Chapter 45

My dome creaks and groans as more Gold Guards swarm around Zane like a clanking river of crushing might.

Five—eight—ten of them.

All the fight bleeds from me.

I fall to my knees, gasping breath, holding Zane’s stare through the shifting obstacle of golden shin guards. This hopeless feeling grips hold of my shoulders and shoves me down so hard I’m certain the pier’s going to splinter beneath me.

There’s the swish of loosening weapons, gold-tipped spears glinting in sporadic bursts of light ripping across the sky. Again, that woman screams in the distance, farther away than before—similar to the sound my mother made when that axe swung.

Struck.

Zane’s face crumbles, and I feel that look fissure through me like hairline splits in my chest, my ribs, my lungs.

Deeper.

Time grinds to a halt as a crack weaves across my crystal dome, the sound so sharp and cataclysmic that I’m certain the world is fracturing.

An inky claw nudges through the gap, slathered in a stretch of goo that drapes between the honed tips of rose-thorn nails, gripping hold of the split’s whetted edge. A second claw follows, clamping down on the other side.

More of the splitting sound that threatens to pop my skull, and the gap widens.

Widens.

Something flaps beneath the surface, scratching, making me want to bunch down into a ball and scream.

Scrape.

Scrape.

Scrape.

More scuffling sounds as a web of fractures weaves across the crystal—

The dome explodes with a shattering blast, bits of it embedding in my organs, my bones, my muscle and my flesh. Leaving my insides in bloody tatters. Lumped amidst the macabre gloom, surrounded by shards of bone and crystal and shredded flesh, is a bony animal cloaked in more of that stretchy, gooey substance it shakes off—splattering the mess against my sides, unveiling more of the creature’s ghastly form:

It reminds me of a krah, except it has branches for wings, dead leaves for plumage, and black, fathomless eyes I’m certain I’ve seen the likes of before. Bits of it have rotted out, a third of its face surrendered to the vile decay, revealing rows of bramble teeth and pockets of gnarled carcass draped with withered vines of black.

Its slender tail curls up, the tip a tuft of singed leaves swaying from side to side as the creature tips its head and squeals—a shrill sound that makes my bones ache, threatening to crumble from the pitch of it. Thick tears puddle in my eyes, and when they leak down my cheeks, I smell blood.

The creature flaps inside me, toiling a churn of crystal shards that shred my heart and my spongy lungs, stripping flesh from my bones. It flits high into my chest, nests in my throat, and screams to the sky as blind, icy rage paints my vision red.

Zane squirms and screams, the spear settling against his cheek drawing the faintest line of pink that jolts me from the inside out—like I just got touched by the spindly tip of lightning clawing across the sky.

I push to a stand and rip the sword from the sheath at my back. A thud hammers into my palm, ratchets up my arm, then ripples through my blood like the beat of a song so complex, I feel like it’s rewriting the fabric of my being.

A scream punches up my throat that tastes like blood, and I charge; teeth bared, that creature flapping inside me, screeching to the thunderstorm as I whip a man around and slash my blade through his carotid. His warm blood splashes my hand, and the beat drums louder.

Louder.

I toss him aside, snarling to the wind and the rain and the frantic churn of gold armor, like wasps buzzing around, threatening to sting what’s mine to protect.

Mine.

My surroundings smudge, and I hack, dodge, stab—fueling that terminal song until it’s a thrum in my ears. Red plumes spray across the pier. Across my face and arms, drenching my hair.

I’m deaf to the rain. Deaf to anything bar the sword’s pounding song spurring me into a deadly dance of mass destruction. Gorging on every slashed artery. Every severed limb and head.

Every dying scream.

I’m a feasting beast, and no matter how many times I stab, hack, kill, I’m still ravenous.

I sever the taut ligaments across the back of somebody’s legs.

He staggers forward.

Descending upon him, I fist his hair, ripping his head back so far I bare his throat to the honed edge of Rhordyn’s sword. I begin to slash it sideways when a desperate sob comes to me through the murk of my rabid rage.

I look up past a litter of butchered bodies, most of which I don’t recall hacking apart. Stabbing through.

Gutting …

My gaze homes on Zane—no longer pressed against the wood but on his knees with his cloak clutched close to his chest. Cainon’s standing behind him, eyes wide, inky balls of blazing accusation. He’s fisting Zane’s hair, baring his too-tender throat to a golden blade.

That macabre creature stills, then scurries down into the chasm in my chest so fast it kicks up crystal shards in its haste.

All the fight melts from my bones.

“No-no-no,” I plead. Dropping the sword, I clamber off the guard and toss my hands up either side of my head in surrender, the blood coating them oozing down in rivulets.

Cainon looks down his nose at me, the rain dripping off his brutal features while Zane squirms in his hold.

I drop to my knees, shuffle forward, a flush of desperation softening my ravaged insides. “Cainon, please. Take my life instead. Please.”

Another crack of lightning, closer now, reflects in Cainon’s eyes like the silver fissures of a broken plate.

He pushes the blade deeper into Zane’s flesh.

I stop moving. Stop breathing.

Too scared to even blink.

Cainon takes in the scene around us, his only surviving guard now bound in a groaning heap, reaching for Rhordyn’s sword. Cainon looks behind me to where I don’t doubt the ship is plowing through the savage waves, hopefully past the rising chain. His upper lip peels back, features honing into something truly horrific.

