Page 2 of WitchBorn

My gut swirled and spiraled for a half second as though I’d fallen a thousand feet instead of a handful. I landed in a heap, on my back, staring up at the sky, trees overhead tinted with reds and golds in thick streams of moonlight. The scent of rain and freshly fallen leaves filled my senses and I sighed, heart slowing as the eerie sensation of being watched faded.

I got up and realized Luke and Jason were nowhere in sight. Neither was the crazy dark shadow wolf or unnaturalmovement of the darkness. The chill seeped away and aches arose in a dozen places. A skinned knee, a twinge in my back, something hot ran down my elbow and I suspected I’d been cut on something. But the chaotic and disturbing ambiance of the woods had vanished.

What the hell? I turned off the video and opened the GPS. No service.

“Guys?” I called. Which way had I come from?

My voice echoed, but beyond a fluttering of leaves on the wind, nothing else made a sound. Okay, that was a little creepy. I gazed upward trying to find the moon, but realizing there was sunlight. Had I been out long enough for it to be morning? The pale sky covered in clouds hovered above the trees, hiding the direction of the sun or any indication of which way I’d come.

Maybe that’s why I smelled rain? A storm coming? If I’d knocked myself out, shouldn’t I hurt more? Or maybe I was remembering wrong and it hadn’t been dark yet when we entered the woods. Forests could breed darkness as the canopies snuffed out anything above, so maybe that’s why I’d thought it was night.

I turned in a slow circle, trying to catch a sense of where I was, but it all looked the same, towering trees in every direction. And Jason had the pack of supplies.

“Fuck,” I cursed, checking my phone again, wandering a few feet and finding no matter which way I went, I had no service, and my battery was quickly running low. I watched back the video I took, wondering if the wolf really appeared, but there it was, plain as day, captured on my phone camera. “Stuck in the woods with no way to show the world. Debunk this, assholes!” I shouted as if someone could hear.

But my voice faded away, leaving me with nothing but silence, trees, and rising anxiety.

Wesley

One

WESLEY

Where are you, Wesley?A voice asked a dozen times in my dreams. I often sat at a table with honeyed bread and fresh tea like I waited for someone while listening for the voice.

The scent of the tea reminded me of last days at the Autumn court with the last of the summer breeze blowing through the dying flora as the nights cooled before I’d been old enough to know the realm was collapsing.

A chill trickled through the dream, unrelenting with an icy bite, startling me out of the pleasant memories and back into reality.

I gasped for breath, air burning my lungs with crystalline cold. My skin stiff, half frozen to the ground, lashes coated in frost, freezing my eyes shut. A blessing, perhaps because they stung from the temperature.

The thick chain clenched tightly around my throat kept me from filling my lungs. It wouldn’t kill me, neither the cold nor the lack of air. Being part fae was a curse rather than a blessing. That I blended, and could be mistaken for true fae, extended my life. Why had I bothered if this was to be my fate?

The zombie remains of the court sat in silence like an early winter morning when the temperature dropped belowartic levels, wind dying away to leave only the barest rippling crackle of ice forming. Winter had fled with the tattered bits of her realm, saving a handful from Spring’s wrath. But fae abandoned the last court in droves, realizing as I did that the walls, thin frozen illusions of castles and a prosperous realm, crumbled. Many slowly disintegrating, others crackling in a web of interlaced lines wriggling through the very core of the space waiting for a strong wind to unravel it all.

Winter was coming to an end. The Hag raged about lack of foes and the weakness of the rising kings. Always demanding a battle between courts despite their need to co-exist if they wanted to retain power at all. Winter warred hard rather than stepping down to let a new power rise. They clung to the threads of dying magic and tried to destroy the buds of new power, threatening to take all life with it.

The Fates were bitter bitches, winding the lives of mortals together in unbreakable ways. Demanding the rise and fall of courts, and death and destruction of species.

Were they losing power, as the modern world descended into chaos, or simply letting all the madness free to further tangle the weave in the fabric of reality? They weren’t benevolent despite what many followers claimed. The few remaining gods with power to change the world, they were as corrupt as the darkest of courts. Could the Fates change hands? I’d given up hope of ever knowing.

It was strange to be visionless. A lifetime of waking nightmares of other people’s fate falling silent should have been a blessing, but it worried me. What was I missing? Had the little King embraced his power? I hid him as long as I could, but his few years offered the barest of armor to help him stand his ground as the new Summer. Fate tied the wolf to him, but a blessing or a curse? Love could deliver both.

The crackling ice continued in a popping orchestra of sound around me. The lack of life and my ear pressed to the floor, made it louder than it probably was. I forced my eyes open, the cold stinging them instantly, but the sight ofhimcomforting as usual.

Bound in stone like some science fiction movie, he screamed out the raging madness of a partial change into a beast of lore. Not unlike many lost creatures of Underhill, as he’d been long corrupted by the dark waves of ice and pain. One of the first witchblood mutts lost inside the mortal world after the veil opened.

Summer warmed him for a while, delaying his fall into this frozen madness. I wondered if he was meant to be Winter. His pain said no. Winter would never fight the cold as he had. Winter would revel in the chill, finding the crisp bite comforting. The beast bound by magic wasn’t Winter.

A rare comfort as I knew he was mine. Tied to me in some way. Life or death, whatever that was meant to be. Our paths crossed and my vision stopped.

A finger-wide crack crawled along the floor to his feet, slow at first, the break barely noticeable. I’d been watching it for weeks, or what felt like centuries. When it touched his toes, I feared he’d crack with it, chiseling away whatever remained of the terrifying thing held back by dying magic.

But the stone encasing his legs whittled away. Tiny slivers of rock crumbling like dust, unnoticed by all but me. The fissure widening, a swirl of wriggling energy inside rather than a person. A corrupt king?

I watched it for endless hours, days, and weeks, until my vision blurred and I could stay awake no longer, losing myself in dreams for a short time until the cold jolted me back. Parts of his wings were freed from the stone, a stretch of leather skin between bony juts of darkness. I waited for them to move, mybreath catching for long minutes as I prayed for an eruption that would end my suffering even if it was a swift death.

He stood immobile. The stone near his face cracked like a shattered mirror, a net of shards cascading outward.