Page 286 of The Ascended
She was in a place cold and dead, a place few dared venture.
Then it hit me—a blinding, white-hot agony that wasn't mine.
I doubled over, a strangled cry tearing from my throat. The pain ripped through my abdomen, as if someone had driven a blade straight through my core. But it wasn't my body being pierced.
Thais.
The bond flared with her pain, her shock, her blood spilling out.
"No." The word escaped as barely a whisper.
Without thought, without hesitation, I plunged my awareness down the gossamer thread that connected us. I gathered my essence and shoved it through the bond.
My life. My death. My immortality.
It flowed from me like dark fire, racing across the connection between us. I didn't know if it would work, if it could reach her, if it would be enough.
"What are you doing?" A voice, distant, irrelevant.
I ignored it, focusing everything on maintaining the flow. On reaching her.
Hold on, starling. Just hold on.
The thread between us thrummed, darkened, strengthened. I felt my essence wrapping around her fading light, a shield against the encroaching darkness.
She was alive. For now. Hurt. Afraid. And fighting for her life.
But alive.
Chapter 66
The Price of Vengeance
Cold stone bitinto my cheek as blood pooled around me. The blade ground against my ribs with every breath, metal scraping, sending fresh agony through nerves already on fire. Whatever coated its surface ate through my veins—acid warring with divine healing, tearing me apart from the inside out.
Stay awake. Stay alive. Save Thatcher.
They'd already dismissed me.
Their mistake.
"How long now?" That treacherous feminine voice rattled through the chamber.
Elysia. It had been her that day. At the Cascades. When her eyes lingered on me a beat too long and my drink ended up with a lethal dose of dreamweep.
Of course it had been her.
"Minutes." Moros ran Olinthar's hands over Thatcher's unconscious form with sick reverence. "After millennia of waiting, mere minutes."
I bit through my lip to muffle the whimper building in my throatas I reached behind me. My fingers found the hilt, slippery with blood—so much blood. The metal had eaten deep. Every instinct screamed to leave it. Removing it would only accelerate death. But it was the poison lacing its surface that was killing me, not the blade itself.
But I couldn't die here. Not with Thatcher helpless on that altar.
One swift motion. That's all.
I yanked it free.
The scream that wanted to tear from my throat would have brought the temple down. Instead, I bit until copper flooded my mouth, muffling the sound into a strangled gurgle lost beneath echoing footsteps. My blood flowed faster now, hot and thick, but divine power surged in response, fighting desperately against the poison that refused to let my wounds close.
