There she was like the dawn.

With a cry, he grabbed ahold of himself, rebelling against the song, and tossed the grenade behind him.

Toward the stairs.

Toward Mellifare.

Then he pulled the girl against his body as the grenade exploded in a sharp hiss of white light.

The shock wave filled the tomb. Stone and shrapnel bit into his back. He clamped down on his tongue to keep himself from screaming as a sharp piece of rock jabbed into his shoulder. A loud crack split the ceiling above them. In surprise, he glanced up. The sandstone heaved—and dropped.

Suddenly, he felt hands on his chest, and the girl pushed him out of the way. A rush of stone and sand came tumbling down, and then there was silence.

And nothing more.

Ana

She came to with a gasp.

Everything was dark, and her tongue tasted like sandpaper. For a moment, she didn’t know where she was or what had happened—until her blurry vision slowly sharpened and she stared down at the body of Di beneath her. She had pushed him out of the way and must’ve fallen on top of him when the ceiling collapsed. Slowly, as if expecting to find something broken, she sat up; pebbles and debris sloughed off her back. She blinked wearily, rubbing the grit out of her eyes as she coughed. She tasted blood in the back of her mouth, and everything hurt—but especially her ribs. She sucked in another breath, and her side spiked with pain.

Yeah, definitely her ribs.

But that also meant she was alive—for the moment.

The tomb had caved in on itself, but most of the ceiling had somehow missed them. When she looked up, she saw the stained-glass windows of the shrine and tree branches breaking through the holes in the roof. Orange evening light streaked through the settling dust. Her gaze drifted down to Di beneath her. He wasn’t moving.

She touched his cheek. “Di?”

His eyes finally looked robotic, the optics in his pupils reminding her of antique camera lenses. He had saved her from the blast, and she didn’t know why.

“Di, wake up,” she pleaded, shaking his shoulders, but his gaze stared beyond her, and his face didn’t move, but in the still of the settling ruins she heard the whir of electricity through his wires.

He was offline, but not dead.

And she hated that she was afraid he’d wake up. That she’d have to fight him again.

Mellifare was nowhere to be found. Had she escaped? Or was she still somewhere in the rubble? Ana hoped the latter, but she doubted the Great Dark could be killed so easily.

A rumble startled her, and the far wall shifted precariously. She needed to leave before the rest of the tomb caved in, or she’d be trapped here like the Goddess had been.

Fighting to keep herself together when all she wanted to do was unravel like a ball of yarn, she grabbed his arm and looped it over her shoulder, and with a sob she pulled him to his feet.