No fucking thanks.
The god’s amusement.
I can’t hear it, but this time, it’s so profound I feel it.
I flip him the fucking bird as I release my wings and slow my free fall. I’m a rock, and there’s no space to fly, but it’s enough. Enough to fight gravity if only a little.
Before I drop through the massive opening, I catch myself on a small outcropping of stone, fingers digging into searing rock.
For a second—just a second—I hold.
But the god isn’t done with me yet. His power surges again, and I can’t fight like this—can’t defend myself while clinging to the wall.
Golden light floods the crevice, pouring into every inch. It hits me like a fucking sledgehammer.
I’m ripped free—thrown full force through the gate. The burn is brief. Brutal, but brief. Gone the second I pass through to the other side.
And of course, I’m not above Lucifer’s high-rise, or the twisted tower his son claims as his own, or even the black, endless mountains of lost souls.
No.
I’m over the lava pits. Blistering. Boiling. Hot enough to melt wing, flesh, muscle, and bone. Closer than they look, or I’m falling faster than I realize.
Either way, I don’t have long.
My wings are wrecked. Shredded. Useless. They won’t catch. Won’t lift me out of the fall.
Not that I’m focused enough to try.
Creatures crawl across the jagged black rock. Others monkey-leap from the stalactites hanging overhead that descend from the top of Hell, and the wailing cries of the wretched souls that huddle in droves on the shores of the pit are deafening.
It slams into my mind all at once—a tidal wave of sound, of desperation. I clutch my head, roaring as it tears through me. The decimal level of absolute lunacy rockets through my mind, and there’s no shutting it down.
Above ground, there’s a valve I can shut off, but here, there’s not, and I can’t shut it out.
Lazreth’s voice joins that of countless others.
Fly, goddamn it! Kahill—use those wings and get us the fuck out of here!
“I’m trying—I’m trying—” The words fracture as my thoughts splinter. “Fuck, I can’t think?—”
Too late.
My wings won’t extend, and below me, a lava bubble explodes. It splashes across wing jumps from feather to feather, racing to consume them all, and quickly trying to claim what’s left of me.
I spin—out of control—pinwheeling as if I’m a featherless chicken about to be cast into a furnace. The river surges up to meet me, and in no time, I fall like a stone into the hottest pit of Hell.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Heat of a Thousand Suns
Eridessa
Spending the day with Orán was a test of many things.
His ability to see the world through my eyes. Whether he could look upon my farm dwellers as more than abominations—whether he could recognize that here life is sustaining life, and whether he might come to understand them as I do: as creations of God, worthy of preservation.
I couldn’t save every species.
