Page 84 of WitchBorn
“Where’s momma?” I asked.
Felix turned back to human, the process faster than most full-grown wolves, but still taking a few minutes. His little toddler eyes filled with tears as he pointed toward his head and then the water.
“What?” Cassa was in the water? I hadn’t seen any sign of her. I got up and leapt into the river, fearing she’d been caught by the current. Beneath the surface a glimpse of dark hair made me swim toward the bottom. My heart in my throat as I raced toward it.
Cassa’s hair cascaded around her, arms floating free, gaze blank in death, expression peaceful. I screamed, air filling my lungs, and reached for her, needing to free her as though I could still save her. She didn’t budge.
Darkness popped around my vision, the lack of air, and water filling my lungs threatening to add me to her grave. Strong arms yanked me from the water, dragging me to the surface. I struggled, but broke the surface, gasping for air, to find Oberon dragging me to shore.
“No!” I flailed. “Cassa is down there.”
He dumped me unceremoniously on the shore, shoving me hard. “Stay there.”
“Cassa…” I whispered my heart breaking.
He dove into the water and it felt like forever before he came up, Cassa in his arms, limp and lifeless. Felix curled up by my side, little face tucked against me, his wail sounding more like a wolf than a child.
Oberon carried Cassa to me. I reached for her, finding a heavy set of chains broken but linked around her waist. Oberon’s hands were bloody, and he dropped down beside us, the scent of his grief wafting through the death.
“She’s already gone,” Oberon said as I tried to turn her over to free the water from her lungs. “Cold. Been gone awhile.”
My mind spun with a thousand ideas and confusion, trying to make sense of anything. “What? How? Why?”
Oberon captured Felix’s face and studied it. He gasped and looked back at Cassa. “Xander,” he said after a moment.
“Help me,” I begged him. How many times had I failed to save his lovers? Was this payback? I couldn’t stop the wheels of time, but Cassa hadn’t been at the end of hers. “Please.”
“Xander,” Oberon said, wrapping a firm arm around me. “She’s gone. She did this to herself.”
“No.”
“Yes. It looks like a spell.” He glanced at Felix. “To suppress the beast.”
“No!” I ripped myself away from them, howling as the beast demanded control and my wolf screamed inside.
“It looks like some sort of sacrifice spell to control Felix’s dark side, but I’ll have to search her belongings to see if there are notes. She’s gone.”
I snarled and reached for the baby monster I’d created. Oberon put himself between us, the claws of my beast going into his gut. He grunted but didn’t back down.
“If you need my death to alleviate your grief, my brother, then so be it.”
I screamed, fighting the beast and the wolf with the fragile remains of my broken human heart, demanding they not destroymy brother, too. Something splintered, a snap into darkness and I floated away into an icy dream of water, blood, and tears.
Fifty-Six
WESLEY
Ifelt Finn’s soul splinter and realized that was the moment Finn, as I knew him, had been created. Darkness flooded the area with a dense layer of suffocating fog, and the Hunt attacked, leaping at Finn.
The bubble of protection around the tree shattered, as if the tearing of his soul released the last of his strength to protect the memories.
“No!” I screamed, finally free, I raced to Finn’s side, but even I couldn’t face the Huntalone. The first icy beast tore into Finn’s leg, dragging him backward, as he gasped but remained otherwise motionless. Broken, I realized, the heartbreak destroying his will to live. But he was mine, and nothing had ever been mine before. I wasn’t ready to let him go yet.
I could count on one hand the times in my life I’d released my hold on the dark side of my Stag, a berserkers rage. “Get to the next statue, Finn!” I yelled.
The next was Sebastian’s, which I realized hadn’t been the Winter’s curse as I thought, but the breaking of whatever spell Cassa had used to bind Felix’s dark side. “You can do this. Honey, please, you have to.” This quest through his past trauma was his and his alone. The choice his, to reunite the three piecesof his soul, or destroy himself in the process. I prayed he could do it, even if my heart ached at the thought of his agony.
I shifted to my Stag, and it towered over the Hunt, deadly horns at the ready. Blood filled my mouth, foam dripped pink as I leapt into their number spearing the first on my rack, the pain and blood adding to my rage. The monsters’ focus swung my way, all snarling as the ice tried to grab hold of my feet.