Chapter 17 · Fractures in the Sky

The eye beneath Veyra opened.

Gold flooded the archive windows.

For one impossible second, the city hung above the clouds in perfect silence. Then the tower groaned, and every shelf in the archive lurched sideways. Books burst from their compartments. Glass tubes shattered against the floor. Somewhere below, metal screamed as the lower foundations tore against the floating city's ancient lift-rings.

Lio hit the ground on one knee, the Third Seal clenched in her fist.

It was warm. Not warm like metal left in sunlight. Warm like something alive, breathing against her palm.

“Lio!” Mara shouted.

A slab of stone dropped from the ceiling.

Lio rolled. The slab exploded where her shoulder had been, scattering dust and splinters across the floor. She came up with her back against a broken cabinet and found Mara crouched beside Cael, one hand pressed to the blood soaking through his coat.

Cael’s head lolled against the cabinet. The empty place beneath his collarbone smoked faintly, the skin around it blackened where the Council’s insignia had burned through flesh before he crushed it.

“Is he alive?” Lio asked.

“Annoyingly,” Mara snapped.