Page 137 of The Princesses of Ruin
“You could’ve been a good girl.”
The words ring like they’re coming from the bottom of a well.
“Could’ve lived with me a few good years.”
There’s a pinch at the back of my neck. I’m pulled from the ground. My arms are so heavy, but I thrust the dagger still clenched in my hand, landing solidly on something.
He curses loudly. My neck hurts. I’m thrown and I land on something that holds me up. My feet are still under me. I push and open my eyes. I see the moons. The window is open.
Nol’Ther tells me to stay and let her darkness cloak me forever.
Eyzanth tells me to jump.
I tip over the ledge and let myself fall.
Chapter forty-eight
Scarlett
“Remember why you chose to fall.”Walt’s voice shocks me.
I gasp, opening my eyes to see the world blurring past in gray. He’s bigger, at the height of his strength when I was just a young girl.
Why?
“Because in falling, there was a chance to live.”
“This is your chance.”His ghostly hand reaches out.
I look down. Below me is a white doorway that feels like peace. It would be easy to keep falling head-first into it. To do nothing. But I know it’s death.
Not just death, but the end of all things.
If I let myself be taken, Ashai will own my body. She will suck the life from this world and everyone in it.
I can’t let that happen.
I grab Walt’s hand and my body jerks, flipping until my feet dangle just at the event horizon of the void into the afterlife. There’s a cobblestone wall in front of me and Walt’s ephemeral presence above me. I cling to him, looking up with desperate eyes, just like that day in the alley when he rescued me.
“Live, Scar.”
Walt thrusts me toward the wall. The breath leaves my lungs as I hit, and my eyes wince shut. Gravity in the world flips, pressing me into the stone as if it’s ground.
All around me is darkness so deep it swallows thought. My arms shake and fail when I try to push myself up. I’m covered in blood and black ichor. It’s seeping into me, making my muscles too sullen to function. It’s draining the magic from the fibers of my being. Sound gurgles up from inside my throat and spills out before me.
I don’t want to be here.
I reach forward and grope at the ground. There’s a crack, a separation of the cobblestones. I wedge my broken fingernails inside and drag, pushing with my legs at the same time. I scrape, inch by inch, across the ground.
Live, Scar.
A deep, droning trumpet thunders behind me. I tremble from the sound, from the fear of what that sound might bring. I look over my shoulder and see it, the white door that sucks everything down into nothingness, condensing it into the raw material of magic and souls.
Vivid orange tumbles past me, scrabbling at the stones I’m holding tight to, but they give them no purchase. The world flips and my hands are up, my feet are down, and gravity is working against me. I wedge my feet into the tiny holds and flatten myself, screaming thick wails of blackness.
The orange loses all its color at the end, turning white and plummeting through the world.
Where am I?
