My breath. My blood. The noise. The smoke itself stopped its lazy wandering in the air.
Blood trickled out of his mouth as he tried to speak. Those little gray specks in his eyes were somehow brighter against the dark opening of the archway.
Bonscaíh, he mouthed, right as the hooked end of the spear embedded itself into his bleeding abdomen, and he was yanked through the archway and into the waiting darkness beyond.
My senses reeled as the sounds and scent of chaos seemed to flood back into the cave.
My eyes were locked on the sheet of darkness as that little tendril of wind connecting me to Astraeus weakened by the second.
Dying.
Lord Astraeus was dying. Kellan was dying.
The air oath between us began to diminish as his life force slipped away. My lips buzzed as my body began to succumb to shock, but my mind stayed focused on that black tunnel of nothing.
My hand raised toward its opening, that small bit of air twisting around my arm and out of my being as it followed the man dying at its other end. The Starling Sentry, whose power would end all or bless all.
Bonscaíh.
Shadow. Was that really what it meant?
I’d been given all these names. The titles spun wildly through my mind as I continued to stare at the open archway. Death Digger. Queen of Darkness. Tynan’s Accepted. Bonder. Bonscaíh.Angel.
The last word dripped with irony and shame. It crashed against my intrinsic nature. Against who I knew I was in the marrow of my bones, of who I’d become. The man who’d given me that name had a firm grip on my arm as he hauled me away from the stone walkway leading to the gate.
But I was no angel.
I wasDeath.
I blinked once, a moment of clarity blossoming in the fog that had drifted into my mind as that last bit of air flitted around my fingertips.
Bayne growled as I tried to twist out of his grasp. His fingers dug into the flesh of my forearms. Thunder echoed inside the cavern, the stone floor rumbling as Tiberius stormed toward me. Without thinking, my dark shield had formed, throwing Bayne back as his fingers ripped through my skin.
My hand laced through Tiberius’s mane as I launched onto his back, and we galloped toward the archway of darkness, to theVael Lacrima: the Gate of the World.
We are Death.
Two more strides.
The stone edges of the archway disappeared as we leaped into darkness.
