Chapter 48 Wolfe #2
I took Elariya’s hand and numbed it. “Just you this time, Ziyka. Best not to do anything to slow the spell down.”
Her eyes widened a fraction for a heartbeat, then she nodded. “Okay, if you’re sure.”
“Yeah, I’m sure. It might work faster, too.” I tapped her hand, giving her added reassurance.
When her nerves loosened, I sliced her palm. The blood pooled again and I dropped it onto the parchment. The others noticed I wasn’t doing mine.
Resuming my focus, I chanted the incantation again, giving it the same energy as before.
Within our sphere of hope, Elariya’s blood took shape fast, darting impossibly fast through the air. It skipped past the slow map formations and seemed to leap through the realms and planes of existence. It reached the place it had before and that pulse came again.
And holy Gods above, I felt it.
I felt the ring.
This time it screamed at me, like a poor soul in distress, desperate to be saved. The sound cut deep to my core, drilling down deep to my bones.
“You feel it too,” Elariya blurted, her words tumbling out.
“Yes.”
“Can you hear it calling?”
“Yes.”
She invoked her threads again, they ripped out of her fingers reaching toward the ring.
But they never reached. The door closed again.
Shutting us out.
Sealing us away from the one thing that could change everything for us.
The shield dropped and no one said anything. Everyone saw what happened.
The spell worked. Until it didn’t.
We’d come further than ever.
But there was something more we had to do.
None of us knew what that was.
The map faded and Elariya’s blood returned to her. I set the athame back down and looked around at everyone’s sad faces. And pity.
Pity for us.
I looked at Elariya and my heart cracked when I saw the disappointment in her eyes. The last time was bad enough, but this time—when my hopes were practically nonexistent—something inside me died.
I couldn’t keep doing this to her. Or myself.
It wasn’t fair.
And I was tired. In a few months we’d be approaching the sixth-year mark to when this all began.
Everything down that path was designed to break up more and more until we found the ring.
“I…” Her voice withered.
She tried to speak again but I shook my head and reached out to touch her cheek. “No more for the night.”
I took her hand, dipped my head toward the others and led her out of the room.
Everyone watched us in our retreat but we didn’t look back.
Elariya squeezed my hand tighter and I held her the same.
We still couldn’t communicate telepathically, but I could feel her agony, the cutting disappointment, and the need to getaway.
We didn’t even walk the full length of the way to our bed chambers. I opened a portal and took her straight there, sealing her away from the rest of the world.
I released her hand and she walked over to the window. Her hands lifted to her cheeks and she held her head down, as though the weight of centuries rested on her shoulders.
“I must have done something wrong,” she mumbled, slowly shaking her head. “I wasn’t enough.”
“No, that’s not true.” No way in the heavens nor the hells was I going to have her believing that.
I marched up to her and turned her to face me. Tears welled in her eyes and her expression became more desolate as she stared at me.
“It is true Wolfe. I’m the tracker.” She pointed to herself. “I don’t know what went wrong. It was within my grasp. What went wrong?”
“None of us know.”
“But I—”
I stopped her with a kiss. I crushed my lips to hers, pulled her flush against me, and kissed her like it was first and the last time I ever got to do it.
She kissed me back with the same reckless need.
We pulled apart for a breath and I stared down at her searching her eyes. I’d kissed her on impulse—wanting to distract her, to take her back to where we were yesterday. And I’d wanted to feel something more than the harsh reality that faced us.
We were at the end of the twelfth day. I didn’t want to waste it on failure.
Time had stolen enough from us.
I cupped the back of her head and pulled her back to my lips. She reached for me too, slipping dainty hands into my hair and grabbing on to my shirt.
I lifted her up and carried her over to the bed where I laid her down and rid us both of our clothes with one thought.
“I want you, Elariya,” I whispered over her smooth, soft skin. “I’ll always, always want you.”
“I’ll never stop wanting you, too. I always want to be with you.”
Her words ignited the fire in me that burned only for her.
