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The Dark Rooh the wounds that opened across my skin, in particular the one that ripped open overfro left over to heal me after this was said and done, I hoped that they’d at least have the strength to bury me

Massive thorns of gleah the earth, dozens of them conjured by my blood from the bowels of the Dark Room The abominations shrieked as hooks and knives of solid darkness ripped into their flesh, a pit of spikes meant to seal them

Drawing on the last of ured, the last ofthe Dark Rooh its shadows, then reentered our world, falling onto my knees by Carver’s feet

He was still chanting when I reappeared, his hands shuddering as he suic still left within his body The sound of broken glass tinkled under the hideous screams of the wounded aboeht of his spell He thrust his hands forward, and with the roaring of a dragon adirectly for the pile of stolen relics I held my breath

The night shattered The abo color exploded between the children, every artifact splintered and sundered by the y reached into the sky, blasting everything around them into worthless smithereens Fuck the Veil, man Hell, fuck the planet If the normals knehere to look, and who to blame, this was practically a declaration of war

The back of my brain ached from the brilliance, and I shielded my eyes until it faded I only dared to look when the radiance had cleared But there was nothing left on the hill The combined detonation of the artifacts had obliterated the abo them down to the last atom

Carver fell to his knees, his palrass I looked around us, at the devastation Thea’s final ritual had wrought The hill had been cratered by the explosion, a perfect concave hollow carved into the earth Diaz’s body was somewhere on its slope, but fro what Thea had done to his family, I didn’t knohether death would have been more merciful

Asher was still watching the hillside with his roaned, sprawled on his back across the wet grass, his chest torn open, but I knew he’d live He just needed a half dozen raw steaks That was all

As for Sterling – there was no easy way to tell At least half his body had been incinerated by sunlight, the rest of hie Thea’s spell I stared in silence at his scorched body, hating that I couldn’t tell if he was alive He’d sacrificed hi to kill Thea

And finally, she was dead And yet, for the first ti while, I felt a swell of pity, of reed by the Eldest, but they were still children after all, inn

ocents yanked harshly fro mother

I couldn’t believe ita silent, secret prayer for the Morganas Perhaps Thea’s one, s to watch her own children die again That I was still capable of having that thought told h ofto

But there would be ti in the distance, because as far out of Valero as the graveyard was, the destruction of the artifacts had caused an explosion loud enough to alert the entire county I was surprised that the Lorica hadn’t shown up yet The best part was that we had no evidence to show that this wasn’t our fault

I lickedwhen I tasted the blood that had dripped into the corner of o”

He lifted his head back, panting, his eyes squeezed shut “Fuck the Eldest Fuck the normals, fuck the Lorica, fuck all the rest of thes we do to save the world”