The ground comes at us too fast.
Too slow.
Flung forward, I collide with the hard-packed earth, my lungs slamming into a state of paralysis. Mouth gaping, I try to move.
Breathe.
I look down my body to where Rhordyn’s crouched, snarling. The tattoos on his forearm pulse with a light that makes my eyes ache, and he heaves it back, makes a fist, then punches the ground—boring a crater into the soil that makes the world jolt.
The hairs on the backs of my arms lift, the air singeing with a shock of …something.
Something I’ve felt before.
On the pier.
There’s a deafeningboom, a blinding flash of light, and a punch of lightning rips down from the sky; a forked spear of silver threaded with a fracture of black. Everything rocks beneath us, and I’m battered by a cataclysmiccrackthat battles the ringing in my ears.
My gaze homes on the jagged cleft of glass now zigzagged through the ground, up through two soldiers paused midstep.
Their bows lifted, notched arrows pointed in our direction. Both glass statues bar a finger here, a nose and cheek there, the bits of remaining flesh weeping lines of blood thatdrip.
Drip.
Drip.
He …killedthem.
He turned them to glass.
The creature in my chest continues to squawk and flap and scream as I look at Rhordyn, and my breath catches.
Heart stills.
He’s hunched over my legs, head down, blood bubbling from his lips. His arms bend, dropping him lower, and I see he’s saddled with arrows both short and tall, thin and thick. Glossy lines of red leak from each gory puncture wound, dribbling.
My creature shreds at my ribs with its bramble claws, slashing so hard I think it might break through, darkness threatening to slit my skull.
More guards spill from the jungle, others retreating to the fringe, screaming orders, forming a line that moves in unison as they raise armed longbows, pointing them skyward. “Volley!” someone bellows over the thrashing storm.
Rhordyn groans, crawling forward. Covering me.
Entirely.
He lifts his head, locking eyes with mine as a cloud of arrows darken the rumbling sky. The aching muscle in my chest pinches, itchy pops flaring across my shoulder.
Up the side of my neck.
“No!”
My pained cry whittles between us, and he holds my stare as the arrows rain upon him.
I see each piercing sting in the twitch of his face muscles. Feel each brutal impale in the short, jagged puffs of breath upon my cheeks. Hear each sickening thud plowing through flesh and muscle and bone as he’s ripped apart in punctured increments.
For me.
My guts twist, heartstrings snap, tears slip free as his blood falls like rain. His eyes glaze, and he pulls a bubbling gasp, head falling between his bulging shoulders.
His right arm buckles slightly.
