CHAPTER 13
Kessian’s eyes widened as he turned to see what had me so spooked, while I reached blindly behind me for the amulet on my bedside.
My fingers tangled around the earring. The wraith shrilled in a voice like a knife sharpening as I drew back and struck, my fist sinking through the shadows.
I’d always thought of them as having density, but I’d never felt them. My hand, lodged inside, moved slowly, as though through thick treacle. I yanked it free, the shadows clinging to my knuckles.
The wraith recoiled, freeing Kessian, who scrabbled behind me. The creature writhed, its darkness dissipating, peeling back from its face where I’d struck it.
Before it vanished, I glimpsed one familiar green eye.
My eye.
Then it melted into nothing, leaving the room silent except for our panting breaths.
Kessian said, “It’s gone?”
“For now.” I didn’t know for how long. It had broken through Lunaris’s wards. With the amulet’s magic expended, I had no more defenses left. “The curse cure didn’t work. Neither did Coill Darragh’s wards.”
Worse, the air still felt damp and cool, like the essence of the wraith still lingered. I got the distinct impression it was trying to pry its way through the bars of whatever cage the amulet had confined it in. Like it was still there, separated from us by a terrifyingly fragile veil.
A snap above my head made me jump. Lunaris had unlatched the skylight. It opened for us.
I exchanged a look with Kessian. Heart hammering, I crawled through, pulling Kessian after me.
At once, I could see why she’d called us out.
We’d parked a quarter mile from Briar and Rowan’s cottage in a passing lane on the country road, with a view of the sheep fields and the forest beyond.
The tree canopy roiled like waves on a stormy sea, and something about it reminded me of smoke signals made by castaways calling for help. Or issuing a warning.
Kessian said, “Tal, we have to go.”
“What? What’s wrong?”
“I—I don’t know. I don’t think the amulet’s done more than buy us time. I think we need help.”
I didn’t need convincing. We went back inside, navigating to the driver’s cabin, but when I sat down and turned the key in the ignition, the engine revved but didn’t turn over.
That Lunaris hadn’t started it right away should have been my first clue something was truly wrong.
My second was the curling black shadows issuing from beneath her bonnet.
We’d escaped with her once before. The wraith wasn’t going to let us go again. No matter how many times I turned the key, the engine wouldn’t start.
Lunaris flung open her doors. Her message could not have been more clear. Run.
We clambered out onto the roadside, my bare feet hitting cold gravel. We ran. I risked looking over my shoulder once and saw a shadow phasing through Lunaris’s walls, struggling as if she held it back.
A knot formed in my throat. The wraith better not hurt her. I didn’t know what I’d do if the one constant in my ever-changing life was suddenly taken from me, too.
I risked looking over my shoulder when a bright light blazed, casting my own shadow long in front of me.
Squinting, I watched as the antlered figure pulled itself free from Lunaris’s grip, the red beam of her taillights illuminating its grisly movements as it limped after us, wounded but dogged in its pursuit.
We turned a bend in the road. I could see the cottage ahead, but not how close the wraith was behind us.
Kessian stumbled. I put out an arm to steady him. “Almost there.”
But he tripped again, this time going down. He let out a groan, holding his hip as he tried to right himself, and I skidded to a stop to help him up. I wound an arm around his waist to support him, limping the rest of the way.
We reached the cottage, sweating despite the cold.
I couldn’t see the wraith yet, but the wind shrieked through the trees in warning.
The cobblestones and gravel chewed the soles of my feet, making the whole world feel sharper, too.
I aimed to hammer on the cottage door to wake the couple inside, but before I could, Kessian grabbed my hand.
“Wait—”
“We need to get help.”
“I know, but … Shit, never mind. It doesn’t matter.”
Kessian had never struck me as the sort of person to faff about in a survival situation, so the fact he was holding back at all alarmed me. “What’s wrong?”
“Never mind. It’s stupid. I was just thinking that I’m shirtless, and my top surgery scars are still really obvious, and I didn’t like the idea of coming out of the closet like this, but we don’t have a whole lot of choice right now.”
“Yes, we do,” I said, and gathered him close to me.
He went rigid with surprise as I leaned past him to pound on the door so hard I could hear the exclamations of shock from the men inside.
I hugged Kessian so we were chest to chest, as if protecting him from the cold.
Or the wraith. “We can ask to borrow clothes.”
Kessian, who could flirt and say the sort of lascivious things that’d get you excommunicated, looked more flustered now than I’d ever seen him.
The door opened. Briar, wearing a housecoat and flanked by Rowan in nothing but boxer shorts, did not ask why we were there. He ushered us inside.
“Did the wraith come?”
“Yes. It tried to take Kessian.” It nearly slit his throat, I couldn’t say. It has my eyes.
“I’ll get you something warmer to wear,” Rowan said.
“So much for it being a curse and an easy fix,” said Briar. “Well, this establishes one thing for certain. The shadow isn’t a curse, and it isn’t a completely separate entity from you, either.”
My stomach sank. “What do you mean by that?”
Briar pointed to my wrist, wrapped around Kessian’s shoulders.
The runestone bracelet was still tied around it.
“Nothing can get through the wards into Coill Darragh without one of those, or without becoming a part of the local community, whether by marriage or just … love, really. If it got through, that means it’s a part of you. You granted it access.”
Despair hit me square in the chest. “I—I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to.”
Rowan said, “Don’t worry yourself. It’s not us it’s after.”
“Did your amulet not banish it?” Briar asked.
“Only temporarily. Lunaris’s engine wouldn’t start. She tried to slow it down. I’m afraid it hurt her.”
