W hen all hell broke loose, I didn’t give myself time to consider what was happening. I just ran.
The sword I’d grabbed from a fallen guard was too heavy for me, and it had no channels to accommodate my magic. I often missed Il’Sahaj, but never so fiercely as I did now, hacking through body after body as I pushed myself down crimson-bathed hallways.
West. I needed to get to the west side of the city. I could feel Max’s presence somewhere close in the deepest layers of the magic we shared, though I struggled to remain attuned to it. My senses were dulled by the effects of Chryxalis and by my exhaustion. My body was weak from the torture I’d endured.
The scale of destruction was greater than I ever could have anticipated. This was not a battle. It was a systemic slaughter. The Fey had no goal but to kill everyone here.
I rounded a corner to see a one-winged Fey gutting a Threllian woman from her navel all the way to her throat, so focused on his task that I was able to slip by him and keep running.
Where are you, Max. Where are you.
I reached down into the magic and felt a returning tug. Relief flooded through me.
But it only lasted for a moment. Because then I sensed another presence there, too. One that I knew as well as my own.
Eventually, I found myself at a dead end—a circular gallery at the end of the hall, with no doors out save for a wide, curved balcony and a long
drop beneath it. I lurched to a stop, panting. Generations of Threllian conquerors stared back at me disapprovingly through oil-painted glares.
The hairs rose on the back of my neck in a way that told me I was not alone.
I turned. A Fey woman stood in the entrance to the room. She was tall and slender, bloody strands of dark-red hair hanging around a gaunt face. She had the most entrancing eyes, large and downturned, and a striking color of rusty violet.
I had never seen this face before… and yet, I knew this person. Suddenly I was very, very afraid.
“It’s you,” I whispered. “Reshaye.”
