Page 136 of Children of Virtue and Vengeance

My heart stops as Zélie pushes Tzain back. My fingers go cold when she limps in my direction.

“I thought you died.” I take a step back. “When Nâo came back alone, I was sure you were both gone—”

She opens her hands and dark shadows of death shoot forth. Pain rips through me as they wrap around my body and my throat.

The moment I hit the ground, Zélie starts to charge. But before she can attack, her eyes roll back. Her shadows dissipate as she collapses in the dirt.

“Zélie!” Tzain runs forward.

Her body twitches with violent convulsions. Her lids flutter as the tattoos flicker on her skin.

“Get her to the ahéré!” A village tîtán steps forward. I back away as Kâmarulifts her seizing body and carries her to a pyramid hut.

“Lock her up!” Na’imah shouts as they run.

Tzain slows at the Tamer’s order. His eyes meet mine when Kenyon drags me to my feet. Instinct makes me want to cry out for help as the Burner binds my arms with a metal restraint, but I know I have lost the right.

Tzain’s gaze moves from me to his village. To the bodies dropped by my command.

“I’m sorry,” I whisper, but he flinches at my words. In him, I see what I’ve lost. The warmth I shall never feel again.

Watching him walk away is the final knife in my heart.

CHAPTER EIGHTY

ZÉLIE

“IDON’T UNDERSTAND—”

“She’s overexerted—”

“We need more blood—”

Every voice sounds like it’s spoken underwater as the world moves in fragments. One moment I’m on the ground. The next the wind grazes my back.

“What’s happening?” Tzain fills my vision as he and Kâmarulay me across a stone surface.

“I don’t know.” Khani puts her hands on my chest. “Her body’s shutting down!”

“Roën.”I fight to speak his name aloud. He seizes across the ahéré, his body convulsing with mine. I used the moonstone to connect our lifeforces. I used our strength to make it through the mountains. But without a blood sacrifice to bind our connection, neither of us can survive.

“Break it.” Tzain puts the pieces together. “Now, before it’s too late!”

I lurch as an ache cuts across my sternum.I can’t!I try to wheeze.

I don’t have enough power to break our connection. And even if I did, what would happen to Roën? I already lost Mâzeli.

I’m not giving up on him.

“He’s dying!” Healers carry Roën’s body from across the hut, laying him by my side. We’re running out of time. My heart will die with his.

But I know what I have to do. Oya showed me in myìsípayáon that fateful day.

If the first ribbons of light were Roën and I, then the next lie right here. Connecting to more lifeforces is how we buy ourselves time.

It is how we survive.

I latch onto Tzain’s wrist, and his lips press together as he reads my eyes.

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