There’s not a drop of mercy in his callous stare when it locks on me again.

Trembling, Zane wiggles his fingers into one of the many pockets tucked amongst the folds of his cloak. I see a flash of gold as he pulls out the Bahari token he stole off one of the sailors.

“I have a t-token,” he pleads, waving it high enough for Cainon to see, and my heart impales itself on the tip of a shattered rib.

He’s trying to buy his life …

Cainon’s gaze drops. He plucks the token from Zane’s grip, weighing it in his hand. Hope bursts in Zane’s eyes—infectious, fragile hope.

Cainon looks at me, and in those inky eyes, I see too much.

Too little.

I see the way this story unfolds—how hopeless it is for me to try to rewrite the ending already scored in stone. To change the fate of this boy who’s going to die simply because I love him. Because I’m a black hole that gobbles up everything bright and good and alive.

Because I exist.

I break Cainon’s stare and look at Zane. Force a smile for him to cling to; a pretty lie to soften the sharp truth notched against his throat.

It’s okay,I mouth, even though it’s not. I mouth it over and over again as his eyes fill with tears.

It’s okay. It’s okay—

“You did this,” Cainon says, his voice a chilling monotone full of heinous promises.

I crumple inside because I know he’s right.

It’s okay. It’s okay. It’s okay—

The blade lowers …

Zane’s eyes widen, and he slumps forward as I look up at Cainon, a seedling of hope blossoming in my heart.

Is he … reconsidering?

The gold token lands with a thunk in a puddle of red by my knee.

My heart stops.

Zane’s blood-curdling scream flays me down the middle as Cainon lifts him off the ground by his hair and dangles him over the edge of the pier. “Think I’ll let the sharks do it.”

“No,” I sob, crawling forward, reaching. “No!”

“You. Did. This.”

He lets go.

Zane falls too fast yet agonizingly slow, cramming me full of every horrifying detail:

Crumpled features …

One hand reaching, the other clutching onto his cloak like it’ll grow wings and save him …

The pure, undiluted fear in his eyes …

I scramble toward the edge, but Cainon lands a boot to my ribs, and I collide with the pier in a dash of blood and water. The sound of Zane splashing into the hungry ocean drives a stake into my gut, and I unspool around it. Not slow and steady, but so fast my entire being ends up in a tangled, messy heap.

Lashing lengths of caustic blackness slither up from that chasm deep within my chest, honing their tapered tips, slitting my skin from the inside out. Hissing for me to kill.

Kill.

KILL!

I can no longer hear the wind, the thunder, or the sound of my own heartbeat. I can no longer hear the raging ocean as it heaves and churns—riddled with beasts that won’t think before they chew.

All I am is brain-bursting pressure and hissing vengeance.

My fingers twist with the chain around my ankle, brutally aware that the jetty is made of wood. That cutting my ugly loose will kill me, too.

I’ve lost the will to care.

I.

Did.

This.

Blood weeps from my eyes as I hold Cainon’s stare and rip my necklace free.

KILL!

The pressure doesn’t immediately abate. Blackness doesn’t burst through my skin and shred everything around me.

I spur the darkness on, screaming for it to kill.

Kill.

Kill …

Pressure swells until I can hardly see through the blood in my eyes, and I’m certain my skull has just as many fractures as my heart.

Something’s … wrong …

Blood gushes from my nose, forging a warm path down my chin.

My scream fades to silence as my lungs deflate, spine arching back. My chest tips to the sky, and I’m certain my eyes are about to pop from the pressure.

Cainon fists my sodden hair, wrenching me forward while I split apart from the inside out, my arms and hands scribbled in lines so hot my bones are surely melting.

He pinches my chin, and itchy pops flare across my shoulder as I’m forced to look up. The sky cracks apart again with another fluorescent flash, igniting Cainon’s wide eyes. Igniting my bright reflection blasting off the mirror of his sable stare.

“You— You’re a—”

Snarling, I cast my hands into claws and try to shred his chest. He looks down and gasps. Drops my hair.

Stumbles back.

I blink, trying to clear more blood from my eyes, seeing the grizzly slits in my outstretched hands, up my arms, tapering toward my elbows. Seeing the slither of sizzling darkness just below the surface—a silent promise for a death that won’t come.

It won’t come.

All the color has gone from Cainon’s face as that pressure continues to build, shoving at my weak spots. I look to where Zane was tossed over the edge of the pier …

My fault.

There’s the sound of a blade loosening, and I see the long, golden sword Cainon just pilfered from a corpse while he stashes his dagger in his boot, looking at me like he finally sees the monster I really am.

All I can see is Zane holding up that golden token—begging for his life.

All I can feel is Rhordyn’s warm kiss upon my forehead.

I smile at Cainon as he whips back the sword. Laughing, I tip my head and bare my bound throat—hoping for a clean slice.

Because I’m done.

I’ve got nothing left to give.

I don’t want to be here anymore.

The air becomes so charged I feel it thumping against my skin, like it holds a pulse of its own. The atmosphere splits as a fork of black-veined lightning cleaves down from above and kisses the tip of Cainon’s sword, blazing off in jagged blades. A shrill, strident sound mulches my brain, followed by a boom so loud another scream rips from my throat.

The ground falls away beneath me with a sound akin to shattering glass, and I plummet into an icy sea of churning, tumbling water that claws at my body and roars at me.

My head collides with something hard.

Darkness.