Page 227 of The Ashes and the Star-Cursed King

“Every shred of my being is screaming not to let you go down there,” Raihn said.

Every shred of mine was beckoning me closer.

“This is it,” I said.

I’d doubted the existence of Septimus’s god blood before. And maybe whatever my parents had hidden in this cave might not be blood, but I now found it hard to believe it was anything but touched by the gods. No one who felt this could deny it.

This wasn’t of this world.

Raihn reached for the door, but I slapped his hand away.

“Don’t be a fucking idiot,” I snapped. “You can’t go in there.”

He grimaced, glancing at his burnt fingertips, recognizing the truth even if he didn’t like it.

“So what? You go down alone?”

“We always knew that would be a possibility.”

I stared into the abyss. A slow, cold fear wrapped around my heart.

Fear is a collection of physical responses,I told myself.

Even though the darkness before me was frightening in a way that seemed so much bigger than a few fangs.

For a moment, it boggled me that those were my biggest problems, a year ago.

Raihn was getting ready to argue with me. I knew what that looked like by now. But just as he opened his mouth, his eyes flicked up to the sky.

“Fuck,” he murmured.

Something about his face told me exactly what I was going to see when I turned around. And yet, when I did, the sight of the wave of Rishan and Bloodborn warriors, emerging from the clouds and over the terrain in a seemingly-endless tide, still made me stop breathing.

There were just somanyof them.

The army I had just been so relieved to see now seemed so pathetically small. We had been so worn down, fighting with the loyal fragments of forces cobbled together into something that had to be—Goddess,neededto be—enough.

I needed to believe it would be enough.

I whirled back to Raihn. His jaw was set, brow low over his eyes, the shadows making them seem redder than ever.

I knew what he was going to say before he opened his mouth.

“You go,” he said. “I’ll hold them off with the others.”

Now I understood how he must have felt when I told him I’d go into this tunnel alone, because every part of me screamed in protest at that sentence. The impulse to stop him, to beg him not to go up against the man who had almost killed him, was briefly overwhelming.

I didn’t.

Raihn could not come with me where I was going, either, and I knew he wanted to stop me just as much.

Neither of us gave in.

I had no choice but to walk through that door, and no choice but to do it alone. Raihn had no choice but to lead the people who had followed him into the shadow of death, and no choice but to be the only one who might—might—be able to hold off Simon long enough for me to secure this weapon.

Neither of us had chosen our roles. But they were a part of us anyway, seared onto our souls as clearly as the Marks on our skin.

It’s hard to describe the sound of thousands of wings. A low, ominous, rolling roar, like thunder rising in a slow build. I was a child the last time I’d heard it, peering out the window to see the wings blotting out the moon.

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