When I turned back to the horsemen, they were rolling along the wall and bashing each other against it. Debris rained down from above, and the tunnel quaked so much that a jagged crack raced across the ceiling.
This had to end before they brought the entire place down on top of us.
Running toward them, I watched as Wrath spun and lifted War off the ground. He bashed him into the wall three times before the rock gave way and War’s body indented the stones. Jagged fissures ran across the floor as fragments fell from the ceiling and shattered on the ground.
I sprinted in and out of the cascading debris, but some of it still bounced off my shoulders and head.No. No. No!The word ran in a constant loop through my mind as I closed in on them.
And then they were spinning again, and War was hammering Wrath into the wall. Pulling back the sword, I plunged it into War’s back as the wall behind Wrath gave way. I was still running as the broken blade pierced through flesh and buried itself in sinew.
The sword didn’t go as far into him as it would have if it still possessed a honed tip, but it caused War’s back to bend, and he released a guttural shout. I crashed into him as the wall behind Wrath gave way. Still holding onto Wrath, War fell forward. My momentum and my grip on the hilt made it impossible for me not to follow them.
I kept hold of the sword as darkness consumed us. War was only inches away from me, but I couldn’t see him.
As I fell, a clawing, rending certainty tore at me. My heart stopped beating, my body became encased in a sheen of icy sweat, and a scream reverberated in my head. Wind whipped at my hair and clothes as the darkness engulfed me.
A cold certainty knotted in my stomach as I fell faster. I’d followed them over the edge ofthedarkness that had haunted me for centuries.
Once this fall came to an end, I would finally have the answers I’d always dreaded. Once this fall came to an end, I would find myself at the mercy of whatever lay below, and I suspected it was my death.
Chapter Twenty-One
Wrath
I didn’t knowhow far we fell until I hit the ground. It felt like we traveled hundreds, if not thousands, of feet before coming to an abrupt halt. The impact was bad enough to crack a few ribs, but War’s body crashing down on top of me added insult to injury. And then, the smaller impact of Bale caused me to grunt as another rib gave way.
She shouldn’t be here with us. I didn’t know where we were, where the breaking wall had dumped us, but it wasn’t safe here for her. The idea of her in danger renewed my strength and determination to end this with War.
Though every part of me ached and my ribs protested any movement, I grasped War’s head as he planted his hands on my chest and started to push himself up. I twisted it to the side and listened to the echoing snap rebounding off what sounded like more tunnel walls.
Paralyzed, War went limp against me. I plunged my fingers into the hole in his throat. It had already started to heal, but I dug my fingers in and tore it further open as I lifted it and ripped his head from his shoulders.
Grasping his head under his chin, I threw it aside and listened as it thudded and rolled into the shadows. A shifting in the weight on top of me alerted me that Bale was scrambling off War a second before she landed beside me. Lifting War’s body, I shoved it aside and pushed myself into a seated position.
Inhaling deeply, I took a minute to steady myself as my power remained out of my control. Gradually, I was able to contain it again while I pondered what I’d done. I felt no remorse over killing War. He had to die to keep Bale safe, and I liked him about as much as I liked dirt, but there would be consequences for my actions.
I couldn’t return to my fellow horsemen. When they learned what I’d done, they would kill me, just as I would have killed one of them for doing the same thing. We all despised each other, but we couldn’t have someone we didn’t trust living with us, and I was that someone.
I didn’t miss any of the fallen horsemen; other than missing their abilities and strengths, I was glad they were dead. When this was over, I’d planned to leave them, but I hadn’t planned on them hunting me.
And if they learned the truth, they would hunt me until the day they died. There was no love between us, we didn’t care when one of us fell, but this was a matter of principle; I’d killed one of our own for a paliton, and it didn’t matter she was my Chosen. I would have hunted one of them if they’d done this.
However, that was a problem for later. We had the bigger issue of learning where we were and getting out of here to deal with first.
I turned to search the shadows, but the darkness was so complete it was impossible to see anything. I knew Bale sat beside me because her arm brushed mine, but I couldn’t see her.
Lifting my hand, I willed my fire to life, and flames sprang from my fingertips. The small influx of light revealed War’s headless body and his black blood spilling across a golden floor. My brow furrowed at the sight of that floor, and I lifted my gaze to the golden walls surrounding us.
Beside me, Bale shuddered, but I didn’t think it had anything to do with the body. She’d seen enough death and delivered enough of it to others to be affected by the sight of a body.
Lifting my hands, I let the flames play over the golden walls stretching as far as I could see. To the right and above us, the ceiling was well over a thousand feet up. The gold spread up to the hole we’d fallen through and further up the wall until I couldn’t see it anymore.
The hole we’d fallen through was a good five hundred feet overhead. The wall was so smooth there was no way we could scale it to escape this place the same way we entered.
I studied the hole for some sign of Zorn, but he didn’t appear. War’s horse would have turned to ash the second War died, which meant Zorn would be okay. An extension of us and our powers, our horses couldn’t sustain life without us, and they were a big part of who we were. Knowing that Zorn was safe eased some of the tension from my shoulders. He had to leave the cavern before Death and Pride returned; I would find him again once we were out of here.
When I moved my hand to the left, the tunnel narrowed, and a golden ceiling, only twenty feet up instead of hundreds, came into view, as did War’s head. Lying on its cheek with its mouth ajar, War’s sightless eyes held mine.
I smiled at the fucker who probably assumed he would easily kill me. He’d learned the hard way which of us was more powerful; I suspected that before all this was over, my fellow horsemen would also learn that truth.
