Page 24

24

Oberon

My heart slammed against my ribs hard enough to feel it in my throat. The laughter twisted and shifted into a soft and broken voice. Her voice.

The breath in my lungs burned, and the world around me narrowed. It mimicked the way she had sobbed in her sleep. How she cried as she gasped awake, clawed at her back, and her fingers curled against phantom wounds that never faded.

The air between us was stretched tight, a thread on the verge of snapping. The creature loomed, flickering between solid and unreal. It was on the edge of existence, shifting, fraying, and bending in ways my mind couldn’t accept.

The echoes of Quinn’s cries still clung to the surrounding space, hollow and taunting, and needled me in ways I refused to let show. I inhaled slowly through my nose, forcing my muscles to stay loose and my jaw to remain locked so the words I wanted to say wouldn’t slip free. It wanted a reaction, a crack in my armor, a way to invade.

Beneath the shifting black mass that passed for a face, something moved. Watched. It didn’t need eyes. The weight of its stare pressed against my skull.

“You have to do better than that,” I said. “If you think I’ll run back trembling, you don’t know what I am.”

Another whisper of laughter that was a layer of rusted metal dragging over stone. It tilted its head again, as though amused. “I know what you are,” it rasped. “More than you do.”

A chill slithered along my spine, and my instincts tightened their grip on me. My fingers itched to reach for steel.

The creature shifted through . The space between us bent, folding around something unseen and older than the thing standing before me.

“She calls your name in the dark.”

My pulse spiked.

“She dreams of you.”

I clenched my teeth. Ignore it.

“She fears for you.”

“And?”

It leaned forward with a grin in its voice.

“She will bleed for you, Fae.”

For me?

My grip tightened, and my nails bit into my gloves hard enough to draw blood. There was a slow creep of feeling beyond rage, beyond control. An older, deeper, and darker burning pulsed in my veins. It was a warning, a threat. The creature’s form trembled as it felt it, as if it recognized what stirred beneath my skin, and it hesitated.

Quinn’s voice tore through the night with raw urgency in the stillness. “Sinclaire!” Her voice slammed through me.

Quinn. Real. Desperate. Alive.

My body wrenched away from the creature in a single breath. The wheat blurred past in streaks of gold and black, brittle stalks snapping under my boots. The mansion appeared in the distance, too far, too damned far.

Faster.

Behind me, the air bent. The creature was shifting again. It slipped between spaces and pulled the world apart at its seams. I felt it press against my back and heard the whisper just out of sight. A low, grating sound enveloped my skull. “You will fail.” I pushed myself to move faster.

“You cannot fight what you do not understand.” The voice slithered beneath my skin, needling into the cracks, but I shoved it away. Quinn’s voice continued to ring in my ears. And that was the only thing that mattered. I pushed until my lungs burned and my legs ached. The mansion came into sharper focus. Light glowed in the upper windows of Quinn’s room. I needed to reach her. To get there now.

A shape flickered ahead, just beyond the fields, between me and the mansion. It wasn’t the thing from the field. No. It was a tall and staggering shadow.

It ripped toward me in a blur of jagged motion, faster than a beast that size had a right to be. A force of shattered stone and sheer malice slammed into my chest, knocking the air from my lungs. I hit the ground with a bone-rattling impact; the dirt beneath me was still warm, as if it remembered the thing that had risen from it. Its form was solid and shifting, brittle bones held together by the absence of light. The smell of decay curled around me, clawing at my senses as it leaned in close. The shriek of scraping metal twisted through my skull.

I snarled against the pressure, gritting my teeth as I urged my mind to focus.

Through the haze, Quinn burst through the mansion doors, her wild strands of hair sticking to her sweat-slicked face. In one hand, she clutched a bundle of herbs; in the other, she held a torch.

My stomach dropped.

Saints, no.

The words ripped from my throat.

“Cin crazui adaneth!”

You crazy woman!

She didn’t stop or falter. Her gaze locked onto mine, blazing with determination and fierce recklessness as she stormed forward, firelight dancing across her face. I snarled, shoving against the creature’s crushing weight.

“I told you to stay put!”

She didn’t slow. “You’re welcome!” she shot back, voice taut between frustration and urgency. The thing lurched off me and twisted toward her with a hollow, rattling breath. Her eyes widened, but she ran faster. The creature blinked , becoming a mere distortion in the air before vanishing.

“HERBALIST!”

Forcing my body upright, I shoved through the pain in my back and ribs just as the thing reappeared before her. She skidded to a halt before the shifting mass of brittle limbs and clawing darkness. The torch wavered in her grip, the flickering light exposing the jagged edges of its form. The sound of grinding metal rattled around us, its voice a hollow echo that grated against my skull.

“The gods are waiting.”

Quinn lifted the torch higher, her fingers curling tighter around the bundle of herbs in her other hand. She gripped the stems as her thumb rubbed the leaves with purpose.

Clever Dilthen Doe.

But not clever enough. The thing shifted in that same unnatural blink, and suddenly, it was behind her. Her body tensed with a gasp. I pushed off the ground and crossed the distance between us.

I slammed into it just as the thing reached for her. The impact vibrated through my bones. I grabbed at whatever I could—solid or shifting—and wrenched it away from her. The torchlight flared, casting deep, jagged shadows over its form as it screeched, a noise of splintering glass and torn metal. Quinn stumbled forward, spinning around with wide eyes. I shoved the creature back again, my voice a low snarl. “Run.”

