Another roar, and deep whuffing sounds grow louder …louder,a different, more destructive force pumping through me.
I refuse to watch him die again.
“Stay right here,” I murmur, planting a kiss on his forehead. I untangle from him, tuck him beside the rock wall the table is pushed against, offer a warm smile that brightens his tear-filled eyes, then turn and shove past the tablecloth.
Unfurling, I squint against the midday glare.
Lush trees cast a dappled shadow on the forest glade that’s dusted with lemon-yellow flowers and fluffy fronds of grass swaying in the wind. But the seven slate gray Vruks prowling toward us muddies the view, their snarling maws dripping evidence of their hunger.
Astute, midnight eyes bounce between me and the table strewn with pots of paint.
We came here to paint in the sun.
They came here to kill.
No more.
Sizzling ire roots around the underside of my skin, searching for weak spots in my shell.
I stalk forward.
“You can’t have him.”
They snap at the air and prowl closer—spines arched and lips rolled back. Talons punch free from their paws.
Part of me wants to fold into a screaming ball at the sight, but that part is weak.
It dies a little every time I watch my brother die.
I grip the necklace caught around my throat like a noose. “You can’t have him.” I growl, voice laced with something dark and harrowing. A cruel smile kicks up the corner of my mouth.
My arm jerks down, snapping the chain.
The necklace falls from my fingers and thuds onto the ground.
Chaos explodes, vile and merciless.
A burst of black vines lash from the cracks in my porcelain skin. The noxious scribble scalds and severs—wild and cutthroat.
Murderous.
Snarls turn to whines that are music to my ears.
The beasts tuck tail and run, but they don’t get far.
They can’t have him.
The words repeat until I’m cold and empty, and the ugly snips off, leaving tender skin and a charred heart devoid of regret as I scan the sea of fleshy bits that reek of scorched death. The grass is burnt back to smoking nubs, the lemon-yellow flowers ash on the wind.
It’s all dead. Every last green bit as far as the eye can see … gone.
There’s a crackle of burning wood behind me, and I spin, breath catching when I see the table.
Afire.
The cloth is ash, the pictures gone, the paints sizzling puddles of color dripping off the sides.
I dash forward and grip a blazing wooden leg. The flesh on my palm melts as I flip the table, littering the air with a wake of fiery spindrift.
