Page 39 of The Oracle of Dusk

Trapped.

Silvanus drew the holy sword, preparing for a fight they could no longer avoid. Drakon’s glittering crimson form emerged from the clouds hanging over the Dragon’s Tail Mountain. Ash began to swirl down from a sky turning black and crimson. Soon, the world would be overrun with monstrosities.

It was all her fault. If she’d pursued her wild magic, refused to accept her magic-deprived state as a child, she might’ve been prepared to face the greatest threat in all of Trisia as an adult. Now they would all die—everyone she knew and loved. Phaedra, Silvanus, her family, her friends. She was the greatest failure in the history of Trisia, unworthy of the trust the high priestess and her goddess had placed in her.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered as she stared into the hatred-filled eyes of the beast.

“Silvanus, can you open the way into the mountain from here?” Phaedra asked.

“Yes, but we’ll never make it across the chasm.”

“Open it.”

Silvanus raised a brow but obeyed. A doorway to a safe haven they would never be able to reach opened in the side of the Dragon’s Tail Mountain range bordering the heart of the Viridian empire.

Was there some hope? Was this not the end?

“What now?” Aurora asked, her knees going weak at the sight of the beast slithering through the sky towards her.

“You’re mine now,” the beast cackled in her ear.

“You remember our deal, right?” Phaedra asked Silvanus.

“Yes.”

“Then do it. And Aurora?”

Aurora’s heart sank. Phaedra was much too calm. Where was her inner fire? Where was her determination?

“What deal? What are you talking about?”

“When you get to the other side, run.”

“No escape now. After so long, I have you right where I want you.”

Drakon opened his maw, teeth gleaming, an unholy purple light building up in the back of his throat. They were dead, all of them. There was no getting to the other side of the chasm and it was too late to run.

With unexpected violence, Aurora was shoved up into the air and catapulted across the chasm. She landed with a sickening thud, bones cracking as the world spun. She looked up just in time to see Phaedra and Silvanus a world away, the holy sword taking the shape of a vast shield. He braced for the impact, his arm around Phaedra’s waist.

Phaedra’s eyes sought Aurora’s. She relayed a simple message with gestures.

Phaedra pointed to her eye.

I.

Her heart.

Love.

Then Aurora.

You.

Then the blast hit, obliterating the pillar on which Phaedra and Silvanus stood. Obliterating Trisia’s brightest, warmest light—and Aurora’s heart along with it.

Aurora screamed.

She screamed until her magic was a raging tempest. She screamed until there was no breath left in her lungs. She screamed until the earth beneath her began to crumble and give way.

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