Page 171 of The Eye of the Fifth
In Memoriam
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Gallena’s Temple, Nythanor.
Kyra.
Kyra ran toward death.
Toward the burning beast that was so scaldingly hot, the thousands of years of compacted ice beneath him was turning glassy. Melting.
That beast was Gedeon. Encased in a cocoon of his own barbaric power, ravaging him from the inside out. His mouth was open, screaming into the night.
Nausea hit Kyra like a sudden storm.
She couldfeelhis agony. Not the pain itself, but she knew he was breaking. Knew he had lost himself to his power, knew the agony was eating him alive.
Naal’s cool wind whipped her cheeks as it shot past her in an attempt to calm the blaze, to cool that which was set to destroy. Beside her, Nysari nocked an arrow to her bow, expression deadly. ‘Take back the order, Naal! He’ll destroy the city!Take back the order!’
Kyra ripped the bow from Nysari’s slender fingers, snapped it over her knee and threw the broken parts at the Eternal’s feet.
She didn’t wait for Nysari’s reaction before sprinting toward Gedeon.
Naal shouted after her. She pressed on. Kawai grabbed her wrist. She shoved him to the ground.
She pressed on.
Nothing else mattered. No one else mattered. Nothing and no one but Gedeon.
The sheer heat of the blaze was astounding. It should have singed the hair from her eyebrows, should have melted her skin into dripping wax. But there was a ward around her, holding strong against the flames, like another layer of skin atop her own, shielding her from harm.
Eyes squinting through the blaze, Kyra didn’t stop until she saw him. There, on his knees with his head thrown back, his chest open to the night above. He was no longer screaming.
As though there was no breath left, nothing left inside.
Her own knees hit the ice hard as she flung herself in front of him, hands gripping his head, pulling his gaze down to her.
The whites of his eyes had turned wholly black. Nothing but consuming darkness stared back at her now. No starlight winked in those inky oceans. Just soulless black, unseeing and unending.
‘Gedeon,’ she whispered, her voice barely audible over the roaring fire.
No one answered.
The flaming cocoon began to flicker and falter, closing in on them, as its power source began to fail. Gedeon’s head sagged forward, and as his previously racing pulse dipped, she felt him start to slip away.
‘No… no,NO!’
Fear as she had never known rushed her entire being.
She could not lose him. Would not lose him.
There was only one thing to do. And she knew she was the only one in any life, on any plane of existence, who could do it.
Reaching for his hand, she pressed his ice-cold palm to her chest, covering it with her own, and instinctively delved to the depths of the pit within, where her sun magic lay unused and slumbering.
Willing it to come forth. Willing it to obey.
For once… it listened.
