79. Chapter 79
79
Nelle
M y hands trembled as I swiveled them palm upward.
Oh my gods, oh my gods…
Nothing…there was nothing…
And there was no time to think, why , how, when—
Danne lurched forward and pressed the dagger to Graysen’s throat, readying to split apart the flesh. “You arrogant sly prick, thinking you can strangle me to death.”
“Wait!” I cried.
Danne’s flushed face cut to mine. Bloodlust was a cloudy haze in his eyes. But he’d halted from slicing through Graysen’s jugular.
“Let him live and I’ll come with you.”
Blood burbled from Graysen’s mouth as he gasped my name. His flesh had taken on a terrible grayish hue, and his breathing was a horrid rasping noise that squeezed my heart in terror.
“You’re coming with me no matter what. And I’m not about to let him live,” Danne scowled, his voice notably hoarse. “Gods, he’s feral, like all his family.” Glancing down at Graysen, his mouth twitched with cruel amusement. “Your sister, though, she tasted so sweet and innocent. I wanted more—until you interrupted my fun.”
Rage burst within Graysen’s gaze.
What did I have? What did I have left? Nothing. Not even a scrap of power.
My strength was bound with the creature. And with the dark magical dust poisoning my blood and trapping it, there was little I could do. What else…what el se do I have?
Me. I had me.
I would not bow to anyone. But I could appear subservient. Lowering my head, I tipped my chin down, and offered quietly, “This is how you want me, isn’t it?”
Danne’s eyes, eager for violence, returned my way and lazily roamed up and down my body. His breathing quickened. “Very much.” His hand fisted in Graysen’s hair, relaxed before he withdrew the dagger a fraction. “You’ll finish what we started in the limousine?” It wasn’t a question.
I nodded, squeezing my hands anxiously at my sides. If I could lure him away from Graysen, maybe I could save us both.
Danne rose and stepped toward me.
Understanding and horror flooded Graysen’s eyes.
No longer able to hold his gaze, I tore mine away.
“You’ll have it all, Danne. Everything you ever wished. Both of us broken.” I kept my line of sight on Danne, looking at him beneath my lowered lashes. “Just as you told me.”
And from the flare of his nostrils, the eagerness blazing from his features, I knew he was remembering what he shared with me in the limousine. His fantasy of watching Graysen while he shoved himself inside me. Seeing Graysen shatter and break with every thrust.
I took a wobbly step back on the uneven ground.
Graysen struck out for Danne, but his hand raked uselessly through the air. “Don’t you fucking touch her! I’ll tear you to pieces! Rip you to shreds!”
Danne approached me in leisurely strides. I backed up, stumbling on rocks and stones.
And Danne kept walking.
If I could get hold of the dagger clenched in his fingers.
Danne glanced over his shoulder. “How, Crowther? Right now, you’re the one bleeding at my feet. And this sweet Wychthorn princess,” he said, reaching out to gently cup my chin, “is right here.”
I lunged for the dagger—
He yanked his hand out of reach—
And I missed it.
I missed!
Spinning sidelong, Danne drew his hand back and then slashed forward. His meaty palm cracked against my face. He slapped me so hard my head whipped sideways, my body following as I staggered and fell to my knees. Pain erupted, scrambling my senses and muddying my thoughts.
“That’s exactly how I want you. On your hands and knees,” Danne sneered, grabbing hold of my hair.
He wrenched my head savagely as he tugged me back to my feet. I swayed, disorientated, slashing drunkenly at his fist with my fingernails.
He cursed and let go.
I tried to move, to evade him—
He punched the side of my head violently. Great bursts of stars exploded behind my eyes. My teeth chattered and ferocious pain crashed right through me. My ears rang and distantly I heard Danne’s laughter as I crumpled to my knees, sagging forward, one hand braced in the sludgy earth to stop me from tipping over.
Danne loomed over me. I blinked sluggishly, as if watching from afar. I saw his dirty, expensive shoes stepping apart to brace his stance, and through the wide gap of his legs, I watched Graysen, bloodied and broken, trying to drag himself toward me.
The creature writhed, twisting and flailing. Its roar of fury drowned out everything else. I could see Graysen’s mouth moving, but I couldn’t hear him. All I could hear was the screaming inside my head. Such wrath. It wanted to burn the world down.
