Page 51 of A Love of Wrath and Rapture

The human settlement needs me… Evangeline needs me. I will not fail you.

Both humans and waira stagger back as I unleash a bloodcurdling roar. I launch the wildest attack the battlefield has seen today, claiming victim after victim.

Humans dive out of my way, dodging death as I rampage through the chaos like a maelstrom of claws, leaving a trail of blood behind me.

All the while, my own wounds worsen as my blind rage leaves me open to attacks. I claim more waira lives, but my body is beginning to weaken.

I grab the final adversary and throw him to the ice, stomping on his head until there is nothing on its neck.

And suddenly, there are no sounds but my heavy breathing. An eerie silence falls over the chaos. In that moment, I become aware of my wounds, feeling each slice, each cut, every bruise, and every torn feather.

Slowly turning around, I look at the destruction the battlefield has left in its wake. Corpses lie everywhere, coasted by blood, guts, and discarded weaponry.

Whatever human soldier is left alive simply stares at me, a look of astonishment on their faces. Then, they peer at my talons.

I look down, watching a pool of blood grow in size around me. Blood not of the enemy, but of my own vessel.

My head bobs as if I am sleepy, consciousness threatening to take its leave. A sudden weight pushes down on my body, and my world turns to black as my head collides with the hard ground.

23

EVANGELINE

“No!”

I hear my voice call out before I see his body hit the ground.

Just as the last spear protrudes through the breastbone of one of the beasts, its humanoid skull face no more dead-looking than when it was alive, Xeros lies in the wreckage, another corpse on the pile.

There is no drama. He does not cry out when he falls to the ground. I’m surprised to see that he bleeds like I do—it’s even the same color.

And I realize how difficult breathing has become.

I feel cold.

He can’t be dead, can he?

I relive the event in slow motion.

The best way to describe it would be that Xeros got cocky. As he ripped through flesh and bone, a godlike being among monsters, he forgot where he ended and they began. It was a well-choreographed dance, his body dipping and diving under their skeletal, mangled forms, swooping and leaping over them with perfect timing.

Until he slipped.

The bright blue glint of his eyes as realization hits his face remains fresh in my mind. It still haunts me. I didn’t think he could make a mistake, much less one so costly. He always seemed invulnerable.

And I don’t know why I haven’t moved yet. Why I can’t bring my legs rushing over to him.

But you have to check.

No.

I think I’m preparing for the worst still, pondering where my life starts and Xeros’s ends.

Seconds feel like minutes. The cries of beasts and the clashing of metal on metal comes to a halt, as people I’ve known my whole life survey the battlefield, which looks like an unburied cemetery, with only one body really mattering to me anymore.

I gasp, coming alive again.

And I hear my feet as they trod over corpses of humans and waira alike, my only companion the noise and feeling of mud slushing beneath me, trying to stop me from discovering what I know must be true.

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