Page 55 of Shadow Fall: Part Two

I dropped the wave into him and hoped he choked on it, hoped he fucking drowned for the way he looked at me, for the way I could still feel his stare as a physical touch, burning my body.

Walden jumped back and whistled; Dave thundered towards us with a high, panicked cry.

Heaviness pulled on my arm until it felt dead, numb. The trapdoor screeched as I pulled it open, whatever magic the key contained throbbing with more power, more urgency.

“Get in!” I yelled at Walden, eyeing Dave. He wasn’t going to fit. “You’re gonna have to run, buddy. Sorry but we can’t take you with us. I’ll make an opening for you, and you run as fast as you can, okay?”

I must have been imagining the hellstallion’s nod. There was no way he understood and replied. Right?

“I’m not getting in there and leaving you behind,” Walden said with a new rasp of anger in his voice.

I flung my hand up again, letting sunlight drip onto the ground, and pictured a huge channel of sunlight forming, just wide enough for a horse to pass through but powerful enough to shove the spirits against the walls of the mountains.

“Shit,” Walden swore softly when golden sunlight filled the passage. “Who are you?”

“Verena,” I replied, turning away from the bright glow of my magic and grabbing the guard’s arm with my free hand. “Get in. Now!”

He didn’t question me this time, which was very strange behaviour. Who followed a girl they didn’t know into a trapdoor that opened in the base of a mountain?

Blackness beckoned beyond the hole in the ground, throbbing with a corona of white light just like the key. I pushed Walden into the void, my heart hammering as he fell with a shout of surprise, and then I jumped in after him.

Take me to my family, I pleaded, gripping the key so hard it bit into my palm and drew blood. Take me to my family.

Blackness tore past us, flickering at the edges like it burned with white fire. Endless. Heavy and scalding, like the air from a coal fire. I had the sense that Walden was ahead of me, tumbling through the darkness, but if he screamed, I never heard the sound. I didn’t hear my own cries either—until the blackness spat us out onto a whirling land of greyness and acrid rotting stink.

I landed on my back with a grunt, all the air knocked out of me, and heard Walden hit the grass with a harsh breath, too. I didn’t stay down this time. I dragged myself to my knees even though my head spun and trained my blurry vision on the field all around us, noise meeting my ears in a sudden rush—shouts of pain, roars of beasts, and somewhere too close for comfort Cronus was laughing.

I stumbled to my feet, ignoring the way I wavered as I reached into my bag, the key falling from my fingers as I searched for something else. But all I had left was the key.

No—that wasn’t quite true. My pocket bulged, the sphere straining the limits of the fabric. I didn’t know what it did, didn’t know what it can create a separate world that stands apart from every other realm in the universe meant, but my eyes finally focused and I saw Cronus looming above the field in his horrific nightmare form—and Haley flapping her wings frantically as a blue net trapped her in place.

Blue like the magic that had ringed her ankle like a fucked up anklet, that had trapped us in a false life and broke my family’s hearts. Broke mine. I’d had a little sister. Kaida. Tiny and winged and squish-faced, so damn cute. But she was never real. All of it was a cruel fucking lie. And now Cronus had used that same magic to trap Haley.

“Like fuck,” I growled under my breath, the ground steadier under me, rage dripping like sunlight from my palms.

I didn’t think. Haley was trapped and easy prey for Cronus. Again. I ripped the sphere from my pocket, my magic dripping into the channels carved all over it, lighting up elaborate symbols until the whole thing glowed. I’d never completed the circuit before; when I lit it up the first time, I only filled the markings halfway with sunlight, but now I pushed it full of magic until the sphere vibrated and shone in my hands.

“What are you doing?” Walden demanded, grabbing my arm.

“Saving my family,” I replied, holding the sphere in both hands, magic pouring from me, my heart racing.

I didn’t know how to unlock the magic inside it, how to make a pocket world. But what the fuck am I doing was practically our family motto—Haley never had a clue what she was doing, and neither did the guys. So I sank my fingers into indentations in the sphere and pressed hard, twisting when that didn’t work, prising with my fingernails when that failed.

Come on, come on…

A little shiver went down my spine when all eight of my fingers found soft dips in the sphere, my thumbs fitting to swirls carved in the metal like they’d always been meant to be there. My heart thundered. When I put pressure on the swirls, this time the sphere clicked.

I’d watched adventure films; it was natural to twist the sphere and pull it open, two sides splitting enough for an inch of the insides to show. It wasn’t sun-yellow that spilled from the sphere but gleaming emerald green.

“This better fucking work,” I warned Wynvail, glaring across the field as if he could see me, wherever he was. If he was even still alive.

I sucked in a breath and threw it at Cronus with all my strength.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

EMLYN

Shadow soldiers flowed from one edge of the realm to another, their numbers never ending even as we killed so many that I lost count. Sweat dripped off the end of my nose as I slashed with an axe I’d taken from one of our fallen when my own weapons were exhausted, the sharp edge cleaving three shadow forms but missing a fourth as the faceless creature came at me. White wings flashed in the edge of my vision. A gleaming spear drove through the shadow soldier at my back before it could grab me.

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