Page 165 of Kissed By the Gods
The Elder calls something, and Ryot turns back instantly, raising his shield—part of him, an extension of his will—to cover the leaders. The air around the Elder sparks. I shift my eyes from Ryot toward Thalric.
“Please don't make me leave. I can fight. I have to fight. I won't leave you. I won't leavehim.”
Thalric’s jaw tightens until I’m afraid he might shatter his own teeth. His eyes—gods, his eyes—are full of grief so sharp it feels like a blade pressed against my skin. “You must go, Leina,” he says, voice breaking low and brutal. “That’s an order.”
Oryndel rears, trying to get my attention. Vaeloria snorts back at him, stomping the ground with matching fury.
The Aishan warriors around me frown and mutter, frustrated with my hesitation, my refusal to obey. But I don’t care—it’s a stupid order. It won’t help anyone here; it only serves to get me out of slaughter. If what we needed was someone to report back on our end, Leif and Rissa will do that.
Ahead of us, the incoming draegoths collide with our front line like a wave breaking against a cliff. Shred-whips lash out, serrated wings slash through armor, flying hooves crash into scaled monsters. Blood pours from the sky, staining the crystal blue water below until the waves turn purple. The sea becomes a grave.
Dozens of them strike against Ryot’s shield. He buckles, falling against Einarr like he took the hit himself, but his shield stays strong. For now. Thalric’s split his attention between me and the battle unfolding on the front lines. It’s an aerial battle,though, and front lines is a misnomer at this point. Faravars from the rearguard already are chasing down Kher’zenn who’ve broken through.
Across the distance—over the clashing army and the blood pouring from the sky and bodies falling into the ocean—my eyes snag on one of the Kher’zenn, just one. He’s not attacking. He’s watching me, too. He raises a pale eyebrow, as if to say,What about it, Veilstrider?
I canfeelhim, as if he’s inside me. My deadened fingers tingle. The air around him—around them all—shimmers.
The Veil around my mind shimmers, too. With death.
And I know, Iknow, I can find him there. I can find them all there, in the Veil. We’re connected somehow.
Thisis what Bri foresaw. And I made a promise to a little girl that I wouldn’t let us all die.
I lean forward, pressing my forehead to Vaeloria's neck, feeling her shuddering beneath me—not from fear, but from readiness.
“Veil or retreat?” I whisper.
Her muscles tense. She rears up with a wild scream, hooves striking out at the sky. She’s already chosen.
I lift my gaze back to Thalric, even as I let the darkness bleed across my mind, the now-familiar chill of the Veil swirling at the edge of my senses. We launch into the air.
“I’ve never been good at following orders,” I say.
“Leina, don’t you?—”
I swing my scythe through the air, parting the fabric that holds our world together. And we’re gone.
CHAPTER SIXTY-THREE
LEINA
I’d cometo think of the Veil as something I had to fight. It’s wild, unknowable, dangerous. But as its endlessness swallows me, surrounds me with something vast and strangely soft, I realize what Bri had tried to tell me: it’s also alive.
It hums around me. It has a heartbeat. A breath.
I shudder from the terrible, aching familiarity of it. The Veil isn’t aplace.
It’s awho.
And it’severyone.
I don’t go toplaces. I go tosouls.
I search the darkness for that tide of wrongness, for the souls here that are chained to a tainted sort of death.
“There!” I say, pointing to something that’s oddly …dull.They’re … out of place, somehow.
“I see it,” she says, and she banks hard until we’re coming again into the light.