Her grip on the torch tightened, her knuckles white against the wood. To my vexation, she lifted her chin and said, “No.”

Saints fucking damn me.

The laughter curdled the air, a twisted symphony of voices that didn’t belong there. But they were different. Not the distorted mockery of my voice or the warped echoes of meaningless screams. The voices meant nothing to me.

I frowned, and my heart quivered in my ribs as the words snaked through the air. A man’s voice spoke, low and coaxing, laced with a hint of sweetness. “ Playing hide and seek again? ” Then a woman’s detached voice followed. “You can’t change what you are.” Confusion knotted in my gut as my mind scrambled to understand it.

My eyes landed on Quinn again.

She had gone rigid . Her face paled in the torchlight. The look in her eyes made my chest seize. Wide. Stricken. She no longer looked at the creature.

She watched me, gauging my reaction.

The voices weren’t for me . It wasn’t mocking me . They were hers. Her memories. Her nightmares were torn from the depths of her mind and laid bare between us, things I was never supposed to hear.

My veins pulsed as the silver-blue light crept along my skin. My instincts snarled at me to move, fight, and tear through whatever force this thing used to dig into her mind. “Herbalist!” I barked. The thing laughed in a low, rattling and pleased tone and then vanished. It was gone in an instant, as if it had never existed. I moved toward Quinn when I thought it was safe. When I assumed the creature got what it wanted or that it may have been another warning or mind game.

Her focus shifted behind me moments before her body crashed against mine, knocking the air from my lungs as her weight collided with my side. I twisted abruptly, and my boots dug into the dirt to catch my footing. My arm wrapped around her waist to steady us both. Her breath was hot against my chest, and her hands gripped my arms for balance as her body pressed flush against mine.

A sudden, blinding whoosh of flames erupted behind her, igniting the air into a searing blaze that licked up my face and cast everything in a golden-red haze. The creature was swallowed by its inferno. The fire devoured it with an unnatural hunger, crackling as if possessed. Shadows writhed and twisted around its form, contorting in agony as the flames curled over every inch of its being.

It screamed with thousands of voices within a cacophony of agony, loss, and damnation. An endless, wailing shriek rattled through my bones and tore through the night, filled with the voices of every soul sacrificed to it. The sound pressed into my skull, reverberated across my ribs, and dug into my marrow.

The fire became insatiable. Its body convulsed and writhed against the inferno, and its limbs twisted at unnatural angles, struggling against the flames that devoured its existence. The smell of charred rot burned my nose as a final, horrid screech split the air. The creature collapsed with one last violent convulsion. Its remnants crumbled into a heap of bones and ash, scattered by the wind as if they had never been there.

My heartbeat roared in my ears, my body still ran hot, and I still thrummed with the energy of the fight. The ancient and violent pulse through my veins itched for an outlet, and the sight of her defiance, the torch clenched in her trembling hand and her breath uneven yet unwavering, only stoked the fire that burned within me.

I grabbed Quinn’s shoulders and shoved her back. “WHAT THE FUCK WERE YOU THINKING?!” I spat, my voice raw. My breath remained unsteady, and my chest heaved as adrenaline pulsed around us. “YOU WERE SUPPOSED TO STAY IN THE ROOM!”

Her head snapped up, eyes flashing with a reckless fury that exasperated me. “And let you die?!” she shot back.

“Die?!” I scoffed. “That thing was testing me, Herbalist! I had it handled!”

“Oh, of course, you did,” she replied sarcastically, throwing her arms up as torchlight danced across the determined lines of her face.

My jaw set, grinding my teeth as I glared at her. “You—”

Her body went rigid with a sharp intake of breath. Maybe I had hit a nerve, pushed too hard, or pressed too far. Her scowl deepened. Her breathing became too fast, too shallow, and she swayed. A sick, ugly sensation twisted in me. I lunged forward just as her legs buckled, catching her before she hit the ground.

My hands clenched around her as I lowered us both, her weight slumping against me. “Herbalist.” The word left my lips, more breath than sound. “Shit.”

An unfamiliar feeling crawled up my throat.

She was still conscious, but barely. Her pulse fluttered when my fingers pressed into her skin. My heart thundered in my ears, silencing the world beyond her. “Dilthen Doe,” my voice became quieter and filled with desperate urgency. “Hey, stay with me.”

A warm, sticky wetness seeped against my palm that should not have been there. My stomach knotted, and a slow, creeping dread slithered through me as I shifted her to adjust my grip. My hand came away slick with blood.

”No .” The guttural word ripped from my throat. In the chaos, when she collided with me, everything blurred. The fire, the screaming, the thing burning. I hadn’t noticed, hadn’t felt it happen despite her body being against mine .

My pulse roared when I pulled her closer. My hands moved fast, searching and pulling at the fabric. A dark stain bloomed across her back, spreading fast . When she crashed into me, she had taken the hit in my stead.

“Fuck . ” The rough and desperate word scraped from my chest. My fingers pressed against the wound as if I could staunch the bleeding. As if I could reverse time and undo the last few minutes. Her breath hitched again, and her body tensed weakly in my arms. I had been so damned distracted. So, fucking focused on its mind games, on its taunts, on the way it had echoed her past, that I hadn’t seen the real danger. I hadn’t seen it coming.

And she was bleeding out in my arms because of it.