Page 127 of The Isles of the Gods
I don’t even know what my prayer will be, what I mean by it, but I throw my words out into the temple itself with everything I have. With a kind of surrender I’ve never known.
“Barrica, please,please,don’t take him. It’s too much. Weneed him.” And then, my eyes shut tight, tearing down every wall I’ve ever built, leaving behind every time I’ve ever tried to prove I need nobody but myself: “Ineed him….”
My prayer falls into absolute silence, broken only by my own ragged breath.
And then it’s as if the temple itself responds, the air throbbing around me. Keegan gasps beside me, and I feel it too—it’s like fire is crackling over my skin, the pressure around me setting my head pounding like the moment before a storm.
Though it’s unspoken, I have the strongest sense of a question pushing at my mind, and I do my best to answer it.
“Please,” I whisper again, opening up my thoughts and offering them to my goddess—opening up my heart, and for the first time I can remember, offering what’s there without trying to protect it. “Please. I need him.”
And then the feeling is gone, and there’s nothing, just the waves outside, and the soft moans of Laskia’s giant magician with the ruined hand. I’d forgotten he was there.
The loss of that overwhelming feeling is like having my legs knocked from under me, like losing something I loved without warning, and my knees shake—I think I cry out, but I can’t tell if the noise comes from me.
And in the next instant, the temple is suddenly washed with a brilliant white light, blinding even when I close my eyes. Throwing up my forearm, I shrink in against Keegan as I turn away from it, and his body trembles against mine.
It’s like being inside the sun, like the temple itself is aflame, and all I can think of is the need to protect my eyes, to try desperately to blink away the shapes branded on the insides of my eyelids.
Keegan makes a wordless sound, and when I lower my arm, the light is beginning to fade.
The first thing I see is Jude, standing farther along the balcony—our gazes lock, but his is impossible to read through the swelling and bruising blossoming all over his face.
And then he looks away, out toward the center of the cavern. To where Leander and Laskia fell.
Slowly, dreading what I’ll see, I turn.
At the center of the fading light is a brilliantly glowing figure—it’s rising up, its arms outstretched, the air shimmering around it.
My mind reaches wildly for the possibilities—is this the Mother, awakened somehow by the sacrifices? Is Barrica herself returning to take up arms?
But then the figure tilts its head a fraction, and the gesture is so achingly familiar that my heart stops.
It’s Leander.
And he’sincandescent.
He’s suspended above the altar, held aloft by an army of air spirits. He throws his arms out wide, his head back, and he screams, and screams again, the raw sounds punctuated by soft, heartbreaking gasps.
“Leander!” I shout, finally wrestling free of Keegan’s grasp. “Leander, here!”
His head turns, as if he hears me, and my heart leaps. Then a fierce wind whips up around us, stealing my voice away, ripping my words from my mouth and drowning them out.
That strange, dreadful pressure returns with the storm, my head throbbing in time with my heart. Voices whisper at the edgeof my hearing. I can’t think, can’t focus. I only know one thing—one instinct drives me forward.
I will not lose him.
“Leander!” I scream again, holding out my hands to him. “Over here! Don’t you dare leave me!”
Slowly, writhing in pain, he turns his head, lifts one hand in my direction.
I reach for him over the edge of the balcony, stretching out with every fiber, but he’s too far away—I’m shaking with the effort, my body trembling, and still I can’t get to him. He’s suspended just out of reach, his back arching and his fingers curling as they grasp at nothing, his cries turning hoarse and jagged.
Then Keegan’s hands are at my waist—he steadies me, grips me tightly, and with a grunt of effort, he lifts me, straining as he helps tip me just alittlefarther.
Leander’s fingertips brush against mine, the lightest of contacts, and a bolt of pain shoots through me, every muscle contracting, every nerve on fire. With a shout, Keegan falls away from me as if he’s been pushed.
All my instincts shriek at me to pull back from Leander, but as the fire threatens to consume me, I grab for his wrist.
