Page 10 of The War of Wings
“Where. Is. She?” I ground out.
“We’ll lead you to her,” the voice answered, drawing out the words.
That easy? No. It wouldn’t be that easy. “Who are you?”
“Has it been so long since you’ve learned of the Occulti that you’ve forgotten about us?”
The Occulti.Fuck.And that meant…
I was in the Darkness Beyond.
A guttural scream ripped through me as I swung my sword through the nothingness, trying to make contact with anything I could. My movements were frenzied. My breaths were quick. A warped bloodlust overtook me as my sword moved wildly, the rubies the only things I could see. “What?” I called, pausing my movements and finding my fighting stance again. My sword stillhummed, the rubies still glowing. “There’s what, a million of you, and only one of me, and you don’t think you can defeat me? Show yourselves!”
“We could snap every bone in your body,” the voice hissed, closer now. “We could peel your skin from the muscle beneath. We could do the same to your dear Petra, and it would last an eternity.”
My breath hitched in my throat at the sound of her name. “Take me to her,” I growled, rage building deep in my chest.
“This way.” A gust of frigid air tore from behind me, nudging me forward. I tentatively followed, my sword still drawn, my eyes scanning the darkness for any sign of movement. I walked and walked, the cold air guiding me every so often. Demons swarmed around me, shooting past my head in every direction. My eyes stayed forward, and it took everything in me to keep them off the rubies in the hilt of my sword.
How was it in this incorporeal form, I still felt my chest tighten with anger? How was it that hatred made my face heat and my jaw clench when I inhabited no physical body? I had no idea how, but it felt so real, so intense, I wanted to crawl out of the skin I didn’t have. This darkness…was suffocating. All-consuming. Maddening.
And where was Malosym? I’d quickly accepted the fact that he was Noros, Saint of Pain, because it explained so much. But now? Now that I knew he was Malosym, a being I’d not given a spare thought to since I was barely more than a boy? How the fuck was I supposed to reconcile that? What Petra faced was something so much darker, so much more sinister than I could fathom.
I locked my mind on Petra. I needed to find her. How long had I been walking? A minute? An hour? A day? There was no way they were leading me to Petra, and I stamped out the hope that dared spark to life in my chest. Something else had sparkedto life, though. A light. A different light than the rubies’ glow. A pinprick of light in the darkness. An actuallight.
The urge to run toward it overtook me, but I kept my steps even until the pinprick widened and… Were those shapes I saw within the brightness? Movement? I couldn’t make out anything recognizable, but yes, those were definitely shadows shifting and swaying. I swallowed hard, flicking my eyes from the light to the darkness that surrounded it and back again.
What if… What if theywereleading me to Petra, but she was dead? What if she was hurt or dying, and I couldn’t get to her?
No.I refused to believe her light had gone out. She was alive somewhere. Breathing. She had to be. I wouldn’t survive the alternative.
I stood before the light now, so close it was the size of a window in the King’s Keep — one of dozens that reached the vaulted ceiling and looked out over Pellucid Harbor. I could see now the moving shapes were two figures, darkening the middle of the light.
“She’s there,” the Occulti demons whispered from somewhere behind me, and another gust of wind pushed me toward the light. “See for yourself.”
With my sword still drawn, I inched closer, a sudden heat radiating from the blinding light. I winced, but all my features went slack when two voices began filtering through. One of them I knew right away.
Petra. That was her. She was muffled, and I couldn’t make out what she was saying, but that was her.
“Closer,” the Occulti whispered in my ear.
Heat continued to flare with each step, as I slowly moved deeper and deeper into the light. The figures sharpened, and there she was. Petra sat on a stone bench in the middle of a garden, talking with another woman. A woman I’d seen before.
Was that Larka?
Petra’s armor was gone. The sleeves of her tunic had been rolled to her elbows, her toes absentmindedly digging into thegravel at her feet. And though blood and dirt still spattered her face and her hair was tangled, she looked happy.
“What is this?” I whispered.
“Heaven,” the Occulti answered matter-of-factly.
My eyes scanned the scene around her. A garden. Some water, maybe a sea. A cabin. Rolling hills. Birds swooping overhead. It looked every bit as perfect and peaceful as Heaven should be. For a moment, for one single, shining moment, relief calmed my heart. She’d made it to Heaven. She was with her sister, surrounded by a world almost as beautiful as she was.
It was all okay. She was safe.
Could she see me? I took a step forward only to immediately jump back as a current sparked through my formless body, so sudden and severe a shout left my throat. I felt every nonexistent muscle seize as I stumbled backward and out of the light.Fuck.Several agonizing moments passed before the burn ebbed enough that I could speak. “What the hell was that?”
The chittering around me grew louder, more frantic, swirling around as their screeches rose in pitch.
