Page 246 of Feralheart

The magic recoiled, slamming back into me so hard my teeth clacked together.

Reece’s hand squeezed mine.

“You tried,” he said, the words barely audible past the blood in his throat. “Tell my wife that I⁠—”

His chest hitched. His eyes went distant, still looking at my face but not seeing anymore. The light behind them guttered, going dark.

His hand went limp, dropping away, and the last breath rattled out of him.

I sat there, still holding his hand, still feeling warmth in his skin that wouldn’t be there much longer.

“No.” The word came out broken. “No, Reece, you can’t⁠—”

But he was already gone.

The pack bond fractured with a violent jolt, leaving a jagged void in my chest where Reece had been. Agony burst through me, a ripping sensation that started in my belly and spread outward. I gasped, doubling over, my hands flying to my face.

The space where Reece had existed went hollow.

Empty.

Fen and Lyndie staggered under the same blow, Fen’s horror and Lyndie’s rage sharpening into something murderous.

Only three of us remained.

I wanted to claw at my chest, dig out the broken pieces of the bond and force them back together.

Tears tracked down my face, hot on frozen skin.

“I’m sorry,” I said to his empty eyes. “I’m so sorry.”

My throat closed around the rest. The promises I’d made had turned into rocks in my gut.

I’d watch out for his granddaughter. I’d tell his wife he was thinking of her when he died. I’d carry his death for the rest of my life, and it still wouldn’t be enough.

I stroked the hair back from his forehead. His skin had started cooling beneath my fingertips. I closed his eyes, and the simple gesture of it cracked a brittle part of me wide open.

Lyndie snarled. She surged to her feet, her face twisting with rage. She mounted her dragon and launched him across the plateau.

I stayed with Reece. Fen stood between me and any threat, blue fire crawling up his forearms. His concentration surged through the bond. He held a magical shield with one hand and tracked movement with the other. His shoulders shook with the effort.

When the ground beneath Reece started to glow, we moved backward, our boots slipping on bone dust. Light bled up through the ground, spreading beneath Reece, outlining his body in stark relief.

The stone pulled him down.

“No. It can’t have him.”

Fen’s hand found mine, but his eyes remained on Reece’s face until the stone closed over it. Only then did he ease me away.

The surface solidified, leaving nothing but a faint outline of where Reece had been. Absorbed into the structure, his bones adding to the foundation.

“Reece is part of this place now,” I growled. “Part of the Scorching that killed him.”

Every bone in those canyon walls had been someone. They hadn’t been anonymous deaths. They were people with families. With names. Riders who’d made it this far and died and been consumed by a structure that fed on their remains.

The Oracle hadn’t been built on death.

It had crafted itself from it.