Page 169 of Kissed By the Gods
The storm looms, thick and restless, a churning mass of mist. A thrill ripples through them, the savage glee of the predatorthat’s cornered its prey exactly where it wants it. I catch flashes of them as we breach the first ragged edge of the storm: leathery wings snapping open to slow their descent, whips coiling, teeth bared, claws spread wide. Hunters in their element. Masters of this broken, bleeding sky.
But we aren’t prey.
We’re the lure.
CHAPTER SIXTY-SEVEN
RYOT
The battlefield is splintering.
It is no longer a line—no longer a war we can see and control. Every front we’d managed to hold is breaking apart. The Kher’zenn breach our defenses and stream into Amarune, sweeping through the city streets, slaughtering everything in their path. Screams echo—high, terrified. Too many of them small.
Down below, in the shattered city of Amarune, Caius fights like a man possessed as civilians cower in the streets behind him. He cuts down one Kher’zenn after another, but there are too many. A draegoth slams into him from behind, a spear punches through his side, knocking him from the saddle. Faelon dives after him in a reckless drop, his hand outstretched, but he’s too late. Caius strikes the cobblestone streets below and doesn’t rise.
Faelon hovers, stunned for half a beat, before he throws himself into defense of the women and children Caius died trying to protect, launching dozens of arrows in seconds and calling them all back—ripping them from the chests and heads of bodies that are still falling—with a rage I’ve never seen from him.
Further back, Thalric fights alone above a temple square. Oryndel bleeds from a dozen wounds, his wings barely holding them aloft as they battle to protect a family hiding behind the marble columns. Kher’zenn surround him, whips lashing, circling for a kill. To my right, Nyrica makes a sound in his throat—low, broken, inhuman—and abandons our line, flying toward Thalric.
I reach out, stretching my shield impossibly far, toward Thalric. My commander. My brother. My family. And it won’t quite reach him. No matter. I gather it tight against me, preparing to fling it out like a net instead, until Leina and Vaeloria dart past my line of sight.
Blood streams from Vaeloria’s wings, from Leina’s arm and face. They falter. Dip. A shredwhip lashes out, and blood pours from Vaeloria’s back leg.
Another strike, and my heart will be dead.
I bite down against the scream rising in my chest and fling the shield upward, hurling it toward Leina with everything I have left. Thalric disappears beneath wings and blades.
CHAPTER SIXTY-EIGHT
LEINA
Vaeloria’s wingslurch against the wind. Blood pours from her back leg, trailing a thick line through the sky.
The Kher’zenn are right behind us. Too close.
A whip snaps past my ear. Another lashes across Vaeloria’s flank. She stumbles midair, a broken beat of her wings that nearly throws me from her back.
We dip low. Lower than we should. It’s not an act, not anymore.
We’ve become the prey.
The sky is spinning, dripping red and black in the rain. The Kher’zenn and their creatures close in, whips ready, claws reaching. I pull at Vaeloria, desperate. I reach for the Veil, but I’m sluggish. She is, too. I try to slash it open with a dagger, but my arm won’t move. We brace for the strikes we won’t be able to dodge?—
A shield slams down around us, magic flaring so bright it blinds me, the shimmering strength of it throwing the Kher’zenn back when they slam against it.
I drag in a ragged breath. Vaeloria beats her wings harder, dragging us upward, finding a strength I don’t understand, butthat I’ll match. I reach for the Veil again, and this time it opens to us—we stumble, but we stagger through it and back out.
This time, we’re underneath the storm. Above us, the sky boils.
I don’t look toward Amarune, toward the screams that will haunt me for the rest of my life, however long that may be. Instead, I find the Elder.
The Elder and Sigurd are at the center of the battle, framed in light and darkness both. The clouds churn around them, thick and black, streaked with veins of molten silver.
The storm is waking up. It’s a low vibration that quakes the air, the world. Maybe even the Veil.
It begins subtly. The cloud’s once-bright edges darken, rippling inward—black ink bleeding through white cotton. It grows denser, heavier until the veins of shadow become everything. Lightning stirs inside the storm’s heart—small at first, flickering faintly like the pulse of something waking from a long sleep.
I tear my gaze from the storm, back to the Elder.
