Page 258 of Of Masks and Fury

We each drew a blade and made cuts on our forearms, letting blood well up bright and red. It drizzled across our skin, gathering into droplets that fell across the breach. The moment it hit, silver and blue-white threads erupted from our wounds, diving into the corrupted pattern, seeking purchase.

The veil recognized us.

But it hurt. Damn, how it hurt. Agony roared through me.

Fire and ice and lightning poured through our blood into the fundamental fabric of reality. I gasped, my knees buckling, but I didn’t lower my arm.

Addie screamed. Her body flickered wildly between solid and shimmering, veil-sickness surging as she channeled everything she had into the breach.

“No,” Coralee shrieked. She tried to disengage from Trew, but Gavelle and Pherin blocked her path to us with walls of flame. Coralee’s companion lay on the ground, breathing, struggling to rise to its feet.

“You want Isi?” Trew snarled, pressing his attack. “Go through me first.”

The breach shuddered. Our blood and power wove through the corruption, transforming it, healing it from within. We were slowly weaving the broken segments back together. The true pattern began to emerge, spiraling, tightening as the ragged edges knitted into the complex mesh it must’ve been before our grandfather broke it.

But this wasn’t enough. We were healing it too slowly. At this rate, we’d run out of blood and strength before the breach closed.

Lord Alfred broke past Derren with a brutal strike that sent him crashing to the ground. Kira, still pale from her imprisonment, threw herself between them, taking a slash across her shoulder that made her blade arm drop.

The remaining Skathes pressed closer, knocking our companions to the ground. Nim bellowed, his silver scales streaked with Skathe blood as he slashed his tail and fangs, fighting off a dozen at once with Levar by his side. Kira’s python coiled around others, crushing them, but more latched onto her with their blade-sharp teeth, dragging her down.

Keek and Dare slashed through the endless mass of bodies but couldn’t reach us.

We were losing.

“Isi,” Addie whispered. Her face had gone paper-white. “I can’t. I don’t think I can do it any longer.”

“Hold on,” I begged. “Please, just hold on.”

Coralee laughed, the sound cutting through everything else. “You can’t stop this. I’ve been planning it for hundreds of years. Every death, every sacrifice, and every drop of harvested magic has built toward this moment.”

She attacked Trew with a flurry of strikes so fast they blurred. He blocked them, his training and skill keeping him alive, but I could see his strength flagging. The wound in his chest bled freely now, and his breathing came hard.

“I will unmake this world,” Coralee shouted, her voice rising. “Tear down the barrier between realms and rebuild reality with myself at its core.”

“You’re mad,” Trew snarled, parrying another strike.

“I’m inevitable.” She feinted left and struck right. Her blade slipped past Trew’s guard and punched through his chest with a wet sound that stopped my heart.

Time slowed to frozen horror.

Trew’s eyes went wide. His sword fell from his nerveless fingers. Dark red spread across his tunic, spreading dark and fast as Coralee twisted the blade.

“Trew!” His name ripped from my throat in a scream that tasted of endless despair.

CHAPTER SIXTY-SEVEN

ISI

Coralee yanked her blade from Trew’s chest and he crumpled, falling to his knees before toppling sideways. Blood pooled beneath him, spreading across the ground in a dark stain. My vision blurred with tears.

Through our bond, I felt his life force flickering like a candle in a storm. Fading. Dying.

“No,” I screamed, trying to pull my arm from the breach. But the weave held fast, my blood and magic creating a connection I couldn’t break.

Gavelle roared, a sound full of so much anguish it shook the battlefield. He raced toward Trew’s fallen form. Pherin followed, both companions shifting mid-run to their smaller forms, landing on Trew’s chest, where they pressed their bodies against his wound.

Heal him,Pherin’s voice shot through my mind.Must heal!