Page 60 of Shadow Fall: Part Two

“Where is she?”

Typhon’s expression was flat, the fifty dragon heads attached to his torso spitting green fire, his black wings beating behind him like he’d just landed.

“No!” a familiar voice screamed, their voice distant but piercing. I vibrated with power, frantic to know why Wane was screaming, but I couldn’t take my eyes off the father of monsters in front of me.

“Where is my mate?”

“She’s here,” Typhon replied, all his dragons speaking at once, mouths parted and glowing with verdant flame. Had his magic been green before?

I took a step forward, bristling with rage, reaching for a bolt of sunlight and ready to burn him to a smoking husk. Typhon moved at the same time, muscles shifting across his body.

Shadows blotted out the sun for a second, but enough light remained to see Typhon lurch forward, all the dragons on his body snapping their jaws. Magic glowed through their skin, outlining bones and skeletons and skulls. I struck before he could reach me, ripping a bolt of sunlight from the sky and driving it through his body, charring Typhon to ashes and bone. The green glow of his dragons winked out and I turned to face the rest of the army—

And jerked back when Queen Lili lunged at me with murder darkening her expression. Her teeth were bared, eyes dull but dangerous. A silver sword thrust too close for me to escape, the edge too sharp to be anything but fatal. I twisted, too slow, too late—

Oh, god.

Shadows crashed down from the sky in a turbulent column at the same second the sword drove at me. I tried to stop my momentum, tried to twist away, to reach out my hands as the shadows formed into dark leather, scarred bronze skin, blood-slick chestnut hair, and a determined expression that made me sick.

Wane faced me instead of the threat, his gaze locked with mine when the sword drove through his stomach. An intentional choice, like him standing between me and a fatal blow was intentional. Oh, god. Pain exploded in his silver eyes as Lili threw her weight on the sword, cutting a jagged line through my brother’s torso, severing sinew and muscle.

I tore across the few feet between us and caught him before he could fall, ripping power from myself to eviscerate Lili with a flare of light. She didn’t even scream as she died.

Sunlight erupted down the sword as I pulled it out of Wane with shaking hands, cauterising the wound on both sides.

“I’ve got you,” I promised, throwing the sword to the mud where it burned to ashes. “I’ve got you, Wane.”

My heart ripped out of my chest when his eyelids fluttered, lashes casting long shadows on his cheeks. Blood soaked into me, so much blood that I couldn’t breathe.

“Why would you do this?” I demanded, my voice breaking as I held him close, pumping him full of healing magic and painfully aware that it was too sharp, still full of Harveil’s deadly rage.

“Don’t… need me,” he slurred, eyes moving behind his eyelids. He was so heavy in my arms. So heavy. “I’m… being a good mate… Take care of…. Haley.”

“Fuck no,” I argued, strangled. My eyes burned, dropping tears on his chest as I poured even more magic into his wound. A sob shattered the air at the sheer scale of the damage. “No, Wane. Do you hear me? No.”

I pressed my forehead against his, desperation crushing my chest, making me shake. The sky went dark above us as I fuelled all my magic and concentration into healing my brother. But the sword had done a cruel job, the queen’s handling of it making his insides a jagged, shredded mess.

“Please,” I gasped, fumbling for more magic, weaker than I’d been just minutes ago. I used too much disintegrating the army. I should have saved it. So fucking stupid!

“Don’t you dare fucking leave. Not when we just found you, not when I just got you back after a hundred years. Please, Wane. Everything I said, all my anger—I didn’t mean it. You are a good mate; you always have been. I took my fear out on you, and I never should have said that. Don’t leave me.”

Magic sank into the ragged hole the sword had made inside him, frantically mending ribs and capillaries and sewing the frayed ends of muscle together, but Wane’s eyelids didn’t flutter again. He didn’t speak, didn’t move, and I was shaking too hard to tell if he was breathing.

Light flashed beside me, and then Wynvail was there, his expression horror stricken. And Kai, with slashes bleeding on his chest. And Emlyn, swaying on his feet, his eyes bleary with pain. Their faces became wan with dread when they saw Wane limp in my arms, not a shadow clinging to him, when they saw all the blood he’d lost, the ragged mess where a sword had driven through his chest. Worse—through his heart.

Emlyn stumbled through the mud towards us, and a sob forced its way past my clenched teeth when he helped me bearing Wane’s weight, his hand resting on my shoulder, too. Kai grabbed my other shoulder, his hand trembling as he gripped me. Wynvail scanned the field of bones and mud, supporting Emlyn as he swayed, weakened by an injury I couldn’t see but felt, throbbing, screaming warnings at my magic.

“She’s gone,” I rasped, meeting Wyn’s eyes, so similar to mine, to Wane’s.

“Where?” Emlyn croaked, his bleary eyes sharpening. “Where did she go?”

I shook my head, pumping all my power into Wane, desperation making me dizzy. “I don’t know.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

HALWEN

Ifroze in the middle of the hideously green sitting room, staring at the unconscious form of Cronus splayed in front of the fire, flames spitting fern-green embers onto the shadows that bled from him. Wane’s shadows.

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