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“Do you trust me?” Calem asked.
“So long as you’re not about to ask me to leave you behind, then yes.” My steed shifted impatiently beneath me, responding to the anxiety pulsing through my body.
“Run.” And for the first time in my life, and quite possibly the last, I witnessed Calem flee from the promise of battle. He dug in his heels, ushering his stallion into a dead sprint toward the stone path just past the Lost.
The mage lunged. Bolts of shadows rained down from the sky and struck around Calem. Sand erupted in a volatile shower of black grains as he guided his steed left and right, dodging most of the Lost’s assault. One bolt slammed into his shoulder and he winced, just as another tendril speared the flank of his mount. Shadows dispersed at the point of contact, and before I realized I’d done it, I’d sent a wave of my own tendrils across the beach to reseal the wound and keep his stallion moving.
I charged after him with my beasts at my side, and the Lost roared. “You cannot escape me!”
Again, we raced down the stone path, and the mage pursued us. Kost’s head bobbled against the space between my shoulders, but I could still feel the shaky skate of his breath against my neck. Alive. I had to keep it that way.
The Lost’s shadows carried him at a breakneck speed, and he flew beside us through the gray expanse. His erratic tendrils, charged with a foreign magic more powerful than any I’d ever encountered, shocked the very mist around us. Thousands of tiny, pale-white volts arced through the air and slammed into our bodies. A scream pushed its way through my lips as red-hot welts formed against my skin. When the charge subsided, so too did the mist, revealing a tumultuous, rocky expanse dotted with barren trees. The earth was covered in a layer of dew, and pale light reflected harshly off the glistening surfaces.
“Hurry!” Calem shouted over his shoulder.
The Lost shrieked and sent a volley of lances toward Calem. Toward my brother.Brother.For that’s what he was. Both Calem and Ozias had stayed by my side throughout this mess, and I wouldforever consider them family. And Kost… He would one day be myanam-cara—the other half of myself—if we made it out of this.
Whenwe made it out of this.
Focusing on the threads of power connecting me to my shadow creatures, I commanded them to peel off and attack. A flock of angry crows slammed into each other, their shadows unstitching and rethreading to form a dragon with a wingspan twice as long as my body.
With a heady roar, it reared itself up and extended its wings wide, taking every hit intended for Calem. The final spear was too much for my power, and it dispersed in a fragmented wisp of smoke, but it’d done its job. Calem was safe.
And the Lost was furious.
He rained another series of shadow bolts down upon us, and again my beasts merged to protect us. But their numbers were waning, and so was my power. A cold sweat had broken out along my hairline, and I could feel the clamminess of my own skin against my collar. Blood oozed from my wounds as all my magic was focused on attacking rather than healing, and a quiet, dangerous ringing had started in my ears.
I couldn’t hold on much longer, and I had no idea where we were going. There was nothing in front of us save the endless path crowded by tumultuous, jagged terrain.
And then my gaze caught on a peculiar glint of silver a short distance away. There, hanging in the air where the path came to a sudden and abrupt end, was a rip in the sky. And in that rip, I could just glimpse a familiar realm. The real shadow realm, the one every undead had access to. Not this awful hellscape we’d known nothing about.
Hope crested in me, and I pushed my mount faster. If we could get back to the shadow realm, we could get back to our world. We could escape the Lost. We could save Kost.
A shadow bolt struck me through the abdomen, and I keeled over against my steed. Stars bloomed behind my eyes and the world swam. If not for the serpent tightened around Kost’s and my waists, I would’ve fallen to the earth. Calem shouted something I couldn’t decipher, and then a volley of shadow blades soared through the air above my head.
“Gaige!” He’d pulled back on his stallion to ride beside me.
Everything blurred and my stomach knotted. Clenching my jaw tight, I forced myself to meet his gaze. I couldn’t speak. My tongue had swollen, and my throat had dried, and one by one I felt the cords snap between my shadow beasts and me. As quickly as my muddled brain would allow, I found the threads to mine and Calem’s mounts and gripped them with everything I had. They pulled taut against my consciousness but held, and some of the nausea passed.
The Lost snarled, and then his head snapped to the rip in the realm. Something shifted in his power, and I caught sight of claws pushing through his hands and wings emerging from his back. They beat furiously against the shadows and moved him even faster, pushing him ahead of us.
“What in the actual fuck?” Calem shouted.
The Lost landed before us with such force that the realm trembled. Black tendrils spiderwebbed across the ground from the impact, snaking out from his feet and lancing into the earth to create canyons in the rocks. A shock wave slammed into us, and all at once the ties to my steeds snapped. My shadows fled, and the three of us crashed into the ground. The force of the hit jostled Kost awake, and he moaned as he managed to pull himself to his knees. Looping his arm over my shoulders, I slowly helped him stand. Calem was already on his feet, and with one quick motion, he summoned a wall of shadow blades. They quivered with anticipation as Calem stared down the Lost.
But the mage was far from fazed.
“You will not leave. I have not claimed what is mine.” Brutal tendrils lashed at the space between us and him, measuring the distance.
Calem didn’t bother to respond. He released his hold on the blades and they sang through the air, speeding toward their target with impeccable accuracy. Their sheer numbers gave me hope. At leastoneof them had to make it. I wasn’t sure if Kost had been able to land any blows, but neither Calem nor I had been able to do so. The Lost had always blocked our attacks with his own magic.
And yet again, he managed to do the same. As Calem’s barrage of blades neared the Lost’s body, columns of shadows erupted from the earth to intercept his assault. Each time one of Calem’s weapons embedded itself in the Lost’s defenses, both sets of shadows went up in wispy smoke. But Calem never stopped. He kept fashioning more and shooting them across the path, taking one step closer with every new advance.
The Lost moved furiously, thrusting his arms this way and that with mind-numbing speed to construct more defenses, only for Calem to tear them down. Kost and I inched along a breath behind our brother. I wanted to help, but my body was already screaming as I shouldered Kost’s weight. A heady ache had settled behind my eyes, and it was all I could do to keep moving.
A scream ruptured through the whoosh of shadows, and my gaze snapped to the Lost. A single blade of Calem’s had slipped through the mage’s flurry of columns and struck him in the side. Relief lit a fire beneath the small dose of hope I’d been harboring since we caught sight of the rip in the realm. We could do this. We just had to slow him down. We… My brows drew together at the same time Calem sucked in a breath.
The Lost didn’t bleed. Shadows pooled out of him like writhinginsects and dropped to his feet. He clamped his hand over the wound in an attempt to slow the spray of darkness, but tendrils leaked through his fumbling fingers and crawled down his legs.
