I seethe through a torn and rattling breath as he pries his fingers around the diadem again, this time jerking almost hard enough to rip me from the spear.
The piece cracks free, like a barely calcified scab not yet ready to fall off, but a sure sign I’m no longer a viable host. That the metal parasite recognizes my baby as a better, juicer feast for it to suck from.
Because I’mdying.
Tyroth looks down at my daughter squirming, crying in his arms, and I’m forced to watch in fading horror while he presses the diadem against her tiny brow.
Sensing her presence, the metal filaments curl in, bending to fit her shape before they latch on. Like a claw.
Her responding squeal threatens to rip out my heart, the sound more painful than the mortal wound that’s draining life from me.
“Rest easy with the knowledge that she’ll never know what a filthy whore you are,” Tyroth mutters, passing me a final seething look before he shakes his head and turns for the door, breaking my view of Kyzari.
I scream, but no sound comes out.
I thrash, but not a single limb moves.
Then I realize I never told Kyzari I love her, and my soul shatters like a fallen moon, my heartstrings fraying.
Snapping.
Slátra’s roar rattles the palace. Morphs into a pained lament that echoes in my aching heart as it lurches through its final, drudging beat—
And I fall into a darkness that knows no end.
Elluin’s consciousness is ripped from Slátra’s heart like an artery torn free, leaving a gaping hole that weeps and throbs. Immeasurable pain branches through her chest cavity, as though it came away with chunks of flesh.
Bits of bone.
Strings of veins.
An agony she’s only felt twice before, when she lost her mate, and when her little Allume took to the sky and laid herself to rest.
Slátra roars so loud her ancestors rattle in the big black, thrashing her wings against the howling wind—consumed by wild, gnashing rage.
She whips forward. Clamps down on the Moltenmaw’s neck—the final of the three beasts that kept her from her Precious Little One for too long. She tears out the buck’s throat, blood spraying as she releases his heavy body from her clawed grip. An act that would usually bring her great sadness—felling a dragon spurred to battle by the sadistic greed of fae folk—but Slátra’s heart is not whole anymore.
Its final reason for beating, gone.
Slátra doesn’t need her vision to sense the direction of the palace, each milky speckle in her eyes the flaring consciousness of distant kin helping her sketch the shape of the world. Even without them, the frantic Air Goddess is making enough sounds to render things in pristine detail, lashing against the heartbreaking contours of it all.
The fallen dragons.
The discord.
The death.
Slátra collides with the palace claws first, gouging into the eaves and walls built to withstand the might of a dragon. They crumble beneath her rabid grip as she clambers toward Elluin’s bloody scent, soured by the agony of her final moments.
Coming to the open entryway, Slátra tears big hunks from the structure. Ripping into it like a fresh kill. With a flick of her head, another dwelling-sized chunk plummets toward the city beneath, not that she cares where it lands. Caring only that she must safely reach her Precious Little One, Elluin’s dying thoughts a raging echo in Slátra’s heart. A tragedy she vows to remedy with every bit of her being.
She wedges her claw, shoulder, and head through the jagged hole, sniffing. Scenting everything that has come to pass since she was chased from Elluin’s nestside.
She reaches for her body—
The high-pitched wails of Elluin’s young punch a splinter in her soul.
Snarling, she whips her head toward the sound, sniffing the male clutching the little one in a defiant, greedy embrace.
