Page 126 of The Isles of the Gods
I will show them Ido not lose.
I drop my knife, scrambling up onto the balcony railing, spreading my arms wide, just as the prince did. I teeter on the edge as I instinctively try to steady myself—and then I remember, and I am utterly free.
Macean is the god of risk, and with my faith—with thisgamble of my life itself—I will fill him to the brim with power, and I will set him free.
He and I, we will seteach otherfree. We have both been kept from all we deserve for far too long, he bound by Barrica and I by Ruby, by Beris.
He will see me, and know me, and reward me.
Hewill not let me down.
“Macean!” I scream, and everything is in my voice—my rage, my devotion, my conviction. “For you!”
In a single movement, I throw myself out toward the altar.
And I hear the waves beyond the temple’s mouth, just for a moment, as I fall.
They’re beautiful.
SELLY
The Temple of the Mother
The Isles of the Gods
“Leander,” I whisper, swaying on my feet. I can’t make myself look at the altar—I don’t want to see him lying there beside Laskia, both of them broken and bloodied. I’m outside myself, disconnected from my own body. I can’t remember how to breathe, how tothink.
But I can’t leave him. I can’t let him go.
“Keegan, we have to—”
He rests his hand on my shoulder, where Leander’s was just a minute ago. I want to shake him off—I want to cling to him. “Selly, it’s done.”
“No, there must be something…”
I can see the air spirits whirling madly around the room, lifting up the sand and the dust and the dirt into wild eddies, as if they’re picking up on my anger, my bewilderment.
But this was what we meant to do.
We knew Laskia would catch us, knew we would die whenshe did. We only hoped to make the sacrifice first. To keep the gods from joining the war that was coming.
But now Leander’s gone, and I’m realizing I never imagined I’d still be here, and he wouldn’t. That there would be a momentafterhis death, and another, and I’d be supposed to survive all of them without him. Shakes run through my body. I’m cold, despite the warm air.
There are too many things I didn’t say to him.
He wanted to teach me to dance.
It’s as if that one thought unleashes a storm of memories—Leander letting me tuck a flower behind his ear the day we met, with that amused smile of his.
Leander marveling at the water spirits around the bow of theLizabettaas they caught the rainbow spray and danced forhim.
Leander with his jaw clenched, spent after urging our ship on for hours, giving ofhimselfto pull Keegan along in our wake and save his life.
Leander at the market, posing in a newsie’s cap to make me smile. Leander at the nightclub, desperately trying to leave behind the fear and guilt nobody imagined he carried. Leander asking to kiss me.
He shouldn’t have died before the world really knew who he was.
“Barrica,” I whisper, my fingers digging into the rock of the balcony railing, the pain an anchor.
