Page 154 of Under the Iron Sky

She finally looked at him then. Not a hint of fear or malice shone on her face, only eerie calm. Acceptance. “I know.”

Ikarus tried to pull himself free, hissing as the Links burned his flesh. He reached for a thread of his magic, to phase, desperately tried to pull even a flicker of something—anything—to get him out of here.

Nothing answered. The godsdamned cuffs around his wrists saw to that. With them on, he might as well have been a human.

She descended the steps, watching him struggle, watching him try to hold his breath so as not to breathe in the air that was slowly shutting his organs down one by one.

It was already seeping in. He could feel it warming his skin. Making his heart race and race and race, speeding against his ribcage so fast it was surely going to explode any second now.

“I understand, you know,” she said quietly, the softest she’d ever spoken to him. “Why you’ve done everything you’ve done—why it’s so important for you to be as ruthless as you are. You’ve lost so many people that you’ll burn down the world and everyone in it to keep the ones you have left safe—but I—”

She knelt in front of him. “I can’t do this anymore, Ikarus,” she said. There was a tremor in her voice. “I’ve been fighting this war for so long … I could live with being the monster haunting your people’s nightmares, but I can’t be a monster to my own. I will not. Even if it means dying here.”

“You can’t do this!”

“I already have.”

The rune in the wall began to pulse. The fifteen-second warning. The countdown to every guard stationed here that the shield had been down for too long and that was all they had left to either get their helmets back on or put the shields back before they choked to death.

Ikarus could feel it starting to take hold now. His throat felt scratchy, and that tingling sensation spreading across his chest was starting to burn.

“This will not be the end,” he threatened, teeth bared, because what else was there to do? “I will find you in the next life, in every life, and torture you for eternity! You do this, and you will never be rid of me!”

He didn’t even know if such places were real, if there was any type of existence after death or if everything just faded to black and that was that. He didn’t care. He’d make an afterlife just to find her. He’d haunt her like a vengeful shadow, choking her every breath. The two of them, fighting for eternity.

Five seconds left.

Four.

Three.

“Go to hell!” It was the only thing he could think to say.

Ikarus closed his eyes, and the last thing he heard before the rune stopped pulsing, his kiss goodbye before he was finally carted away from this life, was her voice.

“I’ll see you there.”

53

Death did not come.

Soraya waited for it. She was ready, had been from the moment Ikarus put her under this awful Hex for the first time.

She waited. And waited.

But it never came.

Ikarus stared at her. She stared back at him. When was the last time one of them had blinked or taken a breath?

“What’s happening?”

Ikarus’s throat worked. “I … don’t know.”

“Do you feel any different?”

“No. I thought … I thought I did but it’s passed now.”

Soraya glanced at the rune in the wall, then the air above the crack, both lacking the red glow of magic. The shield had been down for almost three minutes now—so how was Ikarus still alive?