Chapter 15
Fifteen
The instant we pierce the membranous barrier between worlds, the atmosphere fractures. Air itself seems to shatter like a pane of glass.
Cold. A marrow-freezing cold that sinks its teeth into my flesh and refuses to let go.
Colors and shapes twist and warp in impossible geometries. The landscape of the Void is a nightmarish hellscape, all jagged rock and roiling, noxious mists.
Falcen and I tumble through the air, our bodies twisting and contorting through the sky. We’re falling. My stomach’s being turned inside out, my very essence unraveling at the seams.
But their sky is different. It flares with hellish reds and oranges behind all the gray. I cling to Falcen, absolutely certain that this is how I perish.
He grunts when I wrap my arms around his neck and strangle him with my terror.
“I won’t let you fall!”
His shout is meant to assure me.
It doesn’t. I keep screaming. Verily Holbrook from the poor little town of Belgrave can’t handle being shot into the Void by an ancient, affronted nether drake who then ditched us.
Some base part of me registers Falcen’s hold on me traveling lower, his large hands cupping my buttocks before digging into my outer thighs and then hauling them up around his waist and yelling at me to hold on as tight as I can.
The curve of his groin presses up against mine.
It’s as hard as steel. A surge of electricity shoots from my center as his cock brushes up against my most precious area.
I release a surprised exhale, the scent of him, leather and freshwater, coupled with the length of him and how strong his arms are—
No, Verily. You are falling to your death. This is not the time for your sexual awakening.
And I make my biggest mistake yet. I catch him staring at me.
Falcen’s eyes are no longer blue or gold, but black. So black that his pupils have overtaken his irises.
“Stop. Moving,” he commands through clenched teeth. I somehow hear him perfectly over the rushing wind. “I refuse to have an erection while trying to save our lives.”
I’m so cold, yet the amount of blood that rushes to my core causes an inferno.
“You can’t fly!” I scream into his ear. This suddenly occurs to me. I don’t know much about the Elite, but I’ve never heard them sprout wings or do tricks in the air in battle, and Falcen certainly isn’t showing off that talent at the moment I need it most.
So what in Nox’s nethers are we to do?
I blame the Voidspawn. And Mara. And Falcen. They didn’t let me ask the many questions I wanted to before flinging me into an angry god’s sky.
The horizon tilts sideways, Falcen cutting through the charcoal clouds in a way that I hope is intentional.
I lift my face from the comfort of his neck to follow the direction of his gaze and let out a whimper. “You’re trying to put us into that?”
There’s another tear up ahead, this one more pinkish than purple around the edges, but just as black in the center.
He grunts his assent. “We make it through that tear, we’re out of here.”
“But we’re falling! How are we to defy gravity?”
“Because I simply can.”
I take a closer look at him through my loosened hair and the drying blast of wind that forces me to blink too much.
Falcen isn’t blinking. His eyes illuminate until the blue no longer exists. The lines around his mouth are tight with strain. The gold flickers, then dies, then comes alive again.
“Oh gods, you don’t have enough soul-magick,” I say hoarsely.
The line of his jaw cuts through his skin. “I have enough. I’ll get us through.”
He’s lying. The strain is evident in every line of his body. I should know, because I’ve become familiar with every line and curve of it.
Falcen’s drawing on reserves that are rapidly dwindling after bringing Mara to heel. And if he burns through his soul-magick completely...
Let me.
I jerk my chin back, my vision becoming unfocused as I peer inward. Little ember?
I help, it replies.
It all happens within seconds, because we’re falling, we’re dying, and there’s no time for a full conversation.
My head tilts as if under something else’s control, directed to the fast-approaching jagged, uneven ground.
To the things following us like a herd of antelopes in the wild, a large cluster of them waiting to peel us off the rocky floor and eat us.
I eat, it says.
The Voidspawn? I’m aghast. Terrified. No, no, that’s not right. Falcen said their souls are corrupt. Addictive and poisonous.
The Elite does not know what I can do.
And neither do I. But I do it, anyway.
I reach deep within myself to that place where the ember lives. It thrums eagerly, excited for what I’m about to do. I let my barriers drop, opening myself up to the tiny fire inside me. To the creatures below us, and how their resonance calls to me, a sweet melody that fills my mouth with saliva.
The immediate effect is devastating. The Voidspawn howl in agony as I rip their souls from their misshapen forms, even from this distance.
