Page 11 of Eternal Night

But,he added,I'll consider forgiving you if you can overcome your weakness.

I screamed as the voice sliced through the soft, breakable parts of me. I couldn't feel my face, but I had a strange sense of something rolling down my cheeks. I wasn't sure if it was tears or blood.

Kill the mates of your mate until you are the only one left standing. Then you'll earn my forgiveness. And I'll give you the resurrection pearl you're so desperate for. Fail, and you know what will happen.

My stomach pitched, and the wind raking cruel fingers through my wings and hair tugged harder, ripping out strands of hair, tearing out a feather. But the brutal pressure lifted from the air, the voice faded into silence, and I felt my lashes sweep my cheeks when I blinked.

I couldn't see a single thing, not even Kai, but I knew we were still falling.

"Kai," I rasped.

His arms tightened around me. Holy fuck, I could feel my body now. I wasn't sure if that was a good sign or a bad one. Kai didn't reply, but he held me fiercely as the wind hammered us from all angles. I tried to catch wind in my wings but we were falling too fast to slow our descent. Shit. I wrapped my wings around him and threw myself backwards, protecting Kai so I would take the brunt of the fall.

Ugh, this was going to hurt.

I couldn't hear my other mates’ growls or voices in the void, but they had to be in this vortex, too. That warning from Cronus, still thumping through my head like a migraine … that wasn't for us.

Kill the mates of your mate until you are the only one left standing.

Wynvail.

I tried to snarl at the thought of him hurting my mates, but wind slammed into my face and down my throat until I choked on it. It crashed into my back, my arms, my wings like a rain of punches. I gasped out a cry when it hit a tender part of my wings, knocking me through the vortex. The jewelled dagger nearly slipped from my fingers; I held onto it by sheer dumb luck.1

Empty blackness pressed on Kai and I from every direction, but—there, was that light? I couldn't tell if the spot of grey was real or if I was hallucinating it. Where would this dark tunnel spit us out? Cronus had stopped time in Wynvail's house; were we falling throughtime?Would we emerge a hundred years ago, when the bastard was still trying to kill us?

Would—would Wane be there?

The thought distracted me so much that I missed the warning signs: the grey spot growing bigger, the light brighter, the ground closer.

I slammed into it so hard that I was thrown back into the air with a cry and I bounced twice, each impact snapping something in my arm, my wing, my wrist. I tried to bite back my guttural scream, but the final landing threw me on my damaged wing, and the sound roared up my throat without my permission.

"Haley," Kai rasped, crawling off of me, catching my face in his hands as he stared down at me. At the mess I'd made on the ground, probably. "Hey, look at me. Don't close your eyes okay.Harvey!Where the fuck are you?"

Panic made his voice high and piercing. I dragged my gaze to his face, frowning at the smear of blood on his cheek. I reached for it, but the movement pulled on my wing, and I screamed again, blackness closing in for a long moment.

"I'm here, I'm here," Harvey panted.

My eyes must have fallen shut; I had to force them open to see his face. Harvey was so close to me, bloodied hands reaching for my wing. I jumped at the first rush of power, boiling hot shooting past my feathers to broken bones and ruined muscle. Then pain hit so severely that my back arched off the floor of—actually, I had no idea where we were. We could have been back in the Damned Realm for all I knew. Or up in the pearly clouds of Heaven. I couldn't keep my eyes open long enough to see.

"Is she healing?" Wynvail's unwelcome voice asked.

"Why would you care?" Emlyn growled at him, deep and vibrating. "You brought all this on us."

Wynvail sighed. "When will you start listening?"

"When willyoustart killing us?" Kai snarled, getting to his feet in a rush. His magic shuddered through the air around us, snakes brushing my arms as Harvey finally let go of me. I panted, reeling in the aftermath. "That's what your master told you to do, isn’t it? Murder all of us so you can get a resurrection pearl? Tell me, asshole. Who are you trying to bring back?"

"That's none of your business," Wynvail replied coolly. "And my plans are not your concern, either."

"Oh, shut up," I bit out on a groan. Now that I wasn’t alight with pain, I was just pissed off. We’d just escaped the Wailing Caves, and now Cronus had fucking kidnapped us. Taking my anger out on Wynvail was an obvious outlet.

I leaned my weight into Harvey as I pushed off the floor, testing my wing's movement and hissing at the soreness. No fractures or breaks, though. The rest of me was whole, too.

"Thank you," I murmured to him, catching his hand to squeeze it and frowning at the little stones embedded in our palms. "Ugh, where the fuck are we?"

I climbed awkwardly to my feet, expecting my knees to buckle and send me back to the ground. But with Harvey's help and Emlyn ducking in to support my left, I managed to stand.

"Shit," I hissed when I saw the mammoth walls all around us, steely grey and solid. Formed of pure stone instead of individual bricks. We were sealed in on all sides except for a narrow passage straight ahead. A single route onward.

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