Page 244 of Children of Fallen Gods

My eyes fell back to him. To Tisaanah in his arms.

“Go.”

Forming the word took all of my energy.

The man hesitated. Then looked over his shoulder, at the approaching shadows.

“Go,” I said again.

“I will come back,” he said. “Try to get to the surface.”

I wasn’t even entirely sure which surface he was talking about. Not that it mattered. I nodded all the same.

The man’s wings spread wide, and then he was launching into the darkness above. The shadows scattered, as if afraid of him, before righting themselves and turning faceless heads towards me.

I tried and failed, twice, to push myself to my hands and knees. The floor seemed to be tilting. The walls quaked and trembled. Stones tumbled down.

I succeeded in rising to my knees, then my feet, staggering forward.

I only made it three paces.

Something yanked me back. I fell in a heap.

And then a grey-eyed woman with silver braided hair leaned over me. There was blood on her face and hatred in her eyes.

Nura.

That name came to me fast.

My hand closed around the dagger on the ground. My body knew the movements, but my muscles wouldn’t cooperate. She disarmed me in seconds. The blade went sliding across the floor.

More and more stones fell. The ravine was collapsing.

And Nura’s eyes never left mine.

Figures, that this is how it would end.

The thought floated through my broken mind. And maybe it wasbecauseall of those individual pieces were lost that the culmination seemed suddenly so inevitable. A thousand moments leading here, to this place, this act. A million twisted pathways that all arrive at this destination.

Is this what they call fate? Me and her, destroying each other?

“You don’t get to run away, Max,” she said. “Not this time.”

The rumbles of shifting stone swallowed her words. Her face was close to mine.

“You should have killed me,” she whispered. “I warned you about that bleeding heart.”

The walls collapsed.

And then, darkness.

Chapter Eighty-Seven

Aefe

Reshaye

Aefe

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