CHAPTER 57

COMMANDER RYATT

The army of fae rushes in for attack, and the sound is deafening.

Movement next to me has me turning, and I'm shocked as Lu comes up beside me. Osrik too. Digby and Rissa on Argo. A dozen Second soldiers just behind. King Thold and a few of his men. We tighten into formation, readying ourselves.

One. Last. Stand.

With blood and sweat and pain and rage and defiance. We stand here, when we know it's going to be a slaughter.

Lu, Osrik, and I share a glance. It's heavy. It's fucking wrong . Because Judd isn't with us. He should be standing here with a shit-eating smirk on his face, ready to throw himself into the battle and lift our spirits all at the same time.

But he's not standing. He's lying on the ground somewhere, gone where Wrath can't reach.

So even though the fae are charging, shouting, ready to swing the final blade of death, we stand tall.

I'm going to be cut down, but I'm going to take these fae down with me—as many of them as I can.

"For Judd," I say as I grip my sword, muscles tensed and ready.

Lu and Osrik both nod. "For Judd."

We face forward, weapons in hand, and our Wrath charges toward Death.

But before we can reach the front lines, a booming sound rips through the land. Like the side of a mountain breaking free and toppling. Like an entire city's worth of buildings crashing down all at once.

Everyone stops, Orean and fae alike, looking around in shock.

When my gaze lands on the source, my eyes go wide. My heart stops pumping. Because the fog around the bridge of Lemuria suddenly parts, like something in the air swells . Shoves.

For a moment, this force, whatever it is, sucks away all the thick fog that was obscuring the bridge, clearing it for view. At the far end, I can see fae soldiers in blood-red armor. But at the middle are two figures. Not soldiers—I can see that even from this distance.

As I squint, trying to see who it is, trying to figure out what's happening, the bridge suddenly bursts.

I thought the sound before was loud, but no, this explosion is deafening .

World-altering.

The fog, the air, the land, the void, it all seems to rupture in one cataclysmic event. The entire earth shakes. The skies above thunder. Fatal magic fractures the realm.

I'm knocked to the ground, right along with everyone else. Lu and I land beside each other, and we share a stunned look.

"The bridge just fucking exploded…" she breathes out.

"It can't have," I blurt, even though I know it's nothing more than pure denial bullshit.

Because it can.

It fucking has .

Then the shaking stops and seems to settle. I look around, thoughts spinning. "We—"

I was wrong. It's not settling. It was just the inhale before the blow.

The land where the bridge was starts to give way. With booming cracks, the ground begins sucking down into the void, like it can no longer stay up. Like whatever force just destroyed the bridge is going to destroy the land too.

The stone castle starts to crumble, and in a second, disappears entirely in a rush of dust and snow.

I blink in shock, mouth gaping, fear galloping through my chest.

It's like I'm watching an invisible mouth gnawing at the earth's crust, biting it off chunk by chunk. And it's spreading. Fast .

Osrik suddenly bellows, " Run !"

It snaps me out of my stupor.

Lu and I leap to our feet, and we turn and start sprinting, just as the whole fae army tries to do the same. Everyone runs, screaming as the earth breaks away. There's nothing but pure panic in our shared consciousness, as if we've become one giant herd.

"Digby!" Osrik roars, and I look over as Digby launches Judd's timberwing in the air with Rissa clutched in front of him.

Rissa screams, reaching down for Osrik, horror on her face and his name wrenched from her lips.

But they fly up, just as more timberwings scatter. "We need a bird!" I shout, but the beasts are panicked, some taking off without a rider.

We have none to get on.

The threat of mortal danger licks at our backs like frenzied flames, singeing us with the promise of our own peril.

Snow and fog churns from the earth that rips away, the collapsing land polluting the air with the ghost of the ground. My lungs burn, my heart feeling like it's going to burst, but I keep running as everyone else flees too.

But I hear it closing in on us. Hear hundreds of screaming fae start to succumb to the fall.

The rumbling gets louder…closer. The ground shaking harder.

"We're not gonna make it!" Lu shouts desperately at my side.

It has to fucking stop. It won't just keep disintegrating all of Seventh Kingdom—all of fucking Orea…will it?

