Page 144 of The Bonds of Indigo

“Per sanguinem et cinerem, per clamores damnatorum.”

Fire—nothing like Vendra’s gentle warmth—erupts in my chest. I grit my teeth, clenching against it. Her power usually feels like a summer breeze brushing my skin, but this… this is like being thrown into a living flame.

I swallow, and when I open my eyes, I see a crack in the world before me. It looks like one of my own scars, thin and jagged, but beyond it lies nothing but endless darkness.

“Mors pateat!”

“If you need to stop⁠—”

I shove Kayn out of my mind before he can finish. I’ll have to remind him later that I am not a weak woman. Pain and I have been companions for years; I can take this.

“Pande porta Beyond!”

Static screams in my ears as a violent wind blasts across my face. The echo of iron gates creaking open is drowned out by the shriek of a monster I would’ve happily gone my whole life without seeing.

A black demonic hand bursts through the torn reality and clamps around my throat before I can react. The head of the Grimhorn peels itself out from behind the gates, hissing.

“You come to me this time?”

A scream claws at the edge of my throat, and I can swear I hear Kayn shouting for me. But before he can reach me, before I can even release the cry for help, I’m yanked through the gates and swallowed by the darkness.

A sharp pain registers in my shoulder and I know something’s broken. The unforgiving ground beneath me is cold. Nothing like Vendra’s soil I’d been standing on moments ago.

A heavy thump makes me jerk my gaze upward. The space around me is too bright, and he is far too dark.

Darkness, thick as smoke, coils around the Grimhorn as he steps over me and opens his mouth. The vile stench of decaying bodies rolls off him, making me tremble and slap a hand over my mouth.

His fingers stretch toward me, and a spear with a razor-pointed tip materializes out of thin air.

I throw my hand out, reaching for magic, Vendra’s energy, anything to channel… but there’s nothing.

“She will take back what you took.”

He pulled me into the Beyond, and as that realization settles over me, I know I’m not getting out of here. This is his domain, and I’m just a lost soul who was never meant to step foot in it.

He’s going to take me to her, and there’s absolutely nothing I can do to stop it.

“Kayn…” I whisper. “I’m sorry.”

Vendra, please save him.

As the Grimhorn rears its arm back, I decide I won’t close my eyes. If this is how I go, then so be it. I’ll face it. I won’t cower.

But the moment the Grimhorn thrusts its hand forward, its entire body disintegrates before me. Starting at its chest, it breaks apart into ash. The decay crawls up its arm, and its shrieks rattle the hall, making the bright, luminescent lights flicker. Within seconds, it’s nothing but drifting particles fluttering through the air.

“I’ve never seen one of those things,” a soft, female voice says.

I jolt upright, pushing myself to my knees. Pain spikes through my injured arm when I try to brace on it, but I don’t stop because I need to see where the voice came from.

And when I find her, my breath leaves my lungs. My heart stutters. I’ve never felt so instantly, overwhelmingly connected to someone in my life.

“V-Vendra?”

The woman—standing about fifteen feet away—tilts her head. Mid-length, curly red hair slips over her shoulder as she studies me with quiet confusion.

“Oh, no,” she says gently. “I think you may have the wrong person.”

Her voice is ethereal. And she looks exactly like my God is described. Bright red hair, crimson freckles sprinkled across her cheeks, eyes like arctic-blue bioluminescence. Beautiful—Gods, beautiful doesn’t even come close to describing her.