He let her go and stepped forward.
Elena gasped, but he did not hear her. He did not see her limp body crash to the floor or the light fading from her eyes as he stood before his god and reached.
“My son,” the Serpent crooned.
He touched Her scales. Suddenly, heat—white-hot, electric—zipped up his spine. The Serpent screeched, shadows exploding in shards of black and silver. But there wasn’t triumph or euphoria in its voice.
There waspain.
A deep, heart-wrenching agony gripped Samson and twisted viciously. He howled, doubling over.
Meanwhile, the god thrashed, slamming against the wall, the ceiling. Meanwhile, the mountain shook as if it was not stone but water, and a rock had cracked its still surface.
Meanwhile, Elena lay curled at his feet, his name strangled upon her lips.
Samson felt something integral break then. A splintering.
He saw two things at once: Elena before a great fire that spoiled, a darkness growing within its core.
And a metal coffin with a lone figure, someone at once horrible and familiar. Samson feltwrongupon seeing it, as if he was trespassing on some ancient god’s sleep.
But then the god stirred.
Two beautiful, awful golden eyes snapped open.
The Phoenix laughed, and Samson screamed.
CHAPTER 72
It began, as always, with the desert.
Dunes as high as mountains rolled out across the horizon, scraping the sky as if to catch all the stars. Oases sparkled within valleys. The sand was warm beneath his feet. Soft, as if he were bouncing off pillows.
The desert sighed, and he turned to see that the sky had darkened in the west. Night approached, suddenly and then all at once.
Strange beasts stalked through the terrain, their dark muzzles flecked with blood. Shadows grew where oases once lounged. They cut down the dunes with a strange, vicious hunger, but he felt no fear. Shadows, and even the beasts of the night, were a part of the desert.
The wind kissed his cheek, as if nudging him to look. In the north, he saw three figures. A man and two girls. A father and his daughters.
Shadows pooled around them, the sand around them oddly slick and wet. It was only when he peered closer that he noticed it was soaked with blood too.
A great blaze flared before them all, red and blue and gold and every color imaginable. In the inferno, he saw the faces of people he did not recognize but had the unshakable feeling that he had known long ago. He saw the world as it began. With a spark, a roar. He saw how it died. And he saw it repeat, again and again. The inferno grew taller, but the shadows did not draw back. They leapt into the blaze, and it bucked, hissing. Suddenly, a daughter fell. The other cried. The old man fell to his knees, but the deal was done, the sacrifice complete.
The blaze morphed, and he saw the colors seep away until something dark and terrible and horriblyotherappeared before them.
It reached, and he knew then of fear.
The abyss was deep and endless. It stretched before him, around him, past him, into the unknown future. He traveled mindlessly. There was no one beside him in this long, terrible deep. And the weight of that realization eventually overwhelmed him. He sank, the fabric of the abyss indenting around his knees. The long dark stared back at him, and he could bear it no more. He bowed his head, closed his eyes.
It was then that he knew of loneliness.
They came slowly, like flits of sunlight through a net, brushing his consciousness.
The memories of her.
Her leaning into his hand, his thumb against her cheek. Her standing on a dune, her shoulders outlined by the sun. Her brown eyes bright with fervor, with fire.
Stay with me. Fight with me.