Graysen was yelling something at me, his mouth forming words. Yet, I knew it was one word he kept repeating over and over again and I suddenly realized it was my name he roared— Nelle! NELLE!
Danne turned away to hasten to Graysen.
Free yourself! —I screamed at the creature.
The creature pounded, striking back at the magic-infused dust that had poisoned my body. Fat beads of perspiration burst along my hairline and rolled down my clammy temple. Nausea churned, sweating my mouth. A cruel cramping sensation stabbed my gut.
Hurry, hurry! —I begged it.
Danne kneeled behind Graysen’s head.
Move, move, MOVE!— I screamed at myself.
My limbs shook so badly, they felt like jelly. I couldn’t move.
But I felt it—
A giving.
Cracks and fissures appeared in the wall that pressed back against the creature. It slammed with all its might, and I felt each strike vibrate with every rapid heartbeat and shudder of my bones.
My stomach spasmed —
The thing that lived inside me broke through the prison walls—
Dust exploded from my lungs, my stomach. Hot and bitter motes of dust sprayed all over the river stones, coating their damp surface with a dull sheen of blue, and left me tipping sideways and rolling to my back.
Dazed, my head reeling, I drew in ragged pants, trying to swallow down air. My throat was raw and burning, and I thought for a moment that my lungs were actually on fire.
The creature mewled, convulsing with the residuals of poison still in my system. The energy to break free from its prison had weakened it severely. I could feel how little of its might was left to me.
My bare feet scrambled through loose stones as I struggled to right myself. One stone flew through the air.
I watched the stone skip and bounce, arching—
Arching. Skipping.
I suddenly realized what I could do.
A hiss through gritted teeth had my gaze snapping to Danne.
Danne held his arm stretched high. High enough he’d crossed the shadow line and sunlight struck the blade clenched in his hand. Light glanced off the razor-sharp edge of the dagger and spun away. A fistful of black hair feathered through his fingers as he yanked at Graysen’s head to arch his throat back to expose the jugular.
No, no, no, no, no—
A scrap. There was a scrap of power left to me.
Time slowed.
Danne thrust his hand downward.
The blade sliced through the air—
I pushed to my feet, surged forward—
Barreled into Danne—
Grabbed hold as I knocked him off his feet—
And swifted .
We reappeared in the swifting void. In that shadowed space between places. And beyond the shadows, it deepened to an endless black.
I’d never been frightened of the void. Its pitch-black realm had never terrified me in the same way being locked up in the Tithe Prison and its black emptiness had.
Here, the darkness was welcoming.
Perhaps because I’d always known I wasn’t alone .
Buffeted by icy tendrils, the strange power of the swifting void coiled about an ankle, a wrist, tasting, tugging, trying to ensnare us for eternity. I received an answer to one of my questions. Danne was still alive. I hadn’t been sure when I swifted with Graysen, so I’d woven a pocket of air around him to ensure he could breathe in the void. Now I knew that whoever I touched was safe. Merely holding them allowed someone living to swift with me.
Danne’s eyes were so wide they were mostly white. His mouth fell open. Those creepy phantom tendrils of power ruffled his auburn hair and slipped across his clothes like ghostly fingers.
I held onto him. My fist bunched in his shirt, pulled the fabric tight against his straining belly.
“Nelle, please…I’m your friend.”
“You touched me. You tried to…” Force yourself inside me. To take me against my will.
I could still feel the echo of his hands tearing at my dress, ripping my panties, and pawing at my body.
Cold fury poured through me.
His gaze went to my hand, fisted into his shirt. How I held him aloft with one hand. His eyes snapped back to mine. He rasped, “What are you?”
“Do you want to know the joke of it all?” I hissed.
His throat bobbed as he gave a single tentative nod.
“I don’t know.”
I didn’t know what I was or what I shared my body with. Was I me or simply a vessel to carry something else? Something other.
The creature snarled— Let go, let go, let go, let go…Just…let…go…
Danne had stolen me away.
Taken me against my will.
Tried to force himself inside me.
But what burned my blood to a raging inferno— He dared harm what was mine!
And the snarl that erupted from my lips was from both the creature and myself that twined together to gather in a ferocious roar of untamed fury.
Danne lurched back, altogether forgetting about the void.
