Chapter Sixty-Six
brANCHES TORE AT MY ARMS. ROOTS lunged for my ankles.
I didn’t notice or care.
The cold turned into my enemy as I bolted.
All I could think about, all I could focus on, was finding Lucien before it was too late.
Why had he left?
How long did we have?
Didn’t he understand we had to stay close? That distance was killing us? That the longer we spent apart, the worse we would become until our bodies broke?
Run!
I didn’t have much time.
He didn’t have much time—
I clawed at my chest as another icicle stabbed my heart with its icy, awful dagger.
Running hurt. Breathing hurt. I left a trail of frost with every footfall.
I left via the back gate in the Whispering Dragon wall. I didn’t tell Dillon. I didn’t have time. But I left a trail for him to find us, coating the world in white as I ran and ran and ran.
The bond inside me was pulling, tugging, jerking.
Snippets of Lucien kept spilling into my head.
A dead child. A newborn baby. A slaughter.
I had to go to him. Help him.
Run, run, run!
The ice inside me snarled to go faster, faster, faster—pushing me to find Lucien so he could stop my creeping, freezing takeover.
I ran as hard as I could, my bare feet bleeding.
Why hadn’t I put on shoes?
How could I be so stupid?
Whisper raced next to me, keeping me safe as the forest swallowed us. I could barely see, but I didn’t need to. I followed the compass in my soul, urging me to go east, don’t stop, keep going.
I stumbled over a rock—
The panther pressed his massive shoulder against my hip, bouncing me upright before I could fall. My hand landed on his muscular back, finding my balance before streaking ahead again.
An agonising wrenching in my heart as Lucien howled inside my mind.
Losing himself, killing with a simple thought, burning, burning, burning.
The coldness inside me answered—coating tree trunks in hoarfrost. Ice burst from my sliced feet, freezing everything.
The world became an ice rink, glittering with icy diamonds.
Instead of tripping over branches and fighting trees as they clawed at my hair, my feet skated—skimming over frozen earth, weaving me around obstacles and propelling me forward in a blur of panic.
The bond convulsed.
He was too hot. His heart on the verge of collapse. He harnessed catastrophe only for it to break him—
I cried out as wintery power raged.
He turned his back on me—willingly sacrificing himself to hate.
“Wait!” I screamed. “Fight! Don’t give in!”
The overwhelming horror that I might never see him again sent another blast of ice erupting out of me.
The forest froze.
Leaves halted mid-fall.
Insects paused mid-flight.
Silence crushed me.
I kept sliding with no control—
The world wobbled like glass about to shatter.
I could feel it.
Feel the invisibility of time holding every moment together.
A scream tore from my throat as the frost consumed me—crackling over my throat, my jaw, my head—crowning me in antlers of glacial light.
A blizzard formed, coalescing into a vertical sheet of ice. The huge slab of winter hung suspended right in front of me. The trees behind it warped as if I looked through a deep lake, their silhouettes dancing.
I couldn’t stop.
Couldn’t prevent myself from sliding right into it—
The world splintered.
Silence roared.
Time restarted.
I couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t hear. Couldn’t see.
I coughed up a mouthful of blood as something tore inside me—
But then, everything returned to normal.
Wait...
Not normal.
I skidded to a stop.
Whisper snarled and lurched to a halt beside me.
Something was wrong.
Something had changed...
I tried to get my bearings.
I had no idea where I was or where I was going but...the mountain peak I’d been running toward—the compass needle leading me straight to Lucien—was no longer kilometres in the distance but...right here.
No longer in thick forest. No longer buried beneath a thick canopy. I stood on the ridgeline of the very mountain I needed and...
H-How is this possible?
Spinning back to face the icy sheet I’d run through, I caught glimpses of the trees glittering with hoarfrost as the rift healed. The scar sealed with a hiss of steam and my heart stuttered because...I felt it.
A graveyard of moments. A future of possibilities.
I felt time itself—a living, dying, forever changing layer that ruled every creature and person on this planet.
Snow filled my lungs. Ice burrowed into my marrow. Pain tore through my skull as I sank into the devouring hunger of cold.
I felt death everywhere.
In the roots beneath the forest.
In the fox that died three summers ago.
In the bones buried deep inside the mountain.
The bond yanked hard—wrenching me from the agonising trance. Saving me.
I bolted.
My bare feet glided as if I wore ice-skates.
Whisper kept pace.
Closer.
Nearer.
Lucien.
The sky glowed blood-red...
And the night started burning.