Page 233 of Children of Fallen Gods

Nura’s scars beneath my hands.

Tisaanah’s scars.

Atraclius’s warped, bloody glasses.

Everything you’ve ever loved.

The burning butterfly. Tisaanah’s face as she waved to me, the Towers’ doors closing over her goodbye.

No.

No.

I washere. Here, in the Scar. Fighting for the title of Arch Commandant. Fighting for everything.

Magic was so thick in the air that it burned my eyes, my skin. Nura’s shields against the fire that surrounded us were beginning to wear down — her cheeks were red and slick with sweat, little strands of her hair singed. If I had imagined the end of the world, I might have thought it would look something like this, with every familiar grounding force of the earth stripped away in favor of nothing but wild, uncontrolled destruction.

I lunged, she dodged, I pivoted. Struck, just enough for her to fall. But I was unstable — she brought us both down. She was on top of me, her knife clutched in one hand and magic crackling at the other. My staff flew from my grasp. I could have called it back to me with a single thread of magic. I didn’t. Just as Nura didn’t use her knife. We were far past the point of steel. Past pretending that those weapons mattered.

My own memories were unraveling, Nura’s magic tearing apart the fabric of my mind, but through nothing but force of will I staved her off. Her eyes were bright and glistening.

I was still holding back.

We both knew it.

She tugged on an old memory, one that made us both wince. A lonely little girl and an ill-tempered little boy, hiding from a party.I’ll just call you Max.

“I can win,” I said. “You know that I will.”

“Then do it,” she ground out, through clenched teeth.

Sammerin’s warning rang out in the back of my head.

“I don’t want to win that way,” I said. The world had fallen away. There was nothing around us but our magic, and the magic of the Scar. “Yield, and this is done.”

It was like talking to the winds of a hurricane. I didn’t know why I bothered. There was only the faintest glimmer of hesitation on her face. Then raw fury drowned any remaining remnants of our old fond memories.

“No,” she whispered.

And then the world fell apart.

I didn’t have a name for what she did, then. My head felt like it had been split like an egg, memories pouring out like runny yolk. I couldn’t see, couldn’t breathe. Through the fog and the pain, I saw Nura’s blood running down her arm. Saw a crushed glass bottle in her hand.

I knew Nura’s magic. She was powerful. But this — this was something else. This was worse. How far had she made it with her experimentations in deep magics? It occurred to me that I’d never asked.

A certainty snapped into place. Seconds and I would be gone.

I saw death standing there, waiting.I’ve been expecting you for so long,it whispered.Are you finally here?

Not this time, I replied.

I opened my second eyelids.

Chapter Seventy-Nine

Tisaanah

My knuckles were white. I saw the whole Scar light up with crimson light, as if it were a wound split open, and my heart stopped.

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