The bridge is obliterated, but what if it obliterates everything else too? What if there is nowhere to run?

Fear cuts into my heart and starts draining me dry.

The land just behind me starts giving way. People fall in. Terror overwhelms me when I feel the ground beneath my own boots start sinking.

This is fucking it. This is it. This is—

Lu trips.

I spin to catch her, hand snatching at her arm as she falls with the dropping land. Her body jolts as I catch her, but the ground cracks beneath my feet, the snow giving way for me too, and our eyes meet in horrified acceptance.

And then. It…stops.

I stand frozen while Lu hangs over churning air, held up only by my grip.

I pant, eyes wide, staring past her down to the abyss. The void swirls with fog and snow and darkness, carrying the echoing screams of thousands who've fallen.

It's like I'm in a dream, or a daze. I can't move. I just keep staring.

"Pull me up!" Lu screams frantically. "Ryatt! Snap out of it and pull me the fuck up !"

I blink and wrench my attention to her. But I'm scared to fucking move, scared the ground beneath me will crumble if I dare.

" Ryatt !" Lu yells again.

Osrik appears beside me. With his massive strength, he bands an arm around me and hauls me back, while simultaneously reaching down to fling Lu up and over.

I fall backwards a couple of feet away, while Lu lands in a heap beside me. Osrik hurries over and yanks us back to our feet and we all back away.

My pulse is on a rampage, breath panting as I look out at the landscape. Or…what used to be a landscape.

Seventh Kingdom looks like a split seam. Where the bridge was, the ground has torn away in a line, stretching all the way to where we stand. The void has made a V, stolen the bridge, the castle, maybe a couple miles' worth of land across the edge.

The seam grew narrower as it reached toward us, but it still extends with a quarter of a mile gap right here at its end. Seventh's land stretches precariously to my left and right, and I see just how fucking lucky Lu and I are. We were a step away from being sucked down into the void.

Just like all the fae soldiers were.

"Fucking hell," Lu pants beside me, her hands visibly shaking. She glances over. "Thanks for catching me."

I nod numbly, and she looks at Osrik. "Thanks for pulling me up, Os."

He doesn't reply. He's searching the sky, watching the circle of timberwings. Some are chasing down the riderless birds, snatching up their reins to bring them back.

I turn and look at everyone on the ground, counting heads, finding faces. There are too fucking few. We walk further away from the edge and gather together, and I start cataloging everyone as the timberwings land and we all converge.

Digby with Rissa. King Thold, but I only see two of his soldiers with him, and both are bloodied, their green-clad armor stained with spatter. Queen Kaila lands with a dozen soldiers of her own. I count only twelve men from Second, some of whom are grievously wounded. No fae stand with us.

My chest hammers like it's being pelted with hail. "Judd…" My voice is thick, my jaw tight.

Lu meets my eyes, hers red-rimmed as she shakes her head and says the most devastating words. "He died in my arms." Her voice is broken, misery punching straight through.

He died, and then his body fell into the void. We don't even have his fucking body to bury. Osrik lets out a roar of anguish, knees hitting the ground, head hanging in fury and grief as his fist hits the snow.

Misery and shame strangle me.

Judd died because he was saving me. Cutting me off that timberwing because I was stuck. It would've been my chest that sword had stabbed through if he hadn't come over to help.

And now he's dead. Gone. Fallen away with the disintegrated land.

Rissa rushes over to Osrik and kneels with him, arms wrapping around his bulk, her head nestling against his side.

Emotion thickens in my throat.

"It's over…" Queen Kaila says from the back of her beast. Her face is pale. Eyes haunted, but her voice holds hope. "The bridge is gone—our worlds severed. The fae have actually been defeated ."

King Thold's grim face looks at the broken land, at the wounded soldiers. "At great sacrifice."

The threat of the fae, the one thing that was driving me forward, has been wiped out in sudden seconds. Yet while the others are reeling with bittersweet relief, I'm just reeling.

Yes, the fae are defeated. Yes, Orea is safe.

But…the bridge is gone.

Which means there's no way for Slade, or my mother, or Auren to come back .