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Holding Idril in front of him like a human shield.
His lips move. He says something about a gun, but the sounds bounce off the marble, and my brain doesn’t register them until his shout cuts through the chaos like thunder.
“Get the Silver!”
No.
No, no, fuck no. It’s not possible.
My blood chills. How the fuck does this asshole have silver? How could he possibly know—
The Severed. Of fucking course.
Only they know that secret, and Varenthrall’s working with them.
I barely have time to work through the implications when the sound of a gunshot cracks through the air.
Pain explodes through my leg as the silver burns a searing path through my flesh. My nerves scream in agony, like acid eating through muscle and skin.
This shit won’t kill me, but if Varenthrall wanted me incapacitated, he got his Fatesdamned wish.
My leg buckles as I fall to the floor with a roar of agony. Before anything else, I force myself to check that the bullet isn’t lodged in my muscle.
Entry wound. Exit wound.
The wound is gushing dark red blood, but thank the gods it passed through. If it’d lodged into my muscle or bone, it would have worked through my bloodstream, and if not removed, I’d be dead in an hour.
A shot that’s through and through is survivable, even if it hurts like a bitch.
I groan, but through the haze of pain, my instincts perk up, warning me that something has shifted. The warmth in my chest—the churning, overflowing silver pool—has gone cold. Frozen.
Like something reached into my chest and turned it into ice.
And the air—the air is…
Gone.
Vanished, as if yanked away by some unseen force. I struggle to breathe, but my lungs seize.
There’s no oxygen. No pressure.
Around me, the guards that aren’t dead are starting to panic. Hands fly to chests and clutch at necks as confusion bleeds into terror.
Varenthrall seems the most confused of all, his face drained of color. His smug expression is gone, replaced by fury and fear.
The suffocation feels like it goes on forever, but in reality, only lasts a few seconds.
Just as I start to commiserate with Silas and his time in that coffin… Idril screams.
The sound she releases isn’t human. It isn’t Omega. It isn’t anything I’ve ever heard before.
It’s old. Ancient. The sound of something that’s been asleep for thousands of years and just woke up fucking furious.
Rage, grief, and denial collide, coalescing into a single unending note that explodes through the air.
The windows splinter, cracks racing across the expansive surface, growing faster and faster, before erupting into spinning slivers of light.
Shards hang suspended in the air for a single breath before they fall, raining down around us like glittering diamonds
