death before betrayal,” the Queen of Fate commands, her voice a dark echo.

Fuck it. “Death before broken,” I return.

“Born to sacrifice.”

“Greater than pain.”

“ Destined to strike, ” her voice booms, and the portal breaks apart.

I whip through the storm above Synlon, spreading my arms and chasing the rain. Starlight beams from my pores, lightning arcing through the clouds and licking over my skin in welcome.

Then my bones snap .

I screech into the rain, the natural reservoir of power among the storm creeping below my skin and dragging my fingers straight. Bones realign, dark grooves forming where lightning speeds my healing.

They’ll still need time. The pain may never fade. Not completely. But if a Daughter is meant to be anything, it’s to be a vessel for agony. To let it bloom into something bold and beautiful, shaped by its wielder into a weapon of wrath.

My eyes narrow on The Kraken flag hanging across The Dredge, my father’s ship anchored to Synlon’s core power.

“Fated to win,” I whisper, and thunder quakes through my city.

One Boss down.

One more to go.

I’ve nothing to lose, and everything to gain.

My snake thinks he hates me.

Good.

There’s power in rage.