Page 118 of Children of Fallen Gods

With all my strength, I pushed against the slab of wood. I felt as if my body was a million miles away, but by some miracle, I managed to lift it just enough to wiggle out from beneath it. When I sat up, I stifled a gasp.

It looked like the end of everything.

The world was burning. Flames, orange and blue —blue?— crawled over the trees, consuming the wooden footbridges that connected them all above us. Buildings and debris andbodiesrained down, shattering on the ground as they fell from tens or hundreds of feet in the air. It was so smoky, so chaotic, that it took me a moment to realize what I was looking at above me — countless silhouettes surrounded by magic or wielding steel, locked in battle.

Humans.

I heard the word in my head in Caduan’s voice, just as he had said it before we fell.

Shit.

I went to Caduan, yanking the debris off of him. He was still, violet blood plastering the fabric of his shirt to his body. It ran down the side of his face, too, sticky in his copper hair.

“Caduan.” I felt for his heartbeat, breathing a sigh of relief at the weak, but steady, pulse. “Get up. We have to go.”

Cold fear settled over me.

He would wake up, I told myself. He would open his eyes. He had to. The last thing I said to him had been so, so cruel.

He would wake up.

But he didn’t move.

“Caduan.Please.”

Please. Gods, that word. How it had lost all of its magic.

The screams above us seemed to be getting louder, more desperate. Yithara was only a trading hub — there was no military here to resist the attack. We had no time.

I leaned over Caduan. One of his hands was free from the debris, dangling over a beam. I grasped it and pushed up his sleeve, pausing.

I knew Caduan was a skilled magic speaker, even though I didn’t know much about what exactly his gifts were. But I was desperate.

Mathira, this had better work, I thought to myself, and sunk my teeth into the inside of his wrist.

I was not expecting it to hit me so hard. One swallow, and I felt his magic swell in the pit of my stomach. Ishqa’s magic had felt powerful, but strange and unfamiliar, like trying to speak a new language with sounds that didn’t sit right on my tongue. This? This felt like a song I didn’t realize I remembered. Oddly familiar. Oddly right.

I blinked, and when I opened my eyes again something was… different. It was like seeing color when I had once seen only black and white. Except, color waslife. The pulsing beat of life in the soil, in the leaves above us, in the wood that made up the splintered floorboards — and in Caduan, weak and waning, like a delicate butterfly fluttering in the center of his chest.

I leaned over him, calling to that thread of light. Something intrinsic in me now understood how to speak to it.

Rise, I whispered.Come back.

All at once, he surrounded me like a gust of wind.

The power of it was intoxicating, sweeter and headier than any wine. Every part of me was calling for him, reaching deeper than the warmth of his skin — deeper, rawer, than the physical desire of lust.

I felt so utterly exposed.

Caduan’s eyes opened.

I couldn’t look away. We just stared at each other, that connection burning between us like light refracting through stained glass.

Neither of us blinked. Neither of us breathed. Our noses were nearly touching. My heartbeat pounded in my chest, perfectly in time with his.

“Aefe,” he murmured.

It felt so good to hear his voice. I couldn’t speak.

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