I unfurled my fingers—
Too late…too late did Danne realize what I’d done. He panicked, his hands scrabbling for me, but I’d twisted free and—
Let go.
I watched as he drifted away, his limbs flailing and clawing for purchase that would never come. His eyes bugged and his mouth gaped like a fish landed on the bottom of a boat. Filaments of raw power wrapped around him like thick spider webbing, tugging him further into the shadows.
A noise— BOOM— in the shadowy void.
The swifting void, the pocket of space I’d accidentally ended up in when I was fifteen years old, had frightened me when it first occurred. One moment I was running through the woodland on a crisp winter morning, my bare feet breaking frosty earth, crushing grass and mud. And as I leaped over a jutting root from a tree that had tipped over, I’d suddenly thought of Lise, of when we’d last spoken in her bedroom, and I found myself leaping into nothing.
Into the shadowy, swifting void.
And out again.
I’d reappeared with a sensation of wind beating against my skin like feathers, right in the middle of Lise’s bedroom.
These pockets weren’t only voids, they were places where creatures lived in the space in between. And if you were something special, like the Birds of Prey the Crowthers kept, you could use the dark abyss to pass through. Like stepping into an elevator and out again. One door closing—another opening.
…BOOM…
Denied oxygen, Danne’s chest spasmed. His milky freckled face turned a blotchy red, then purple and blue. His hands scrabbled frantically at his throat.
I floated in the endless shadows, watching and feeling nothing but a simmering sort of satisfaction.
…BOOM…
…BOOM…
His fingers were white and brittle. His flesh became dry like drought-stricken earth, fissures cracking his skin.
Danne unfurled a hand to stare at it. Disbelief washed away his strangled, panicked expression. He tried to raise his arm higher, only to find it snap at the shoulder joint and flail uselessly in the darkness.
The sound of gigantic wingtips reverberated around me.
…BOOM…BOOM…BOOM…BOOM…
A score of color emerged against the black. Frost-white and silver with touches of charcoal and mauve. And out of the darkness came the creature to whom this void belonged.
It soared through the grim shadows, a burst of crackling luminosity out of nowhere, a streak of lightning hues as its inflamed feathers rippled with every beat of its wings. A gigantic bird—a Stormbird.
It swooped in a graceful arc to snatch up Danne with its talons. Upon impact, his calcifying body snapped in several places. Fingers shattered, and his leg broke at the kneecap, drifting past me.
The Stormbird’s pitiless eyes found mine, and the void winds, shifted by its aerodynamics, stroked against my skin like a caress.
…BOOM…
…BOOM…
…BOOM…
I stayed to watch the creature disappear into the darkness beyond until even its silver and charcoal flamed feathers winked out until there was only me, alone, in the swifting void.
It hit me then, what I had done.
Suffocating in the void didn’t kill Danne. Nor did the calcification of his body. Nor was it the Stormbird that lived in the space between places. It was me. I killed Danne.
It was my choice to let go.
I swifted from the void, appearing some distance from Graysen. Stones kicked up beneath my feet in my rush to reach his side. Mud squelched between my toes as I fled up the mound of fallen earth.
Graysen sucked in a breath of relief when he realized I’d arrived alone. I sank to my knees beside him. Black eyes flecked with gold scanned my face and body as he searched for wounds until he reassured himself I was unhurt. “Danne?”
“I left him in the swifting void.”
Graysen was shattered, bloodied, and pale. Cold, too, I discovered as I pressed my hands to his, my stomach giving a tremulous lurch at his clammy skin and violent shivering. The stab wounds in his chest weren’t healing either.
He stared up at me with eyes completely bloodshot with burst vessels. I pushed back his dark hair, wet with blood. “You came for me.”
“Always, little bird.” His lashes lowered and he sighed. “You c-could have let him have me…b-be free of the Alverac.”
My mouth tipped up on one side. “I’ve gotten used to your sullen face. I think—I might miss it.”
He grunted in pain. “You’d m-miss me th-then?”
I pressed my lips to his. His mouth was so cold, too cold, and I tasted something other than the coppery tang of blood. Salty tears, I realized as I drew away, my lips wet, my cheeks too .
A broken, pained chuckle. “You’re crying.”
I sniffed, rubbing at my damp eyes with the back of my wrist. My bottom lip quivered. “No, I’m not.”
