Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty
P ain.
The world is blinding, endless pain.
I choke for air.
I gaze at the balcony several stories up, see the way they shout for me.
“Vastianna,” someone says—not below but inside my mind. The voice is lovely and feminine, soft as a drop of rain. But I can’t talk to her yet. It takes all the strength, all the willpower I have left, to tilt my head just so.
I have to know if it worked.
Illian lies a few yards away, his body broken and bent at odd angles, his face pancaked into stone. Blood runs from him like thinned-out paint, soaking the nearby grass.
It offers me the modicum of peace I needed, even as I feel myself fade away.
I no longer try to hold on.
Letting go feels like a relief.
Breath leaves me.
Pain leaves me.
And I feel myself die.