Page 202 of Ash and Feather

Chapter 45

Dravyn

The world was shifting.

Breaking apart beneath me.

And I wanted it to swallow me whole and never spit me back out.

If she is going, take me too.

But when my vision cleared and my surroundings stopped reeling, I had not moved. Nothing had taken me.

So I was forced to watch what was unfolding.

Silver and black energy wove a tangled web around Karys’s body, bleeding out from the spot where she’d stabbed herself. Little fires slipped between the ribbons of that energy, as if fleeing from it. They extinguished almost as quickly as they flew away from her.

Even from a distance, I could see how pale she was becoming.

Could see that she wasn’t moving.

I ran, throwing myself down beside her, gathering her against me. Her body was already stiff. Devoid entirely of color.As if that knife she’d plunged into her chest had not only killed her, but sucked her dry of all her spirit, all her magic. Where had she gotten that knife? What had it done? Andwhy?

Dead.

She was dead.

This could not be.

Because I would not let it happen. I wouldneverlet it happen. I’d sworn it. I would have protected her from every single hurt, every threat, every beast in every heaven and hell and everywhere in between. Fromanything,no matter the cost.

But this…

She’d done it to herself.

Why?

I couldn’t move.

Andrel shook free of his stupor before I did. I heard him sheathing his sword, shuffling his stance.

Then helaughed.

My eyes flashed toward him.

He started to back away, still smiling.

As soon as he took a step, Karys’s body caught fire, igniting into a violent pyre, its flames so thick they blinded me from all else.

Not knowing what else to do, I held even more tightly to her. Her flames had never bothered or burned me before, and I didn’t care if they did now. I held to her fire like it was the very air I needed to exist.

My wildfire, my goddess, my breath…

But her body was growing lighter, slipping away from me no matter how fiercely I clung to it. Turning to threads of flame like it did whenever she transported herself…except the threads did not immediately whisk away into nothingness.

They pulled her body away from me only to gather again and weave into a different form—into the same mythical creature I’d seen on the day we’d first practiced flying together.

A phoenix.

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