Page 171 of Kissed By the Gods
The Elder slips through my fingers.
CHAPTER SIXTY-NINE
LEINA
The sky ishot and heavy with smoke when the Veil drops us out.
Vaeloria shudders beneath me, her wings snapping open wide to keep us aloft.
The Veil still clings to me, cradling us both, as if it knows we’re at our ends. But I’m furious.
Furious that it pulled me back when I still had something left to give. Furious that it ripped me away when I was only seconds from reaching the Elder.
“Godsdammit!” I scream into this smoke-smothered sky.
And it brought me where?
I don’t know this place. I’m not near the battle. I’m not even in Amarune. I’m definitely not at the Synod.
My eyelids are heavy, every movement thick and sluggish. I drag my eyes open, forcing them to focus.
The air tastes of ash. It’s a bitter, sharp taste I recognize after Solmire.
But this isn’t Solmire. There are no ruins, no crumbling harbor, no decrepit castle.
Only rock. Black, broken, lifeless rock.
I pat Vaeloria’s neck, feeling the tremor in her muscles. She’s drained. So am I. She brings us down to the little island, and we turn in a full circle.
The ocean spreads out as far as the eye can see in every direction. Lava flows steadily in the distance. It’s oozing down the back of the island, piling up on top of itself—the bright, bubbling gold cooling into another layer of black rock as it hits the cold ocean water.
But no structures, no plants, no animals interrupt the bleakness of the island. There’s not even lichen or moss.
“Why are we here?” I whisper to Vaeloria. She whinnies, but it’s an exhausted sound. I swing down from her back. There’s no reason for her to carry my weight on the ground.
My boots sink into the ground. The crust beneath the ash is soft, half-formed, spongy. I look down at that too-soft ground to find it’s covered in prints. Scattered around are tracks of a colossal predator. They’ve left gaping hollows in the ground. I step in one, and my booted foot doesn’t even fill one of the jagged furrows left by the animal’s talons. I could probably lie down inside one of these footprints.
I turn a full circle again trying to understand, but my brain is sluggish.
It’s my second time spinning in a circle—the darkness of the Veil holding me up as my knees threaten to give out. A second wave of Kher’zenn, flying in tight, perfect formation. Twice as many as before.
My knees buckle, and I collapse to the ash-smothered ground. Amarune won’t survive a second wave.
Vaeloria whines and rears, her feet pumping out wildly.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper. I’m not sure who I’m speaking to—to Vaeloria, to the Veil, to the people of Amarune.
The Elder. Seb and Leo.
To Ryot.
But I’m so very, very sorry.
Vaeloria rears again, and her terror strikes at me. But she’s not fearful of the tide of Kher’zenn approaching. She’s not looking at them at all. With what little strength I have left, I turn. And there, cloaked in ash, is a figure. She’swatchingus. She’s not walking. I’m not sure her feet are on the ground at all.
The air folds around her. She gleams, but not with light.
She tilts her head, but there’s no face, no eyes for me to make out. Even still, her gaze cleaves through me.
