“Don’t say that,” he growls, pushing away from me.
“They have to die,” I yell.
“No!” Farron screams, but he leaps into the fight, a torrent of red flames erupting from his hands. The corpses shudder, their skin charring, hair going up in embers. But they keep coming, walking through the fire as if it were cool rain.
I take a heaving breath, staring at the back of Farron’s head. He doesn’t understand.
They’re not his soldiers anymore. They didn’t choose this. They don’t want to bethis.
But I can’t make him understand. So I rush to his side, protecting his flank as he changes to a steaming wind, trying to push a path through the chaos of bodies.
“Dom! Billy!” I scream. I see a thatch of red hair to Farron’s right and yank on the shirt, pulling the twin tight to me, out of grasp of a corpse. It’s Dom, who immediately gets his hand axe up, buying us some time with three quick swipes at the crowd.
“Where’s Billy?” he gasps. “He was next to me.”
“Billy? Billy!” Farron screams.
I spin in a circle, blocking with my trident, and peer through the horde. In my peripheral, I spot another flash of red. Billy, walking backward, falchion gleaming as he defends against a charging corpse.
“Billy, stop!” I scream.
But it’s too late.
Billy blocks a sword strike, then takes a step back. There’s no ground beneath him.
His other foot slips, and he tumbles over the cliff’s edge.
49
Farron
There is noise all around. Metal clashing against metal. Themoan of my soldiers, fallen yet forced to walk. Dayton crying out my brother’s name.
But I hear only one sound.
Snap.
“Billy!” My voice is lost in the hiss of flames as orange fire envelopes my body. I fling myself over the cliff.
The propulsion of my blaze keeps me from free-falling as I search the dark and mist. There, sixty feet down. An outcrop of rock.
My brother.
Thatch of red hair. Freckled face. He’s lying on his back, limbs splayed, hands up and open. A maple leaf with the edges curled, fallen too soon from its branch.
I land beside him, flames extinguishing, and collapse to my knees. “Billy!”
His eyes are wide and glassy, and they dart around before they find my own. He doesn’t turn his head to look at me. A trickle of blood dribbles from his mouth.
“You…found me.”
“Of course I did,” I whisper, stroking his hair. “Of course.”
“I can’t…feel my…hands.”
His voice. So wet and raspy. So familiar. I know the cadence of this voice because I hear it in every nightmare. My mother’s voice, when her lungs were thick with blood.
No. No no no.
