Page 91 of Kept

Midian screamed in my head. “You said you had no plan! You lied!”

My arm gave out, and I collapsed on my side. “Yes,” I said weakly. I opened my mind to him fully, allowing him to see the lie I’d woven into the Middling from the moment I started making it. I’d concealed my plan, ensuring he wouldn’t find it until it was too late.

His panic exploded. Trapped in a dying body. There was nowhere to go.

“You’ll die, too,” he said. “You’ll be nothing.”

My heart slowed, the beats growing irregular. I stared as the last white flower drifted to the nothingness and disappeared. “Maybe.”

But I’d left something behind.

Love.

So simple. But it was everything.

It was worth dying for.

Midian screamed. Locked in my head, he wailed his anguish.

The grass receded quickly. The sunlight faded and disappeared, plunging me into darkness. Into the void. Midian faded too. Unable to return to the Shade, he receded into my dying brain, his last thought little more than a whisper.

“Now I am nothing too.”

My heart stopped.

I finished it, Avenor.

I was strong enough.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

VARICK

As the Thicket fell, the knights tried to run. Then the ground began to buckle and roll again.

I stayed on my feet through sheer stubbornness, and I shouted at Jordan over the roar of the giant trees coming down. “How do we stop them?” I bellowed. We couldn’t fight the demons with swords. But he was the Archmage. He claimed he’d seen every possibility. I’d felt the power he wielded. If we had any hope of surviving, it had to come from him.

Jordan ignored me. As knights scrambled to their feet and staggered toward the horses, he turned and ran toward the Rift.

“Jordan!”

He ran faster, his brown cloak flying out behind him. He ran away.

Shock gripped me.

He ran away.

The ground heaved. As I struggled to keep my balance, anger and confusion replaced my shock. What was he doing, running toward the Rift?

My stomach twisted. Jordan had seen everything. He knew what the demons would do once the trees stopped falling. He knew—and he’d decided a plunge into the Rift was preferable to waiting for the Thicket to collapse.

The ground in front of me exploded. Rocks pelted my face, knocking me backward. My heel caught something hard, and I went down. Pain exploded in my head.

Everything went blurry. Black huddled at the edges of my vision, threatening to swallow me up. I couldn’t let it. With waves of nausea sloshing in my gut, I forced my eyes open and blinked at the night sky.

Laurent appeared above me, his pale face streaked with dirt and blood. “Come on,” he gasped, gripping my forearm and hauling me up. The ground continued to shudder, throwing me into him so we ended up clinging to each other as we tried to stay upright.

“Are you hurt?” I yelled, trying to get a good look at him.

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