Page 140 of Riftborne
My hair whipped around me as darkness overcame the land.
Wait.
An echo of something whispered in my mind.
I was doing something. I was saving someone. My thoughts reeled, trying to remember. And then my vision locked with a pair of familiar aquamarine eyes.
Osta. I was saving Osta.
She stared back at me, concern drowning her features as she kneeled with the Soleils. The wind still whipped. My arms dropped down to my side, and I gasped for air, falling to my knees.
The entire lawn was still.
Every eye was on me.
What just happened?
My body went limp, and I stumbled forward, earth slamming into my broken shoulder as I hit the ground. A searing torrent of pain shot through me. But it couldn’t hold a candle to the confusion that gripped every fiber of every thought.
I clawed at the ground, forcing myself up enough to see the destruction around me. Laryk’s stared at me from across the lawn. His eyes were wide with something. Horror.
Laryk?
Memories came flooding back.
My heart skipped at the sight of him.
I needed him. I needed him to help me.
My hand hit the ground again, grabbing the dirt and pulling myself forward as shadows crept up in my peripheral vision. I tried to scream, but my lungs were shredded.
Laryk took a step forward, then hesitated. I wanted to scream for help. Why was he just standing there?
Dark energy surrounded me, slithering across the grass like smoke, lacing up my arms, caressing my face, and tinging my vision with an iron hue.
“Fia! No!” Osta screamed in the distance. I tried to tear my vision to her. To see her, even if for one last time. My best friend. The most important person in my life.
But I was frozen solid.
My eyes locked on my lover across the lawn. Fear ripped through me as my body lifted from the ground, the feeling of shadowy tendrils enveloping my limbs.
Someone do something!
I wanted to scream, to writhe, to fight. But my body betrayed me.
Please.
It was just a single thought, a single request that permeated my mind. One that I so rarely employed. My heart slammed into my chest, and time slowed as I waited.
And waited.
But no one came. No one moved.
A glimpse of copper hair reflecting the moonlight was the sight I clung to as everything disappeared. My body soared through the night, brushing past trees and whipping over the expanse of the West.
Crescent Tower gleamed in the distance.
My eyes blurred, either from tears or from exhaustion.