“Got s-something caught in your eye then, little bird?”
“A bit of dirt,” I lied, even as fresh tears coursed down my cheeks.
Graysen winced, gritting his teeth to hold in a bark of pain—yet lifted a shaky bloodied hand to wipe away my tears, leaving a sticky smear of red in its wake. “I’m not worth crying over.”
“Don’t leave me, Graysen,” I whispered, clutching his shoulder with a white-knuckled grip and pressing my forehead to his.
“I wouldn’t d-dare…” he murmured, weaving his hand beneath my tangled hair to its place at the nape of my neck. “Your wrath…would only h-hound me into the next life… Have you p-pissed at me for eternity? Not worth it.”
I tried to smile for him and failed miserably.
He’d thrown himself from a cliff to save me, shattered almost every bone in his body, and still, he’d fought for me.
The creature inside me purred. It liked Graysen, it always had. It wasn’t a tentative touch either. It seeped outward to glide over his chest and squeeze gently in a reassuring embrace.
Pulling back, I cupped my hands around Graysen’s cold cheeks. “I don’t have much power. I don’t think I can swift for very long.” I didn’t think I’d be able to swift all the way home, even if I was swifting in short bursts.
“F-follow the r-river…” he rasped.
Yes! Wherever there was water, there was life. If I followed the tumbling waters far enough, surely I’d come upon someone living along the riverbank. Someone I could beg for help.
Which way? Up or downriver?
Downriver!
I gathered the remnants of its power and clasped hold of Graysen’s arm. His bloodshot eyes flared wide as dark magic rumbled all around us. Swifting wind stirred—gray-tipped wind and the illusion of feathers—a welcome caress.
Because I could only swift somewhere I’d been, or at the very least, seen, I could only swift short distances. From one line of sight to the next, I followed the river, reappearing to disappear before we’d fully materialized, only to slip back into the void. Each time, it got harder and harder to push through the abyss. The creature inside me was nearing exhaustion. I tracked the churning water, down bends and through rapids, leaving the mountainous ravine behind, to swift through gloomy thickets and along the riverbank that bordered lonely meadows, until the river spilled into a small lake, and there at its edge, I spied a cottage. We were on the opposite shore but it only took one blink, one heartbeat, for me to swift us there.
It was a small paint-chipped wood-battened cottage. No fences, simply a short overgrown lawn stretching to where waves lapped against a rocky shore and a raft bobbed in the distance.
I left Graysen lying amid the wild grass and ran up the porch steps, which groaned underneath my weight. I banged my fist loudly against the door and shouted, “Help! Help!” But no one replied. My stomach fell at the thought that no one was home. Jiggling the handle, I discovered it was locked, but that was nothing to me. Power coiled around my bones. I kicked the door in and was greeted by a musty smell that meant no one had lived there for some time.
Where is the phone?
I need a phone!
A mess of panicked thoughts, I burst inside and ran through the small cottage and its few rooms.
Nothing. No electrical devices. No TV. It was a rustic place with a wood-burning stove. A place I might have appreciated if I didn’t desperately need to contact my family.
My feet slapped against the paint-chipped wooden boards of the porch as I ran back outside and came to a slamming halt—
We weren’t alone.
Someone stood between Graysen and me.
He stared at me with kingfisher-blue eyes—Silas Boon.
My gaze cut to Graysen, splayed on the grass with his eyes closed. As soon as I saw the pulse point fluttering in his throat, I let out the pent-up breath I was holding. He’d mercifully passed out.
I turned my attention to the stranger.
He’d traded his tuxedo for an ivory robe, intricately detailed with silver stitching that fell mid-thigh. The belt held a curved dagger, and he wore a tight black shirt and pants with knee-high boots. His appearance and stiff posture seemed old-fashioned, and there was an aura about him, as if he were from another era. His attire was also eerily similar to the two things standing silently on either side of him.
And these things were exactly like those in the catacombs. Warriors. They towered over him with papier maché masks, a twisted mockery of features that perhaps resembled their true face hidden behind the mask. Though a morning breeze stirred over the lake, teasing small waves and fluttering Sila’s clothing and hair, the warriors’ robes remained untouched. In each of their studded-gloved hands was a savage-looking sword.
What did I know about them? But more importantly, what did I feel about them?
