Page 166 of Kissed By the Gods
The battlefield opens beneath us.
The Kher’zenn wheel through the sky, their long white hair streaming behind them, their eyes pure and empty and terrifying. They are beautiful the way a blade is beautiful rightbefore it sinks into your heart. The draegoths open their mouths in silent shrieks, flashing rows of jagged teeth that drip venom so potent the air is rank with it.
The Altor meet them in midair, blades slashing atop the surging backs of their beasts.
The faravars’ wings catch the wind in violent beats, driving their riders harder, higher, into the core of the enemy. A storm that didn’t exist before starts to stir from the force of all these wings. Feathers—ripped free by the draegoths’ claws—spin down into the sea like bloodied petals.
But they’re losing. Everywhere I look, Altor and beasts are falling, spiraling into the cold grasp of the ocean below. Lightning flashes on the horizon, throwing the world into sharp, savage relief—death dressed in something beautiful.
The air burns my face, and salt sticks to my skin. My heart beats once, twice. Vaeloria vibrates beneath me, aching to dive. Her mind presses against mine—let’s go, let’s go, let’s go.
The Veil inside me stirs too, whispering with a voice made of memory—you are the undoing.
I lock my knees around Vaeloria’s flanks, and lower myself against her neck, making myself as one with her as I can.
“Alright, girl,” I whisper, silently pulling my scythe from my back. “Let’s undo what we can.”
She answers with motion, tucking her wings against her body, dropping us from the sky.
We burst from the heavens on a whistle of pure speed. I swing my scythe out, decapitating the same Kher’zenn I’d locked eyes with before. He doesn’t see me until his head is severed. Another tries to wheel his draegoth around, but I swing again, ripping him from his saddle.
"Veilstrider!" he screams, a sound full of terror even as he plummets, blood pouring from the ruin that’s his chest.
I pull my scythe in close again, breathing hard, as Vaeloria levels off and spreads her magnificent, terrible wings. She slashes through the back of a draegoth as it turns to face us. Grim satisfaction floods me as our Altor surge forward, seizing the opportunity we’ve carved open. They cut through the Kher’zenn and their creatures, through those foolish enough to turn their backs.
But every time an Altor falls—and they fall, oh gods, they fall—it punches straight through my chest. I waste precious moments searching for Ryot in the chaos. I panic when I can’t find him, terrified he’s already at the bottom of the ocean.
He’s cutting through the Kher’zenn like a man possessed. His blade flashes in brutal, economical strikes—no wasted motion, no hesitation. He turns for a breath—merely long enough to see me above him, to know it’s me. His face breaks open, a crack of fierce relief cutting through the mask he wears. His sword slams through a draegoth’s eye socket a second later.
Shredwhips slice through the air, one tearing across my forearm, peeling flesh from bone. I don’t feel the rest because I’ve already reached for the Veil again.
And it’s there. So easy. So close.
Like slipping into my own skin.
It embraces us.
CHAPTER SIXTY-FOUR
LEINA
Inside the Veil,the world is nothing but cool, beautiful darkness.
Blood—too much blood—pours down my arm. Too much blood. I adjust my grip on my scythe, but it’s getting slippery, heavy. I holster it and pull my daggers free.
Vaeloria surges upward, her wings slicing higher and higher, muscles bunching and stretching, building speed in a rising spiral.
“Higher,” she whispers across my mind, but the thought is so fierce and determined, I can’t tell if she's speaking to me or to herself. The Veil hums around us, a living current of memory and purpose.
“Hold tight, Strider.”
I grip her with my knees, lowering myself against her neck. “There!” I tell her, seeing thatwrongnessof the Kher’zenn in the Veil.
At the apex of our climb, Vaeloria tucks her wings tight against her body, and we fall.
We plummet through the Veil as if it grabbed us and hurled us out. The pressure slams into me, pinning me against Vaeloria.It crushes my ribs into my chainmail, my bones into her back. The wind shrieks past us in a high, thin keen that drills into my ears, and my vision narrows, going black at the edges.
At the last possible moment, Vaeloria snaps her wings wide—those curved, honed blades masquerading as feathers. She became a weapon. Though we’d been falling vertically in the Veil, we emerge flying horizontally, slicing straight through the Kher’zenn’s rearguard like a blade through silk. They never see us coming.
