“Brin!” Chieftain Harkon shouted. “Get out of here, lass. The enemy is upon us. Run back to the Kype! Do it now!”
Brin ignored sense and joined the ranks of men rushing down the steps. She was shocked by the devastation of everything below the upper courtyard. Collapsed buildings and towers had blocked access to the city streets, but the stairs and a pathway had been cleared all the way down to the lower courtyard. Walking down to where the front gates had been felt like swimming out too far; she was going too deep, getting over her head. When she reached the bottom—where men were forming in lines to replace the stone wall with one of flesh and blood—she still didn’t see Tesh. The sound of marching made her look east. The seven bridges were complete, and the elven army was crossing.
With no place left to look for Tesh, she headed back, but each step she took hurt. She just wanted to see him one last time, needed to say goodbye, share a final kiss. She didn’t think that was too much to ask. She didn’t think it would be so hard. As she ran back to the upper courtyard, she felt her heart breaking—her desire to say goodbye had become a genuine need. She had to see him once more before…before the end of the world.
It’s not fair!
Others had years. Padera had been blessed with decades. What did she and Tesh have? Not much, just a few days to love, to fight, to hold, and to cry. Brin wanted nothing more than to grow old with him, to live the life her mother had. She wanted to spend day after boring day in a tiny home and suffer endless nights listening to him snore. When he was sick, she would’ve brought him soup. On his birthday, she would’ve surprised him with a new pair of mittens she’d spent months knitting. Brin wanted to be cooped up through long winters beside him, the two of them curled up like a pair of chipmunks in a den. She wanted to give him children, watch them grow up, see them marry and have their own children. How would Tesh look with gray hair? How would it be to sip tea in front of their own home watching grandchildren play? She would never know.
I got one kiss, one lousy kiss!
“Brin!”
She whirled and saw Tesh running at her.
Brin flung her arms out and pulled him to her. Squeezing as hard as she could, she kissed him. Then she did it again and again. Her lips still against his, her hands making fists in his hair and shirt, she said, “I wanted to say goodbye.”
“Goodbye?”
She let her cheek slide next to his and spoke in his ear. “You’re going to fight with the rest, and by morning, we’ll all be dead. I had to see you. I had to say goodbye. I had to—I have to tell you…I love you.”
She hadn’t planned on saying it. Brin hadn’t even thought it before. The words just came out, but the moment they left her lips, she knew it was true. That was the real reason she’d been so desperate to find him.
“I love you, too,” he said.
He loves me! She kissed him again.
Horns were blaring. She heard shouts and the clang of metal. She ignored it all. The world could fall apart, she no longer cared.
“Brin! What the Tet are you doing here?” Moya ran at them along with an onrush of swordsmen and archers. Her face was fierce, her bow strung. “The lower yard is overrun. They’re coming up the steps. Get to the Kype! Move!”
* * *
—
Padera was just making her way down when the whole world started coming up. She was on her way to find Raithe, and the best place to start looking was the barracks. That was across the corbel bridge, through the Verenthenon, and down the long, narrow stairs to the upper courtyard. She only got as far as the bridge.
“Don’t go out there,” Grygor said. The giant stood guard beside the bronze door, which, for the time being, was left open so he could look out.
“Persephone wants me to get a message to Raithe.”
Grygor shook his head. “Too late for that. The fane’s army is across the ford.”
The old woman stood with the giant in the doorway of the Kype, looking out at the end of the world. The sky was swirling again. Dark, unnatural clouds covered the stars, folding and unfolding, making threatening faces at the living. Lightning flashed between the shades of gray, brilliant bolts of white that cracked and boomed.
“I wish it would rain,” Grygor said.
Padera glanced at him. No matter how she tilted her head, or how tightly she squinted her one eye, she could never manage to fill her expression with enough incredulity. “Did you say you wished it would rain? Why in the world—”
“Because it’d only be a storm then, wouldn’t it? Just a spring rain. We could shutter the windows and bolt the doors, and it would blow over as all downpours do. But this isn’t one of those storms, is it?”
From beyond the dome, she saw streaks of red light coming from the far side of the ford. One struck the remaining forward tower and sheared off the top.
“No,” she said. “No, it’s not.”