I cast my senses wide and I felt nothing living about them at all.
What if someone had resurrected the dead?
But the dead never came back right. My research in my family’s dusty tomes had made that clear. So whoever created these warriors, who surely had been brought back to life, had to have a dark hold over their skill of necromancy.
I felt Silas’s gaze traveling all over my body. The shock at the state of me, I expect, had his eyes widening and his mouth tightening, his hands fisting with violent tension. Graysen’s blood was a smear of red on my cheeks. Dried blood crusted my chin where I’d bitten off Danne’s earlobe. My dress was torn and filthy, my hair was a tangled mess, and I was covered in scrapes and bruises.
He hurried forward.
I lurched backward, raising a hand. “Back off!”
“What happened? What did he do to you?!”
And the question was so ridiculous. The absurdity of it had a rough laugh crackling from my throat. Gods, everything. Danne wanted everything from me. He wanted to do such vile things to my body. Desired with a cruel passion to break my mind and my spirit. He’d been desperate to end the life of the one person who was mine, and Graysen’s death would have accomplished all of that. It only made my harsh laugh louder, more manic. A moment later, my reckless chuckle slowly died. “You mean Danne Pellan—the man you left me with after you captured me? Danne, who double-crossed you? Who attempted to steal something from me?”
Silas looked unnerved and sickened. Perhaps from my laughter, as well as a bite of the truth.
“I didn’t know. He hid you behind a shield. I couldn’t find you.”
I wiped the pinch of tears from the corner of my eyes, collected myself, and strode down the rickety porch steps. Wild grass scratched against my shins as I waded through its thickness, drawing closer to the trio. “No, I expect not.” I cocked my head, glaring at the stranger. But he wasn’t a stranger any longer. I knew his name and greeted him coldly with it. “Silas Boon.”
He inclined his head, his pale blond hair sliding over his forehead with the motion.
My gaze flicked to those things on either side of him. “Children of the Harbinger, right?” I snorted. “And you said you didn’t want to frighten me.”
“The catacombs was rather regrettable. And I apologize… I saw a chance and I took it. You hadn’t left the estate in months. You’d slipped out of my hands when Danne tried to exchange you with the Changeling that first night. And since then, you were always in his company.”
His company. Graysen’s company. And I could feel his palpable abhorrence rolling toward Graysen, lying in the grass near his feet.
Graysen, whose breathing was shallow and hard fought for. The rasping sound of it had fear trickling down my spine and squeezing my heart with icy fingers.
I turned my attention back to the man with bright blue eyes and my fury for him boiled my blood. I wanted him gone!
Throwing myself into a swift , I reappeared in front of Graysen, lowering my stance and bracing my bare feet wide apart. Dark power, the scraps I had left, sparked in my balled fists.
The two warriors turned as one. Despite the eyeless masks, I knew where they were staring…knew what they wanted.
Graysen dead.
Silas followed their movement. And it was with grace when he swooped to a knee, bowing before me.
For a moment, I was blind-sided.
Bowing? What was he doing? I was a Wychthorn, yes, but I didn’t understand why he’d be bowing at the feet of someone like me—his enemy.
He raised his head and his striking blue eyes met mine before he raised a hand, palm upward in offering. “Come with me.”
“Why the hells would I willingly come with you?” Why in all Nine Hells would a child of the Houses—of the Horned Gods, no less—go with the Children of the Harbinger? Our enemy? The faction that had sworn to rid the earth of us and very nearly did.
“Wouldn’t you like to know what you are?”
I blinked in astonishment.
Did he really know what lurked inside of me?
Could he give a name to it?
It was so unexpected that my fury stumbled.
“I can explain it all,” he said softly. “I can explain everything.”
But I noticed his companions—his guards—had moved forward, their swords rising.
“I can keep you safe. Protect you. ”
From him , Silas was saying. From Graysen —that was what he was truly implying.
A sweltering heat poured like molten lava through my veins. Fire. Rage. “Right now,” I said, with lethal slowness. “The only one who needs protecting is you from me .”
He blinked. Then gestured behind me at Graysen’s limp body. “This…he… he’s not right for you. You have another choice.”
“Choice? Do I? Or is it, yet again, someone telling me my choice is already made?”
Silas would steal me away, and Graysen would be slaughtered.
He rose to his feet, taking a step toward me.
