Page 78 of Fallen Stars

Without warning, her mother tossed her across to him, and she somersaulted, screaming through the air, hands and legs outstretched as Enzo caught her. His clown mask was the only one grinning, the sight setting Elara tremoring. She looked with wide eyes to his clown costume and the blood pooling from his stomach where Ariete had stabbed him.

Enzo lurched forward onto Elara, and she gagged as one of his intestines began to fall out of his abdomen, a dull wet thunk as it hit the trapeze plank.

“You could have saved me,” he wheezed—exactly as he had in Botis’s dreams. He didn’t smell like Enzo; he smelled like death, rotten and fetid and too sweet.

Elara tried to push away from him, but she couldn’t get far without falling.

“Stop doing that,” she screamed down to Ariete.

The god’s eyes widened in feral wonder. “Oh, I’m not doing anything. This is all you.”

She felt a hard push at her back and gasped as Enzo pushed her from the swing, and she fell screaming through the air. Her father’s arms caught her once more.

“You could have saved us,” her father rasped as mould spores began to float off his tongue. She spun, barely able to see as her mother swiped her.

“You could have saved us,” her mother repeated, beetles crawling out of her eyes as she blinked, making Elara recoil.

“The final act!” Ariete roared below.

She was propelled once more through the stars before two hands that felt warmer than the others gripped onto her. Elara slowly raised her head and sobbed. Sofia’s face tilted, observing her as Elara was suspended, dangling from the trapeze.

“Not you too,” Elara whispered, Eli’s training utterly forgotten.

Sofia smiled, the grin widening and widening until it began to split her face, blood leaking from the sides of her mouth.

“You could have saved us,” she whispered.

“Help me,” Elara said.

Sofia chuckled coldly. “No, I don’t think I will.”

It was the last thing she heard as with a scream, Sofia’s hold released her. She tumbled, her cry mingling with Ariete’s cackle below as she fell, the abyss below waiting.

Chapter Twenty-Six

The air rushed around Elara, howlingas the circus music sped up around her, the crowd gasping as they saw the star of the show tumble through the air.

Elara grunted, a hand flung out as she called her shadows to her.

Nothing.

Her heart thundered as she continued to drop through the air, trying again, teeth gritted. She willed her magick into them, willed her shadows.

Nothing, not even a wisp.

She cried out, with no idea why her shadows weren’t being brought forth. “Please,” she begged as her body flailed on the air’s undercurrents, the darkness yawning below her and the growl of creatures that lurked in the dark waiting for her.

She closed her eyes one final time, a strangled scream on her lips as the pit grew even closer. “Please!” she screamed, her hands punching out.

But the shadows did not come, and Elara gave a bloodcurdling scream as the pit swallowed her.

At the last moment, when the darkness was already enclosing her, Elara illusioned a dagger and slammed it into the side of the pit.

She hung from it, sobbing, both hands wrapped tightly around the imaginary knife as she dangled from the lip of the pit.

She looked down wildly and wished she hadn’t.

She could see nothing but a terrifying and endless night. But below that, shadows shifted. Ones with red eyes that Elara knew with absolute certainty did not belong in this world.

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