The ground stops shaking.
The eclipse tears apart like burning paper and the sky snaps back to blue, too bright after the unnatural dark. For one suspended second, everything is still.
Then the screaming starts.
Covenant operatives collapse across the field, some writhing, some unconscious. The sigil carved into the earth splinters into cracked lines of dead magic.
Lilith is gone.
Not dead.
Gone.
I’m still standing in the center of the broken ritual circle, but my knees feel hollow. Silver light bleeds from my skin in faint threads, flickering like a dying flame.
Then the pain hits.
Sharp. Deep. Wrong.
My hand flies to my stomach.
Blood.
Just a thin line beneath my palm.
But enough.
“No,” I whisper.
Kade is at my side before I fall.
He catches me as my legs give out, loweri