“Leave before I burn you to hells,” I snarled.
Silas’s companions didn’t listen—moving with utter silence through the long waving grass.
I unleashed the dark power—the last of it.
The earth erupted in a violent quake that shuddered through my bones. Silas jostled, stumbling back, his arms shifting to right his balance against the ground rumbling beneath his feet. A cruel tempest whistled through the wild unkempt lawns, whipping up dead leaves to dance in the air, and my fire burst free, great swathes of silver and golden flames setting the grass alight to create a wall of wind and fire and fury.
Silas braced himself against the wind that struck at him. Half-twisting away, he threw up an arm to shield his face against the deadly flames that licked out. The squall tugged and tore at his pale hair. Sweat rolled down his temples. Gold and silver fire reflected in his bright blue eyes.
“MINE!” I roared.
“Stop it! Stop it now!” Silas barked. Alarm flared across every inch of his horrified features.
MINE! —the creature’s rumbling snarl joined my own—“ MINE!”
His hands shot up, palms outward in surrender. The words fell from his mouth, rushed and panicked. “You don’t know what you’re saying. You don’t know what it means!”
Mine.
I was making a claim. I felt it, those threads of power binding Graysen and myself together, tightening. Anticipation hummed through the air. Aether sparked and vibrated with the embers tossed about by the wind.
What will happen if I say that word, heavy with meaning, one more time ?
My lips met, curling in as I began to form the word.
“No!” he shouted in rising horror. “I’ll leave…” and his expression fell in defeat and confusion. “But don’t… Just don’t…”
Keeping my slitted eyes on him, I let the dark power in my hands crackle and spark higher.
Swifting wind gathered around those things— the Children of Harbinger—and their physical form wavered in and out of the shadowy void before they swifted completely.
I didn’t move a muscle. Didn’t relax my lips.
Silas seemed resigned, and there was something else in his gaze I couldn’t place. Couldn’t understand at that moment, too caught up in protecting Graysen.
He inclined his head, a gentle gesture, then disappeared. Not swifting like his companions. No, this was something altogether different from what I’d ever seen before. He simply vanished.
I stayed still and tense and battle-ready for a little longer. When I was sure Silas and his warriors weren’t coming back, I whirled around to crouch beside Graysen, taking hold of his arm. I rallied the very last drop of power in the well that had always seemed limitless and swifted him onto the only bed in a small room with unadorned walls, only bare chipboard.
Rushing away, I found a bowl in the kitchen and filled it with fresh water before snatching a washcloth from a linen cupboard and returning to his side. Carefully unzipping his jacket, I winced at the stab wounds and the amount of blood coating his torso, but also relief eased my frantic heartbeat to see most of the flesh had knitted back together. I cleaned the blood away and found blankets. Tucking them over and around his body, I settled down beside him, a hand on his chest, counting his shallow breaths.
He was ashen, almost a frost-white tint, with bloodless lips and a waxy sheen to his clammy skin, like a corpse left too long in the cold.
Would they find us? His brothers? My father?
As the hours ticked by, the swelling and petaled bruises faded. Color bloomed on his cheeks, and I listened to the soft crinkle as the last of his bones fused back together again. I took what felt, at the time, like my very first breath, and pressed a gentle kiss to his temple.
And still, he didn’t wake, leaving me to the empty quiet house and my equally quiet mind.
I was a Wychthorn princess. I’d lived with servants my entire life who did everything for me, but I wasn’t completely useless when it came to looking after myself. I gathered broken twigs and pine cones from outside and stuffed them inside a wood-burning stove. The creature had burned itself out entirely, falling into such deep slumber I couldn’t prod it awake. Instead of fire dancing along my fingertips, I lit a match and carefully held it under screwed-up newspaper until the flames caught, igniting the kindling. It didn’t take long to warm up, filling the cottage with comforting heat. I dug around the tiny kitchen and found a can of pumpkin soup in the pantry and cooked it on the stove. I ate it directly from the pot with a wooden spoon, not tasting a single mouthful, and though the warmth of the soup filled my belly, it couldn’t thaw the chill that resided in my heart.
As night descended, I lit candles and Graysen slept on. And those lengthening shadows stained my mind with darkness and fear…and left me alone with my dark thoughts…everything… everything finally caught up with me.