Page 326 of Commanding Scythe and Sky

“Have you gone mental?”

“If I have, are you comin’ with me?” I asked with a shit-eating grin he promptly returned.

“This life would be bloody boring without you, mate.”

“Good,” I said, taking my place at the front. With one steadying breath, I led us forward. Clothed in grace, I walk by faith, not by sight. I am protected because if God is with me, who can stand against me?

One by one, I recited my prayers, my affirmations, my hope in the Being who’d spared my life and sent me home. Years of practice brought them to the tip of my tongue—messages from pages so beloved they were tattered, words that had carried me through grief, sorrow, victory. The world was good at making us feel small. Insignificant. But in faith, I found strength—the unwavering belief that even suffering could hold purpose.

It was there that I anchored myself.

Step after cautious step, ensuring those following me walked steadily behind, I forced us through the gray.

Branches snapped.

Guttural growls cut through the air.

The plan didn’t deviate. I didn’t look toward them—didn’t grant power to the fear, didn’t actualize the threat.

And we walked.

We walked until the gray of the fog glowed silver, until it thinned, and a low light crept through the branches.

We walked until dappled sunlight speckled the pathway.

Until a familiar scent reached through the branches.

And the souls I loved followed me.

Granting me their trust.

Their belief.

Held by the supernatural strength that had returned breath to this body, we walked until mountain air filled my lungs.

“Mags,” I breathed, squeezing her hand. Her eyes found mine without hesitation. I smiled down at her, nodding as she blinked into the daylight pouring through the branches. “Dove, I smell pine.”

PART 4

BONDS

SIXTY-FOUR

FRACTURED LINES

RYKER

Four weeks.

For four excruciating weeks, the skies were clear.

For four weeks, the resistance had been pummeled so thoroughly that even Ryker was losing hope they’d ever rally again.

Watch House Twenty was down sixty percent. Where trained sailors and soldiers fell, only the rage of their surviving children remained. Untrained—well, beyond the basics ingrained by their parents in the last five months.

Ryker Ashborne watched with quiet fury as the remaining rebels shouted over each other and thought this had been the celestials’ intention all along. Humanity had lost the very trait that made it human long before the portals opened. Ford taught his son that compassion, not intelligence, set humans apart from animals.

But as the ‘leaders’ behaved more like rabid dogs, neck veins bulging and skin reddening as they screamed at each other, Ryker decided they could use more of both.