Page 23 of A Curse So Cruel (Fated Mates of Shadowbone Academy #1)
I don’t register what the spider is saying.
All I can think about is how close I must be to death.
My body sags, and it’s only the spider’s web that’s keeping me upright.
Shadow magic. The thought occurs to me belatedly.
Mustering what little energy I have, I reach for the shadow magic my academy ring can provide me.
“Answer, human,” the spider hisses at the same moment power enters my system. It starts as a slow trickle before the magic begins to build.
“I can’t die yet,” I mutter, and just as the power inside me forms a ball of energy, just as I go to direct it from my body, there’s a loud screeching in my ears. The shadow spider’s pincers release me, and I struggle to focus my blurred vision.
My eyes close, and I have to fight to open them again.
When I do, Blake is standing in front of me.
Her hair falls in dark waves around her face, and she gives me a rueful grin.
Her mouth moves as she says something, and though I can’t hear her words I smile, because I’m so glad to see her.
“I missed you,” I rasp, my heart squeezing.
Her mouth continues to move, silent words tumbling out, but then her features change before my eyes.
Her familiar face fades away, and I frown when I find myself looking up at a hooded man instead.
I can’t make out most of the man’s features, but penetrating black eyes bore into me from under the hood, and there’s a flash of concern before the man’s gaze hardens.
For a moment, I think I might have been wrong.
Maybe the spider was some kind of shifter after all.
Strong hands reach through the bars and grab my shoulders.
As they do, the web falls from me, and the cage disappears as if it had never been there.
Fire and ice races through me at the man’s touch, and the power that had been building inside me calms. I’m vaguely aware of strong arms lifting me, and then it’s darkness again.
~ Knox ~
I’m leaning back in my leather armchair, staring out of the window when her scream rips through my mind.
Her cry penetrates the carefully crafted silence in my head, tearing through the barrier I learned to construct long ago.
For my sanity, I chose to ignore the dreams of others, their desires, and most importantly, their pain.
The barrier offered me a false sense of peace, but now, the little human’s scream cuts through it as if it were fragile.
I tense, trying to rebuild my mental wall. The dreamcrawlers only take the vulnerable. They prey on the students with the most delicate minds. The ones who would never survive against one of the Xalgrith on the battlefield. The ones who would be too easily manipulated.
…Or the ones that I’ve weakened…
Guilt twists through me, and I grip the glass in my hand too tightly.
It shatters, shards of glass slicing into my palm.
I pay no attention as whiskey and blood spills onto the carpet.
Across from me, Thane peers up from his book, and there’s concern in his gaze as he leans forward in his armchair, but he doesn’t speak.
I tell myself the little human’s demise is for the best. Raith and the others are already too interested in her, even if they have acknowledged she can’t be our mate.
At best, she’s a distraction, and at worst, she’s a deceiver sent to divide us.
I want to justify her death. It would make our lives simpler again, that’s a certainty, but would Raith forgive me?
I already let our mate die, and now he believes he’s connected to this human.
Would my brother forgive me if I let her die, too?
Fuck. I already know the answer.
“I’ll be back,” I mutter to Thane.
“Do what you have to do,” he rumbles, not questioning me. I suspect he knows I hadn’t restored the human’s energy, though he never questioned it. Our relationship is built on trust, and even now, he’s showing me that the little human hasn’t changed that.
Another one of the human’s screams shatters through my head, and I curse, closing my eyes and slipping into her dream.
The human’s mind is a mess. I walk past fragments of broken memories, and it doesn’t take me long to find her ensnared by a dreamcrawler. She’s pressed up against the bars of a cage as the shadow creature drains her lifeforce.
She looks so vulnerable in his hold, and I can’t explain the blinding fury that washes through me at the sight.
Without thinking, my shadows attack, sinking into the dreamcrawler, and the creature howls as it releases the human.
The dreamcrawler scuttles back into the darkness of her dream, but I don’t relent.
Breathing heavily, I keep my power focused on the spider, driving it from her mind as I move to the human.
She peers up at me and smiles. “I missed you,” she whispers, the words falling from her soft lips.
The human’s eyes are unfocused, and I know she’s not seeing me in that moment, but my anger falters.
The darkness that had been taking over me halts, and for a moment, all I can do is stare at her.
My heart stops beating because for a second, when I look at the human’s face, I see her— the woman who haunts my nightmares.
My mate. The one I lost. The one I murdered.
This human’s features are different, softer, but there’s something about her…
Her eyes close as she drifts off, and I come to my senses.
It can’t be her.
No matter how much I wish it was.
Sending out my power, I dissolve the cage, freeing the human and lifting her into my arms. I tell myself this is the only time I’ll save her, and I ignore the strange pounding of my heart as I pull her from her nightmare.