Page 150 of Broken Veil
A girl pulled out her phone and checked something on the glowing screen.
“It’s the internet,” Carys murmured. “Social media. That’s what she worships.”
There were humans with feet that seemed to sink into the earth and humans with angry red skin and ears that literally steamed. Nature lovers. People who lived in pure anger.
I would not mind being a tree. But the red-skinned humans are dangerous. Be wary of them. They will ignite with the smallest spark.
Sprinkled among the spirits and what Carys could only think of as demons were familiar marks of other gods. Crosses and crescent moons, prayer beads or the scent of incense.
“It’s everyone,” Carys said. “It’s not just people with no religion or belief. She’s enchanted all of them.”
Not all of them are enchanted. Some are simply… interested.
“Either way,” Carys whispered, “they’re giving her attention, and attention?—”
Means power.
Godrik led them out of the forest and into a wheat field where deep paths had been laid down through the nodding golden heads.
You have formed your own wing.
“What?”
Though you are a nêrys ddraig, you were never trained as I was. These people—the wolf, the fae, your friends, along with Cadell—they are your wing.
Carys smiled a little bit, glancing at Cadell.
He nodded.
He hears me too.
I do, old friend.
Don’t use that voice, lizard. You act like I’m dead.
Youaredead.
Only from one perspective.
“Okay, you two are going to have to stop having conversations in my head,” Carys whispered, “because it’s going to get way too confusing.”
They stopped at the edge of the wheat field and looked back toward the forest at all the humans who were following them.
“I hate to say this,” Laura said as they watched the throngs of people all walking toward Cley Hill, “but this almost feels like a zombie movie.”
“You’re not wrong,” Carys said.
She lifted her eyes to Cley Hill in the distance, and the sky above it terrified her. She stumbled in the field.
Gods and goddesses of old.
Cadell rushed over. “Nêrys?”
“The sky is broken,” Carys whispered. “Don’t tell the others, but there’s something wrong with the sky.”
I have never seen anything like this, Cadell.
Where stars should have shone over the peak of the hill, instead there was a dark, blood-red gash, and no one—not the humans trudging toward it and not even the magical creatures by her sides—seemed to realize it was there.
