Page 72 of Children of Blood and Bone

Two.

Just one plank to go.You can do it. You didn’t come this far to die.I reach for the final panel.

“No!”

The plank snaps beneath my grip.

Time passes in an instant and an eternity. Wind whips at my back with fury, twisting me toward my grave. I close my eyes to greet death.

“Ugh!”

A thundering force crushes my body, knocking the air from my chest. White light wraps around my skin—Lekan’s magic.

Like the hand of a god, the strength of his spirit lifts me, propelling me into Tzain’s arms. I turn to face him just as the admiral breaks from his hold.

“Lekan—”

The admiral’s sword plunges through Lekan’s heart.

His eyes bulge and his mouth falls open. His staff drops from his hand.

Lekan’s blood splatters as it hits the ground.

“No!” I scream.

The admiral yanks out her sword. Lekan collapses, ripped from our world in an instant. As his spirit leaves his body, it surges into mine. For a moment, I see the world through his eyes.

—running through the temple grounds with the sêntaro children, a glee likeno other alight in his golden gaze—his body steadies as the mamaláwo inks every part of his skin, painting the beautiful symbols in white—his soul rips, again and again, traveling through the massacred ruins of his people—his spirit soars like never before as he performs his first and only awakening—

As the vision ends, one whisper endures, a word teetering through the blackness of my mind.

“Live,” his spirit breathes.“Whatever you do, survive.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

INAN

BEFORE TODAY,magic didn’t have a face.

Not beyond beggars’ tales and the hushed undertones of servants’ stories. It died eleven years ago. It only lived in the fear in Father’s eyes.

Magic didn’t breathe. It didn’t strike or attack.

Magic didn’t kill my ryders and trap me inside its grasp.

I peer over the ledge of the cliff; Lula’s body slumps, impaled on a jagged rock. Her eyes hang open in an empty stare. Blood stains her spotted coat. As a child I watched Lula rip through a savage gorillion twice her size.

In the face of magic, she couldn’t even fight.

“One…,” I whisper to myself, leaning away from the ghastly sight. “Two… three… four… five…”

I will the numbers to slow my pulse, but my heart only beats harder in my chest. There are no moves. No counterattacks.

In the face of magic we become ants.

I watch a line of the six-legged creatures until I feel something sticky under the metal heel of my boot. I scoot back and follow the crimson droplets to the maji’s corpse; blood still leaks from his chest.

I study him, really seeing the maji for the first time. Alive, he looked three times his actual size, a beast shrouded in white. The symbols thatcovered his dark skin glowed as he threw our ryders through the air. With his death, the symbols have vanished. Without them, he looks strangely human. Strangely empty.

---