Page 95 of Still the Sun

A commotion rises; the others are still down there, waiting for our signal. Waiting to help. Will they flood the tower in an angry rampage, or cower at the death of one of our own?

“He is nothing to you!” I scream, wiping my eyes. I need to see. I have to be able to see. The portal ripples. I watch Moseus’s dead eyes as I reach behind me, where I folded over my shirt inside my waistband. Myhands form tight fists. I desperately try to breathe through the shaking of my shoulders.

“It isallnothing to me,” Moseus hisses, his skin growing more hale. Tone lower, echoing, hateful. He steps toward me. I raise my chin and ignore my trembling knees. “I will enjoy devouring you, Pelnophe.” That sneer returns, and he looks past my shoulder at the falling night. “My time has come.”

A tear slides down my cheek as I nod. To Moseus, it would look like capitulation. To Salki, it’s a signal.

She charges forward, my lantern in her hands, its frame perfectly matching the dimensions of the hole composing Moseus’s middle. She shoves it into him, spilling more darkness over the protrusion.

Moseus grunts and spins, and I’m ready. I pull the iron cuff from the folds of my shirt and leap onto him, clamping it around his neck. I’ve no lock to bind it, but when the poison touches his skin, he hisses and whips toward me, throwing me off with a great sweep of his arm. I roll across the protrusion, clambering for a hold—

Salki twists the middle of the lantern.

The machine burns a brilliant white, powered by as many emilies as she could shove into it while Arthen and I raced for the mountains.

The angle of the protrusion protects me from toppling off its end; I grab its welded lip to steady myself. Moseus screams, scraping at his middle as his stolen form disintegrates around the light. The emptiness of his eyes spreads into his brow, cheeks, chin. Salki hurries back, falling once before catching herself just outside the portal.

Moseus screams something in a thousand clashing voices. Something in a tongue older than Cas’s. He collapses to his knees and claws toward me with the stubs of his fingers.

I pull myself up. “I remember everything, you ripe bastard,” I sneer. “This is for Cas.”

A violent shriek like thunder tears from his throat as he reaches for me, bubbling and twisting, spewing darkness against the dimming lightof the setting sun. Then, with one barely corporeal hand, he grabs the frame of the lantern and rips it out.

Cold blood retreats from my skin.No.Oh gods, no. I didn’t think he’d be able to—

The poisoned cuff, loosened from the tussle, falls to the protrusion. Standing, teetering, Moseus crushes the lantern in his malformed hand. He’s still humanoid, stillsomething, but there is so little of Moseus left in him. He—it—is a leaning, bleeding monster, a swirl of black and violet and colorlessemptinessthat my mind cannot piece together. My skull throbs with the effort to understand.

Foul words in a tongue I don’t recognize drip from his lips as he moves for me, slow and uneven, reaching that hideous, murderous hand toward my neck, just as he did with Maglon. I don’t even try to hold my ground this time; I saw what it did to my dear friend. I retreat, my steps unsure, nearly sliding off the side of the protrusion.

“Run,” I croak to Salki, never taking my eyes off Moseus. I don’t know what good it will do. Stupid of me, to think a flower-powered lantern would quell the Devourer when it required the stilling of an entire planet to manage it before. In his weakened state, I thought—

Twilight climbs up the eastern sky.

Moseus says nothing. Nothing about how he should have killed me the first time, or how weak I am. No gloating about my failure or his restoration. He merely stumbles forward, his hand reaching, reaching—

I pull away. Run out of machine to stand on.

The void god’s lips crack as my balance breaks. My hands fly out, but there’s nothing to catch me. I fall backward, gut lurching with the sudden weightlessness. Cool air whistling by my ears fills in the gaps between heartbeats as I plummet. My eyes take in the growing tendrils of violet in the sky, and in the back of my mind, I’m relieved. Relieved that I’ll die like this, beside Maglon, but with my soul intact.

The tower floors whip by. I notice their slowing before I feel the pressure around my waist, like a serpent coiling. My neck pops as myhead whips back at the sudden deceleration. I can’t see what’s beneath me, but I haven’t hit.

Suddenly the serpent pushes me upward with a sound like clicking and stretching and digging. It twists, setting me upright, and only then do I see the green of the coil—not a snake at all, but an enormous verdant vine. A massive fairy wisp, of all things.

My heart drops into my pelvis and springs back as the plant releases me onto the crest of the tower, right beside ... not Moseus, nor Salki, but a being who hovers a hand’s breadth above the stone.

I recognize Heartwood, yet I don’t. It might be the adrenaline, which courses like hot oil through my limbs. My pulse thunders in my ears. His back hunches with the pain of his burns, but his vivid eyes are resolute, his skin radiant, his presence ... intense. He is not himself, no, but he is more than he was.

I realize the moment he speaks that the lantern wasn’t a complete failure. It hurt Moseus, forcing him to release part of what he stole.

Moseus, alone on the protrusion, looks at us with dead eyes.

And laughs.

The laughter echoes in that gaping hole. More heavy darkness spills from it. “You’re too late,” he says simply, his voice sootherI can barely understand it.

Only the tip of the sun’s crown remains above the horizon.

“An army of gods couldn’t stop me.” Moseus staggers forward. “And neither will you. You’re only a fraction of what you were.”

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