Page 279 of Born of Blood and Ash

His cousin stood beside him. “The souls can wait—”

“You don’t understand,” Rhaharinterrupted. Nektas helped me stand. “He was pulledto the Pillars.”

Breathing raggedly, I felt my stomach hollow. I’d never seenthe draken look so pale—so disturbed.

Rhain stumbled back and understanding dawned on his face. “No.”

Saion’s worried gaze darted between his cousin and Rhain.“What the fuck is happening?”

“As a Primal of Death, it is a summons he has no choice butto obey.” The corners of Nektas’s mouth were pinchedwhite. “There are…” He looked away, his jaw clenching. He closed his eyes.

“Too many souls have arrived at the Pillars to be judged bythem,” Rhain answered.

Saion stiffened. “What?”

“Souls,” I whispered, my hands trembling as I suddenlyunderstood what had taken my legs out from under me. “Hundreds.” A shudder wentthrough me. “Thousands of souls. So many I could hear them. I can stillhear them. Can feel their deaths.”

“Fates,” Saion breathed. “What could’ve caused that?”

“A…a disaster in the environment?” Rhain suggested numbly.“Like a massive quake?”

“No,” I whispered, the nape of my neck tingling. “It wasn’tthat. There was nothing natural about this. It was…” I inhaled sharply. “I haveto go.”

Nektas’s stare snapped in mydirection. “No, you do not.”

Shaking my head, I backed up, the essence thrumming. “I haveto.”

Rhain’s eyes went wide. “Don’t—”

The part of me that still operated as if I were mortalsimply clicked off. There was no hesitation, no overthinking anything.

Following the cries of the dying, I shadowsteppedinto the mortal realm—into a waking nightmare that had once been my home.

Lasania.

CHAPTERFORTY-ONE

Death was everywhere.

It was all I could smell when I shadowsteppedto different parts of the kingdom. All I could see. All I could hear amid thewailing of those who remained. No matter where I looked. No matter where I shadowstepped. Death had come in the moonlight, during thequietest, softest hours, and reigned with supremacy over Lasania’scapital. Neither wealth, power, nor age protected them.

And even though I couldn’t believe what I was seeing, Iknew. Gods, I knew whose screams I had heard first.

But I couldn’t believe it as I kept moving throughout Carsodonia and saw every one of their faces, each withwaxy, stunned expressions. A bone-deep fury sparked.

Bodies hung from blown-out windows. They lay in theirgardens in pairs, faces forever frozen in horror, and crowded the narrowstreets of Croft’s Cross, having fallen one atop the other. They choked the NyeRiver and washed in with the tide, some getting snagged on the rocks whileothers got pulled back out to be forever lost in the Stroud Sea. Bodies dottedthe beach’s white sand, their arms and legs twisted. They bunched in scatteredheaps along the battlements, forms broken from the fall.

And all the while, shadows moved silently through the citylike wraiths, seeking to hide. But I saw them. I saw all of them. And I feltothers I hadn’t yet seen. I was not alone here.

My gaze lifted to the towers and turrets of the castle, andI knew. Gods, I already knew what I would find when I shadowstepped beyond walls that had done nothing—absolutelyfucking nothing—to prevent the horror that had come this night. Still, what Isaw in the courtyard brought me to my knees.

I saw them between the flashes of lightning—silver-and-goldstrikes that tore through the night sky. Impaled to the walls of Wayfair justas the gods had been on the Rise outside the House of Haides, staked throughthe hands and chest with shadowstone. Their headswere tilted back, forced into unnatural poses that exposed their faces as ifthey wanted to be seen. Needed to be.

I didn’t want to look. A tremor started deep within me, andI made myself see them—see the faces of the servants and guards, maids andstewards I recognized. I saw the dark-haired, pale-skinned serving girl who’dbaited me into a trap the day I returned from assisting Ezra at the Healers. Isaw the cook Orlando, the mountain of a man reduced to nothing but lifelessflesh and bone.

I saw Lady Kala.

My mother’s most trusted Lady in Wait, who’d made that longwalk with me through the corridors of the Shadow Temple upon my seventeenthbirthday. Who was always with—

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