Kessian’s arms squeezed around me. I’d never been so grateful for an excuse to hold him. As the reality of what had nearly come to pass washed over me, crushing him against my chest grounded me better than tapping my thumb and ring finger, or counting backward from a thousand.
Rowan appeared with clothes. Briar’s would have been too small for me, but Rowan’s were huge.
Likewise, Briar’s were slightly too big for Kessian.
I didn’t care, so long as he felt more comfortable.
Rowan and Briar retreated to give us privacy, and when they were out of sight, I released him so we could get dressed.
He mouthed, Thank you.
Briar’s voice carried from the kitchen. “Perhaps get a move on. We may need to visit the forest before dawn.”
We dressed quickly and found Briar and Rowan both looking out the window over the sink. They backed away to give us both a view of the fields. In the distance, I could see Lunaris. It was hard to tell if she was all right, but a great, ashy stain rose up her back wall as if she’d been burned.
And in between her and the cottage, the wraith shambled over a fence, half walking, half crawling. It twitched fully upright when it seemed to lay eyes on us.
“Out the back door,” Rowan said.
Kessian still limped, so I kept an arm around him for support.
We emerged into a garden, though not like one I’d ever seen.
Alien plants festooned the flower beds and pots, and it had a smell unlike any greenhouse I’d been to—loamy, sure, but eye-watering, too.
As if someone had cut many onions. We borrowed their wellies and followed them out through a back gate, across the fields, heading to the forest. To our right, the shadow put on a burst of speed, aiming to cut us off before we reached the tree line.
It melted low to the ground and swept forward like a dark fog of spidery limbs and broken antlers.
We all put on a burst of speed. Briar moved more slowly with his cane, and Kessian couldn’t run, hobbled by his injury, but we had a head start. Blood thrumming in my ears, we reached the trees before the wraith.
It felt like walking through a portal from one world into another. When I looked back, the shrubs and trees and flora of the woods fanned out, crowding together, forming walls. We couldn’t be more than six steps within the tree line, yet I couldn’t see the cottage anymore, or Lunaris.
Or the wraith.
“What happened?” Kessian asked. “Did we teleport?”
“No. The forest is protecting you,” Rowan said.
Protect the Keepers.
I shivered, the voice simultaneously a breeze through the canopy and a breath on the back of my neck.
Briar shook himself like he’d walked through a cobweb. “Yeah. I never quite got used to that.”
Rowan had gone still. “It’s willing to talk, if you’re willing to hear it.”
I exchanged a look with Kessian. Adrenaline wearing off, I scrambled for what questions to ask. “Can you tell us what the wraith is?”
You. Not you. Like you, but other.
That made no sense to me at all. It only opened more questions. Kessian looked equally frustrated.
“What do you mean, it’s me but not me?”
A part of you. A piece, severed. The soul of its wild magic twinned to your own witch’s heart.
“And what does it want?”
To go home.
“But … I thought Shearwater was its home.”
It is … a tree without roots. A house unoccupied. A place people come and go but never stay.
“Are you talking about the wraith or Shearwater or me?”
Yes.
I scrubbed a hand roughly through my hair, as if I might tear it out. Kessian leaned into me in a subtle show of comfort.
Briar said, “I know. The riddles don’t help matters.”
“If it’s any comfort, this is the forest being quite direct, like,” Rowan said.
“But I was back in Shearwater, and the wraith was there. If it means for all of us to be reunited, to go home, we already have been, and it still tried to drag Kessian off to …”
I trailed off. The breeze through the trees whispered eagerly like I’d said the right thing.
I didn’t want to believe the implication, but the look shared between Rowan and Briar confirmed they were thinking the same. The strid … It wanted us to go back to the strid.
The Keeper will find safe passage. Your dreams are the compass. Time is the road you must travel.
I shivered. Dreams? Like Kessian’s memory I’d found myself in? Time, like its visions of the past and future?
“What does that mean? How?” Kessian demanded.
But the forest no longer seemed to listen, its words rushing together, whistling intensely through the trees.
In times of old, its waters ran through the veins of all who drank from its well, and they were it, and it was them, and they were Shearwater.
But now it is a poisoned well. The blood of its heart leaks far from its shore, so now the water is not blood, but tears.
It cries, “Come home,” but no one hears it, and the poison makes it bitter and sour.
It ensnares the blood to sleep forever in the depths, but you—you escaped.
You, a grave awaiting burial, and your Keeper the spade.
“The Keeper? Who is the Keeper?” I asked.
“The one with whom you share dreams.”
The voice rattled my teeth in my skull, made my bones ache, but that last phrase drove a splinter of fear through my heart.
Kessian said, “Does that mean …? Am I the Keeper? Am I a danger to him and not the other way around?”
Whether you are each other’s salvation or each other’s doom rests on the flip of a coin.
It didn’t reassure me. Lady Luck had never favored me, and I hated the idea of being anyone else’s doom. Especially after Laurelie. I shook my head. “Then I will run like I always do. I’m not risking anyone else’s life.”
It is too late to run. Running will not save your Keeper. The poison is upon him, too.
The horror took its time settling upon me. I did not quite believe it, yet. Running had always worked. I’d been running for years, and it hadn’t quite caught up.
I looked at Kessian. My voice didn’t come so I ended up mouthing the words, I’m sorry.
He shook his head. He had a determined look, like none of this particularly surprised him. Not calm, but far more accepting than me.
A tremulous quiet followed. The wind died down. The canopy ceased to hiss. The forest seemed to teeter uncertainly upon the edge of what to say.
The one who kept the strid before holds more answers than I. Speak with him, your father’s father, and cleanse the poison, or it will take root in the soil wherever you set foot.