Page 43 of WitchBorn
My cock made a halfhearted attempt to rise at the image he planted in my head, but it too, was exhausted. “All the plants around us should be spring plants, not autumn. Not unless I had sealed my bond with the Autumn king. All of the kings,”or queens if any of them other than Winter were left, “can use my power. But without them it should be spring.” Had Autumn snuck in after I blacked out? “Was anyone else here when you woke up?”
“I never slept, and no. Just you, me, and all the creepy statues.”
“You never passed out?” Meanwhile he sat there practically glowing with energy. “What about the spot on your back?”
Finn turned and the dark splotch had vanished. “I don’t feel it.”
“It’s gone.”
He threw me a radiant smile. “You healed me. Even if it took an insane amount of sex to get the job done. Should we need to do that again, I volunteer.”
Boxes checked inside my head in a growing list ofnot rightpieces coming together. Finn, not quite human, with strange memories of a shadow wolf as a child, healed by my touch, nearly strong enough to resist the pull of a true heat, and now glowing with magic.
“Why do you look like I kicked your dog?” Finn asked.
“You’re bound to Autumn somehow, and through you, he’s bound me.”
Twenty-Nine
WESLEY
Finn stared at me, head tilted, expression troubled. “How? Is that a fae thing?”
“As much as I’d like to say I know everything about the fae, they are as different as humans. Crazy powerful, and often sociopaths, but varied and secretive bastards.”
“Well…” He trailed off at a loss for what to say. He picked up his discarded sweatpants, but they were beyond dirty. “I guess one positive from all of this is I seem to be able to eat the food here?”
“Not dying of starvation is good,” I agreed. “We should find some water.” I peered out over the wild overgrowth of the forest around the statues and didn’t see any pools of water, though the drizzle of rain continued, light and refreshing. I held my hand out to let the rain drip. “Maybe we can find a way to collect the rain?”
“Sure,” Finn said. He reached for a big leaf growing from the swell of Sebastian’s statue. But he miscalculated and stumbled, planting his palm against the tree to stabilize himself. His gasp was the first indication of something gone wrong.
As Finn's palm connected with the rough bark, a jolt of magic writhed in a visual surged through him. I watched his eyes turnwhite which meant he was having a vision of some kind. Had this realm somehow taken the ability from me and given it to Finn?
“Fucking chaotic shit realm,” I cursed as I grabbed Finn around the waist intending to rip him away from the tree, but the vision wrapped around me, too. Dragging me into a memory that began as a swirling mist dissolved, and I found myself standing in a forest, the air thick with the scent of pine and earth. The trickle of running water, and birds singing, filled the area with a peaceful ambiance.
In the distance, a child darted through the brush. The child was small, with a face framed by red hair and dark, fearful eyes. As I watched, the boy shifted seamlessly into a fox, his fur a blaze of blood red against the green growth. Sebastian.
A growl rumbled through the forest, low and menacing. My heart flipped over in fear as a massive black wolf, its fur dark and glistening with shards of ice, raced to follow the fox. The wolf lunged, jaws snapping as if to devour the baby fox whole, but another wolf leapt into the fray, and collided with the shadow wolf. A shockwave of magic rippled through the forest, the ground shaking beneath their struggle. The new wolf took a tearing bite to its side, and a wide gash down its flank, distracting the dark beast from the fox.
The second wolf howled in pain. The tiny fox cowered in a bush, frozen in fear, yipping with terror. The second wolf, smaller and lighter in color, fought hard, bleeding and snarling, taking the brunt of the attack even if it meant its death.
The shadow wolf snapped at him, its eyes glowing with a malevolent light, dripping ice. I recognized the curse of Winter. The dark wolf was turning into a monster of the Wild Hunt, its hunger for magic would supersede all reason until any mortal presence it had died and left only the shell to become a puppet of death and destruction.
But the lighter wolf fought relentlessly with a ferocity that I could only describe as insane. The dark wolf tore into the lighter wolf’s shoulder, ripping a gash of spraying blood, hitting something vital. The lighter one yelped and writhed, a signal of death throes more than the will to fight, but ice slid from the dark wolf to the other, coating the wound in a crystalizing film.
Fuck! Winter’s curse spread to the second wolf, and I knew instantly what I was seeing. The vision of Sebastian’s youth, when the Volkov had fought his son to keep Felix from killing Sebastian and devouring his magic.
I reacted without thinking, leaping as if I had physical form to break them apart. I hooked my arms around the lighter wolf and yanked, mind screamingNo!as if that would stop the blight from spreading.
The vision shattered like glass the ripple of it cutting into my sensitive mind as the forest with the fight vanished and returned me to the chaos of the Autumn realm. A headache pulsed behind my eyes as I gasped for air, arms around Finn, who stared back with a haunted expression.
“What the hell just happened?” I demanded; my heart pounding as if I’d run a marathon.
Finn blinked, disoriented and panting. He reached up to touch his shoulder, gazing at it as though he expected to find an open wound spurting blood and ice, but it was untouched. “I saw a child change into a fox. He was running from a dark wolf.” His gaze met mine in horror. “Did I have another one of those visions of yours?”
“Not mine,” I said. “The vision started before I touched you.”
Finn shook his head as if he could shake off the lingering fear. “I... I fought the wolf. As a wolf.” He held out his hands, staring at them as though he could see the blood. “Are all your visions like that? Real?”