Page 59 of Shadow Fall: Part Two

Russ put a hand on my shoulder, and I was so wrecked that I didn’t immediately shake it off.

I thought I was numb to pain, thought nothing could hurt more than losing Haley. But a scream tore from my chest, shredding my throat when a spike of metal pierced my back at force, slicing skin and sinew, scraping bone before it thrust out my chest. The world blackened at the edges. I staggered, tasting blood.

And in that second, I knew Haley would be furious. She'd be absolutely incandescent with rage that I’d been hurt so badly. There was no doubt she felt it through the bond.

If she was still alive. If the titan hadn’t already killed her.

I screamed, the pain overwhelming every sense until I struggled to hold onto the shadows protecting Emlyn, until the swarm I used to fight the titan’s army, already in tatters, collapsed entirely.

I staggered, my hand rising to the spike through my chest as Russ stepped back, his face expressionless. And I realised—Cerberus fought deeper in the field. Russ was in his shifted form with his brothers, battling the titan’s most powerful allies. This wasn’t Russ.

How many of these mimics did the titan have?

Pain dropped me to my knees in the mud, the world flashing dark for a long second. I panted, rallying my magic, using it to tear the spike from me and stopper the wound before I could lose more blood. But my head swam, and the injury plus losing Haley was a deadly combination.

These creatures were taking us out, one by one, as if they’d been commanded by the titan to do just that.

“Wane!” Kai screamed gutturally, but his voice was so far away.

I fought through the pain for Kai, for the rest of our family. They needed my shadows. Screaming, I dragged myself, swaying, back to my feet, but blackness hovered very close and unlike my shadows it wasn’t comforting. It was cold. Lethal.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

HARVEY

Cronus had played us all like this was a huge game, and we were losing. I’d been pushed to the edge of my temper for hours, riding a wave of violence I couldn’t entirely control. The world stopped turning when Cronus disappeared with my mate, and like a switch flipped I stopped leashing that deadly temper. Why should I pull punches, why care if I eviscerated our allies along with our enemies? My mate was gone. My mate was gone.

I threw my head back and screamed, tearing the lid off my power in a way I’d only done once before. I didn’t let a mere trickle free, didn’t release even a river—an ocean of sunlight poured out of me, blinding me to anything but burning, ruthless gold. It split the sky in two, cleaved the blackness around us, and burned every shadow soldier into shreds of magic. Magic stolen from my brother when Cronus tortured him. Magic Wane would never get back.

My throat burned as the scream kept coming, sending my magic higher, further, until I felt bodies char and crackle, bones seared clean. I pulled back only when I sensed Wynvail near, his own magic an eruption of light and rage.

Haley was gone.

“Where is she?” I screamed at the empty field, only a few gods and titans remaining of our allies. “Where is she?”

I took a furious step and the ground trembled, the skies splitting even wider, sunlight fracturing it with cruel fury. No one would escape until I had my mate back.

Another step and veins of gold cracked the sky like tributaries of a river, and magic flashed across the battlefield as people wrapped themselves in shields or were whisked away from the danger. Another step and Cronus’s god army fell apart, scattering in fear. They should be afraid.

Some were not. Some readjusted their grips on weapons or readied magic. I bared my teeth and welcomed them, stalking across the endless field, aware of where my family stood, marking their positions so they’d be left alive.

A golden-skinned god with armour reminiscent of a Roman charged at me, a shield across one arm and magic gathering like rubies in his palm. He was very confident for a man who’d lost most of his power when Zeus was killed by Queen Lili and her men. The gods’ magic had shifted, and I didn’t think it was a coincidence that Cronus was making a bid for power so soon after the age of gods ended.

I crooked a finger at the golden god, my expression merciless, no excitement or thrill in my heart. I was a being of brutality and unforgiving sunlight and nothing else. The god smiled though, his mouth cracking with something cocky and eager. I crooked my finger again and a bolt of sunlight shattered the sky and stabbed down at the ground. It speared the god so suddenly that his expression didn’t even morph into shock, his golden face full of confidence. His eyes emptied.

I encouraged my sunlight to burn him to a crisp and marched past his blackened corpse, scanning the army for more attacks and not particularly surprised when three threw themselves at me at once. As if they could find safety in numbers.

There was no safety when I was unleashed. I burned them to charred bones.

Sweat beaded on my forehead and dripped down the bridge of my nose. My body throbbed, overheated inside my leathers, but I marched on, calling bolts of sunlight from the burning sky, spearing any and all who came at me. I lost more of myself with everyone I killed, with every crash of sunlight I ripped from my soul and speared through bodies, frying them to blackened husks.

“Where is she?” I roared at the next person to come at me, this one a human descendant of a god. He didn’t stand a chance. Even as he hit me with something noxious and green, his magic a poison in the air, I seethed with power. Within seconds, his bones smoked on the ground. I stepped over them and walked on, searching for my family, for my mate.

“Where is she?”

“Here,” an awful voice said behind me, not painful to my ears like Cronus’s thundering voice but eerie, terrifying. Fifty voices speaking at once, echoing and raspy.

I spun, inhaling, gathering magic, but it was Typhon who stood in front of me. Haley was nowhere in sight.

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