Page 234 of Children of Fallen Gods

I knew what I was seeing. And beyond that, I couldfeelit — Max’s deepest magic, the strange kind that called to the foreign powers that lived within me, too.

Sammerin hissed a curse beneath his breath. “I told him not to.”

“Hehadto,” I murmured.

Yet, a part of me was relieved. I know how powerful Max’s magic was. Nura was good, but she wasn’tthatgood. If Max had resorted to this, it meant he was desperate, yes. But it also meant he would win. He’dhaveto win.

But then, I felt something in the air shift.

There was no other way to describe it — it was like a sound I couldn’t hear was scratching the insides of my ears, vibrating and roiling within my bones. Every hair on my arms stood up. The contents of my stomach all soured at once, and I staggered back from the rail, pressing the back of my hand to my mouth.

Beneath it all, there was something more. A certain sick, slithering familiarity.

Sammerin gave me an odd look. “What’s wrong?”

The Syrizen’s stances went weak, then rigid. Even Anserra stumbled, her hands tightening around her spear. “Whatisthat?” she muttered.

Ariadnea turned her face to me. “You feel it too,” she said, and I nodded.

Dread clenched in my stomach.

I rushed to the railing and peered over. I couldn’t see anything but flickering orange light and the mist of the Scar’s magic. But a dark pressure was building, building, building in the back of my mind.

“Something is wrong,” I muttered. “I’m going down—”

I turned to Sammerin and froze.

He was looking past me, a strange expression on his face.

“Ariadnea,” he said, quietly.

I turned.

The Syrizen were standing crooked, like marionettes held by weak strings — so different than their perpetual rigid grace. It took me a moment to see what Sammerin did: that the delicate veins beneath their skin, clustering around the scars in their eye sockets, had become a familiar shade of black.

I noticed this only for a split second, before Ariadnea’s spear lit up, and she lunged for Sammerin.

Chapter Eighty

Max

Ihad made a terrible mistake.

I didn’t notice, at first, overwhelmed by the power that stormed through me. My body unraveled. I was everywhere and nowhere at once. The flames around us roared and billowed, the heat cracking the ground beneath us.

The force of it was enough to make Nura let out a gasp and leap backwards. Her magic was severed, like a string sliced with a rusty blade. I tried to rein in the power of it, but it was so much more than I had anticipated. Another burst, and Nura was slammed against the rock wall. She dropped to her knees, then fell to the ground in a heap, unmoving.

Dread.

One thought cut through my mind:I didn’t want to kill her.

I didn’t know if I had. I barely thought about my victory. I had won, after all. She had stopped fighting.

This realization didn’t even have time to settle.

I felt raw power tear through me, yes. I felt fire and magic and strength. But I felt something else, too. A presence that had been lurking, waiting for its opportunity to step inside.

And I had just opened the door.

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