Page 458 of Commanding Scythe and Sky

Seconds.

I would have seconds to get inside the tunnel and close the door. Prayed Fletcher was ready. Prayed Cora would get there just ahead of me. That they wouldn’t close me out.

Ragged inhales kept me moving as I bounced off the damn doorframe. Only as that gaping maw of the tunnel came into view did I dare a glance backward. A gasp lodged in my throat—towering and horned. This was no petty tormentor. They’d sent some upper-hierarchy nightmare after me.

The moment my feet hit stone, I whirled, dug my nails into the shelf, yanking it into place with a screech. The thing roared a beat before it collided with the other side.

A scream tore through me as it was ripped from my hands. A gaping maw layered in razor-sharp teeth roared at me as I threw my hands up—freeing another burst of sunlight. It screamed. I ran, suddenly unspeakably grateful for the terrifyingly narrow passageway. Could that thing follow us? I wasn’t going to wait and find out.

“Run!!” I yelled down the spiral stairs, praying they were fleeing. Praying they’d do as I’d fucking told them. Not that I could say the same godsdamn thing.

I reached the bottom platform, sucking down a ragged inhale and straining my ears. I didn’t have to listen long to hear the snorts and chuffs, the heavy footfalls as the beast worked to squeeze down the stairs.

Gasping for air, I returned to a run, with no sign of Cora or Fletcher.

“Come on, Blythe,” I wheezed, urging my feet to move faster, to put more distance between me and that thing.

My chest constricted, aching enough that I swayed, a hand lashing out to brace against the wall.

I was on the ground.

Knees screaming.

Mind spinning.

Mouth agape.

My hands flew to my chest—a stinging buzzing sensation beneath my solar plexus. Pain—distant, almost in memory.

Breathless.

Agonizingly breathless.

The world tilted and swayed, as though all the energy in the universe were being dragged backward into a vacuum.

I was crying.

Bent over my knees on the stone floor of the tunnel, mouth open in a soundless scream as my very essence was shredded to pieces. My shaking arms wrapped around my torso, as if they could hold together the sacred ropes being torn apart. By the time I could pry my eyes open to suck down a rattling breath, my face was covered in tears, my airways clogged with snot, saliva wetting my lips as I sobbed.

Sobbed into my knees, raising a trembling hand to wipe the back of it over my mouth like that could erase the agony of that bond—that one constant—winking out. Gone. He was gone.

“No.” A broken croak burned through my throat—for the man I knew, the one who liked home makeover shows, the one who loved nothing more than a plate of fucking Alfredo. The one who kept. Fucking. Saving me. No matter how much I hated him—no matter how much I knew I had to hate him, he kept coming for me. He kept…

Some kind of animal cry echoed off the walls. Mine, I thought.

A cry for all the things he should’ve been. All the things we should’ve been.

If he hadn’t been born to this horrible family… If he hadn’t betrayed Mags…

It morphed into a scream as I was lifted to my feet, my arms wrenched backward into rough hands and then died in my throat.

Fitting, I supposed, as I was half dragged up the stairs and through the maze of halls, that neither of us would make it out alive.

Fitting that when the jeering men struck me with fists and words, it couldn’t reach me.

Because he was gone.

He’d left me here.