Page 104 of Kissed By the Gods
“This isn’tyou, Ryot. You can’t go around snapping necks ofwards.”
A growl, and a rough hand grasps my arm, tightly. “Do you see her, Rissa? Lookat her.”
“You know how Tyrston’s gift worked. It thrived on fury. He lost control.”
I crack my eyes open to see Princess Rissa. My eyes slide back closed on a wave of confusion. What is she doing here?
“Then he wasn’t fit to be an Altor. He wasn’t fit to even breathe the same air as her.”
There’s a pause, and it’s heavy. I try to swim for the surface, but I can’t break through.
“What is it about this girl? This is dangerous, Ryot. You’re a hairsbreadth away from going against the Synod. Against the crown. This kind of … attachment …” she trails off. “It’s forbidden. You know this.”
He doesn’t answer, or maybe I don’t stay alert long enough to hear him. I’m dragged back under, floating in a river of pain. I’m so tired of pain.
Why must life hurt like this?
Despite humanity’s frailty, its filth, its endless failings, we let them live. If that is not selflessness, I suppose I do not know the meaning of the word. And yet, they still demand more. More. More. More. Always more, from creatures who have so little to give.
Letter from the goddess Thayana to Rene, Goddess of Patience
CHAPTER FORTY
Strider,a voice calls to me in the darkness.
I fight back. I don’t want to be here, not without Ryot. Where is he? I try to run away—swim away, claw away—but it’s suffocating. It’s in my eyes and my ears and it surrounds me like smoke and sorrow. It wraps around my limbs, pulling me down, deeper. My scream is silent, swallowed by the heaviness.
Strider! That voice calls again. More insistent, with a sense of urgency, cracking like lighting in a storm.
My heart lurches, but not from fear. That voice … I know it. Even tangled in the dark, even muffled by whatever this obsidian place is, I know it. I reach out blindly, hands grasping through thick air, but there’s nothing.
“Where are you?” I whisper, but I don’t know if the words even make it past my lips.
It’s time, Strider.
The voice isn’t human. It hums beneath the surface of my thoughts, vibrating in my bones. The closest thing to it is a forgotten lullaby—one of the ancient songs my mother would sing us to sleep with. The darkness stirs around me, and it’s living. Watching.
Strider! Time is short, the voice says.Come now. Come to where you’ve always belonged.
A ragged cry breaks free, even here. “I don’t belong anywhere. Not anymore.”
The thought weighs me down, as if I’d tied boulders to my feet and jumped into the ocean. Obsidian darkness drags me through the depths and then shatters. But like a whisper on the wind, the voice follows me. It weaves through my panic, even as I flounder and fight and claw against the heavy obsidian.
The Veil waits for you.
When the Veil calls, do not run?—
There’s nowhere to hide, not under the sun.
When it calls your soul, your flesh must obey,
Or all that you are may wither away.