They flood into me, a torrent of power that scorches my veins and makes my head spin.
I’m dimly aware of Falcen cursing, and I pry my eyes open, noticing the emergence of his soul-glyphs creeping up his exposed skin like vines.
Except they’re not that beautiful azure that always manages to mesmerize me. They’re turning black.
The ember, my ember, is siphoning the Void souls into him.
You are novice, it explains. He is not.
Falcen’s body goes rigid against mine, his eyes flaring wide, and for a terrifying moment, I think I’ve killed him, overloaded his system like an idiot novice. But then he sucks in a shuddering breath, and his arms harden around me.
“Verily,” he groans. “What are you doing?”
“Helping,” I manage to gasp out. “I think. To get us … to that tear.”
My body convulses against Falcen’s as the foreign souls rage through me, setting every nerve ending alight with hellfire. I’m dimly aware of his hold digging bruises into my body as he holds me fast against the onslaught.
“Verily!” His voice is a distant sound, nearly lost in the maelstrom. “Stop! It’s too much!”
But I can’t stop. Stopping means our deaths. Stopping means failing Falcen. So I let the pain wash over me, let it scour me inside and out until I’m cut open and bleeding, and still I don’t relent.
The Void creatures are disintegrating now, their forms crumbling to ash as I consume them whole. The ember is a raging bonfire, devouring everything I feed it and cheering for more.
Falcen’s muscles tense and flex as the stolen souls flood his system. His glyphs start pulsing in time with my frantic heartbeats. They’ve gone higher than I’ve ever seen, up his temples, across his nose, around his eyes and turning him into something demonic.
His skin takes on an ashen pallor, dark veins spider-webbing across any clean section of skin the glyphs haven’t corrupted.
“F-Falcen?” I ask.
He shifts his grip on me, one arm banding across my back while the other cups the back of my head, cradling me against him. Then he angles his body toward the tear and pours on the speed.
The tear’s sheer size becomes evident as Falcen accelerates to inhuman speeds, our bodies a comet of darkness streaking across the infernal sky.
The Void souls crackle over his skin like piteous lightning, the energy I’ve looted for him threatening to tear him apart even as it propels us forward.
But it’s the look in his eyes that truly terrifies me. They’re no longer the striking blue I’ve come to know, nor even the unsettling black from moments ago. Now, they blaze with an unholy light, a sickening fusion of gold and crimson that speaks of something far worse than mere corruption.
He’s shaking. A pained groan escapes his clenched teeth, and my heart clenches in response. This is killing him. I’m killing him.
What have I done?
Success. My ember snickers before extinguishing.
Falcen’s head snaps back, a guttural roar tearing from his throat as the Void souls crest within him. For a heart-stopping instant, I think it’s going to rip him apart, burst out of him in a gory explosion of flesh and tainted magick.
But he masters it, bends it to his will with a snarl of defiance and a flex of iron will that sends heat flooding through my core even in the midst of the icy Void winds.
“Hold on,” he grits out in a voice I don’t recognize. Then he hurls us forward, straight into the tear’s gaping maw.
We punch through the membranous barrier, the transition from Void to world as jarring as I imagine the way my mother birthed me.
Sound and sensation slam into me like a physical force. Bright light sears my retinas, blinding after the oppressive gloom of the Void. The din of a hundred voices assaults my ears, a cacophony of shouts, laughter, and … is that the clatter of cutlery against plates?
BOOM.
We crash to the ground in a splinter of glass and wood and stone and fractures of marble, hitting the floor in a tangle of limbs and skidding across destroyed tiles.
Chairs and tables scatter in our wake. Food goes flying.
Yells and curses abound until we come to a stop, the dust cloud fading to reveal Falcen flat on his back with me sprawled on top of him.
And the people. Gods, the people. Hundreds of them, all frozen in various states of shock, the ones outside of our trajectory with forks and knives hovering forgotten halfway to their mouths. Students, I note, taking in the sea of black uniforms and colored robes.
The silence stretches, broken only by the occasional groan of settling debris.
My vision blurs, the room spinning lazily. Through the haze, I notice a bowl of pudding that survived our crash landing, perched precariously on the edge of a nearby table.
“Look,” I slur, patting Falcen’s chest weakly. “At least we didn’t ruin dessert.”
From somewhere in the stunned crowd, a dry voice drawls, “And that, students, concludes this morning’s lesson on how not to exit a Veil tear.”
Then everything goes black.