Page 100 of Veradel
It feels like time has rewound and reversed itself. NowI’mthe one chasinghimthrough the rosebushes, up the stone staircase to the next terrace above us. And instead of streaks of sunset filtering through the clouds, it’s light from the crackling flames that illuminates my path.
The antivenom must have dissolved more of the Wall, because everything past the garden, stretching from left to right as far as I can see, spits sparks into the night sky, smoke unfurling in great, black plumes. I underestimated just how well it would work. Heat blows into my face, but I don’t slow down as I chase Arad up, up, and up.
“You can run!” I call after him, still keeping my promise—still refusing to give him the satisfaction of uttering his name out loud. “But I will catch you!”
I chase him through the fountains and hydrangeas on the second terrace.
“You can hide, but I will find you!”
Past the hyacinths and statues of old Chosen Ones on the third.
“You can scream, but no one will hear you!”
In fact, I’m pretty sure nobody would heareitherof us scream, what with the crackling, snapping flames so close to catching the Blood Moon Palace on fire. Briefly, I wonder if it’s possible for a vampire’s marble skin to melt off…
And then we’re on the topmost terrace, where the people who have turned to stone are crammed together, crumbling and fading. Arad finally swishes around to turn and face me.
His arm around the statue of my mother.
“What are you doing?” I ask, screeching myself to a halt.
Arad’s entire face gleams wickedly, orange and red in the flickering firelight. He presses his head into my mother’s frozen cheek, as if he’s whispering against her ear. “I daresay her death would be irreversible if I…” He runs a single nail down her stone neckline, sending an explosion of fury through every atom in my body. But the meaning is clear:
If I move a single step closer, he’ll break my mother into too many pieces to fix.
“What’s your plan?” I ask incredulously, not daring to move a muscle despite my tone. “You obviously can’t get past that Wall of fire, so how are you planning on running away?”
“Running away?” he scoffs, his nose scrunching. “Oh, no. I’m not running away from this empire I’ve built.”
“All the other Guardians are dead,” I say flatly.
Not technically true—their hearts aren’t yet burned, but it’s not going to be a hard thing to do with all this fire everywhere.
Arad, however, waves a moon-white hand through the air.
“I don’t need the other Guardians. I’m still going to kill the dogs all on my own, just like I killed them five hundred years ago.” His voice reaches a pitch bordering on insanity, and his grip tightens on my mother’s statue until she wobbles. “But this time, I won’t bother with the formalities of a Choosing. I’ll drink from whomever I want,whenever I want, and then I will discard them immediately instead of wasting years letting them wither away to stone. And there will be nobody around to stop me, Saskia, because you will either die or join me.”
Behind him, the spikes on the Wall break away, crumbling into ashes. Someone howls.
I tighten my hands into fists at my sides and spit, “I willneverjoin you. That’s a promise—and you know I always keep my promises,Guardian.”
Arad’s smile flickers over his fangs. Those crimson eyes tighten with the kind of loathing only someone who loathes themselves can achieve.
“Suit yourself.”
It happens so fast, I don’t have time to blink.
Arad’s arm lashes out and knocks my mother’s statue over.
A lifetime of lullabies and hugs and soft soothing flashes before my eyes as she tips, her eyes locking with me one more time before her stone figure crashes against the ground and shatters into several shards right in front of me.
My scream of horror lodges in my throat, suffocating me, making me double over as if grief itself kicked me in the stomach. Because this is it. All this time I worried she was dead, and now she actually is. The antivenom won’t work on fractured pieces.
But I hit my knees and crawl toward her now, sobbing her name, begging her to come back anyway.
So many things I would fix if I could. Say if I were able. All of those moments I wish I could get back. I wouldn’t take them for granted. But now, this is the end.
Right as I grab her dismembered stone hand, Arad kicks me in the shoulder, flipping me onto my back and planting his foot on my chest. My tears blur my vision of him towering over me, looking so smugly pleased with himself that vomit rises up my throat.
