Page 116 of Kissed By the Gods
Her words sink into me, and I shudder. I grasp her mane tight. “Where are we?”
“You’re asking the wrong question, Strider.”
She breathes, and the air cackles with something more than sound.
I still. “Then what’s the right one?”
Her wings shift, her feathers parting the darkness ahead of us, just enough to show the gleam of something silver moving in the dark. Not sky. Not stars. Eyes.
“What thread pulled at you, and who holds the other end?”
What? I’m going to ask her more, to understand, when there’s a desperate battle cry from ahead.
I turn toward it. Then, Irun, drawn toward that cry like it’s my own soul pulled from my chest.
Beyond the darkness, draegoths cut through the air, white as the moonlight. They’re hiding in the clouds above and the fog below. And there is so much fog. It is thick and noxious, and falls from the heavens, more and more of it gathering on the ground and building up in great heaps.
“Not fog. Ash,”Vaeloria says to me.
I jerk around. Oh, my gods, I have to keep her safe here. But where is here? I sweep my gaze over the horizon and see the volcano in the distance, spewing great swaths of ash and golden, molten lava from the bowels of the earth. Is this Elandors Veil? No, definitely not Elandors Veil. This is an island—the ocean surrounds it. I’m looking down at it, as if we’re in the sky, even though my feet are on the … ground?
“What are they doing?” I whisper to her.
“Attacking your heart.”
I jerk my head around, but I can’t see. Vaeloria and I are still tucked in the darkness, in our cocoon. I reach out with my other hand, parting the dark like it’s a curtain. Ryot is on Einarr’s back, the two of them being driven further and further into a pile of ruins at the base of the volcano, beaten back by the Kher’zenn and their creatures.
“Oh, my gods,” I whisper in horror. “We have to save them.”
“Yes. These two we can save.”Vaeloria raises her wings. “We ride, Strider.”
I go to mount her, but … “I can’t risk you.” I grip my scythe tighter, preparing to walk through the curtain alone. I hold my hands out to her, motioning for her to stay. “You wait here.”
She chuffs furiously, pawing at the ground that’s not there. “We were made for this, you and I.”
“We’ve never trained! No. Absolutely not.”
She shakes her mane back, irate. “Those demon spawn won’t even touch my tail feathers. You do not battle alone. Not anymore.”
She will not be left behind. Her determination, her resolution, fills me and becomes my own. I launch myself onto her back. “Alright, Vaeloria. If we do this, we win.”
“There is nothing else.”
She lifts into the sky in a flurry of thunderous sound, her wings swirling the darkness that surrounds us. “Scythe up, Strider.”I clasp my knees around her flanks and raise my scythe as we drop directly into the battle, leaving the darkness behind us.
Oh, sweet Thayana. How did we do that?
But there’s no time for questions, because she’s already banking hard to the left.
I swing my scythe in a wide arc, slicing the stunned draegoth we’re facing across the neck. It tries to bellow, but no sound escapes. It falls from the sky, taking its rider with it. There’s no time to gloat in the easy victory. Vaeloria banks again, and I swing the scythe back around, striking the Kher’zenn in front of me in the chest. His pure, white eyes latch onto mine in shocked disbelief. They’re not cloudy, like the Elder’s. They’re crisp, almost reflective. He stretches out a hand for me, and I reach for him. His perfection is alluring—white hair swirling around his angelic face, rune-like markings etched into his bare chest.
Vaeloria shouts at me—not with words, but withfeelings.She blasts with me aNOthat is so loud I jerk my scarred, blackened fingers back into my chest.
I’m an idiot. I almost did itagain. I snatch the blade from his chest with a vicious twist, and he plummets to the ground with a shriek. The draegoth opens its mouth to display row upon row of wicked, gleaming teeth. The creature’s sickly white scales glint, and it flaps membrane-like wings stretched over ridgesthat could shred the air itself. It swings its tail—a weapon in and of itself, long and whip-like with a nasty-looking tip at the end—toward Vaeloria. I swing my scythe down. The severed tail curls over the bladed edge of my scythe.
Vaeloria screams back, and flicks out with a wing, hurling one of those dagger-like feathers through the air and striking the beast in the chest. Sweet Thayana, I didn’t know she could do that.
But now our surprise attack is over. The Kher’zenn that are left turn from their assault on Ryot and Einarr. Ryot is covered in blood and staring up at me, mouth agape, in shock. And he’s fucking furious.