I spread her legs wide open and thrusted my aching cock deep, deep into her entrance.
Her body arched instantly into mine, giving me room to drive into her harder. Her walls squeeze around my cock and I lose my mind.
My thrusts become wild and animalistic, a reflection of the fractured state of my mind, and an echo of my fears—the fear of losing her.
The thought makes her take more from her, fucking her deeper.
I had no plans to stop. I wanted all of her.
She was so beautiful and perfect and fucking mine. Time would not take her again from me tonight.
This woman had been my reason—the reason I breathed, the reason I lived, the reason I fought for a future.
I devoured her, wrenching one orgasm after the other from her perfect body. Each time I took in the pleasure filled vision of her impaled on my cock, surrendering to me.
And fuck, I wanted to worship her body again and again and all over again.
I couldn’t stop myself. We kept going until we couldn’t.
I took her from behind one last time before we both collapsed on to the bed in a sweaty mess.
I held her close, skin-to-skin, my breathing ragged against hers.
When we calmed, I pulled out of her and she turned on her side to face me.
She reached up to touch my face, running her fingers along the scruff of my beard. In her eyes I saw…everything.
The hollow nothingness had long gone and instead of looking at me like she did before the reset, I saw so much more.
"I love you," she whispered, her voice carrying the weight of every emotion she'd been holding back.
Her eyes shimmered with unshed tears, wide and earnest, like she was offering me her heart on open palms. She looked at me like I was her entire world, like I was worth keeping, worth choosing, worth loving. And her walls were finally down.
“I love you.” I pressed my forehead to hers, savoring the moment. Savoring her.
I had her back, and I wouldn’t think of losing her again.
Even if it was inevitable.
I held her against my heart until we both fell asleep.
Darkness swallowed me whole.
Not the quiet dark of night.
This was thick. This was breathing. This was alive.
I walked through it, though I didn’t remember how I’d begun. Or how I’d gotten here.
Smoke and shadows curled around my boots, coiling up my legs, clinging to my skin like sweat. There was no ground beneath me. Only shadow layered upon shadow.
Was I back in Morg?ven?
Or somewhere else.
Somewhere worse.
The darkness shifted below.
Then it split.
Hands reached up from the abyss, reaching for me.
Hundreds of them!
They burst from the void, fingers skeletal and slick with rot, knuckles cracked, nails blackened and broken. They reached upward in jerking, desperate motions, clawing at my ankles, my wrists, my throat.
A whisper rose from beneath me filled with many voice.
“Join us…”
The smoke thickened, pouring into my lungs. The hands tightened, dragging me downward inch by inch. Bone scraped against my skin and something sharp pierced through my ribs.
“Become us…”
Those words. I’d heard them before. Many times, before. It was the voices of death calling to me, beckoning me to become the deathwalker forevermore.
The darkness opened beneath me like a mouth. And then I felt it.
My essence.
Something was pulling at the center of me, unspooling my soul thread by thread.
“Join us.”
The words echoed inside my mind, layered and relentless.
The hands climbed higher, tearing at me now. And through me.
I roared and tore myself free—
And woke.
Panting, I bolted upright, my eyes meeting stone walls, dying embers in the hearth, and moonlight spilling through the window.
Then Elariya. She slept safely beside me, her breathing slow and steady.
I wasn’t in some dark hell but the cold touch of death remained in my body.
I looked down and my breath stopped.
Half of my body had dissolved into the shadowy form of the wraith.
My arm flickered, skeletal beneath a veil of smoke. Veins glowed faintly under translucent skin, as though trapped between states.
I flexed my hand, and the wraith flexed with me.
“No. Not now,” I muttered.
I forced my magic inward, commanding it to retreat. But the fucking shadows resisted.
They clung to my essence in a way they never had before. Then a sharp pain tore through me.
The sensation of hands pulling through me returned and that was when I understood.
I never had a nightmare.
Death had come for me. And it was hungry to have me.
I leapt off the bed, as quietly as I could manage but I crashed into the dresser.
Elariya didn’t stir. Good.
I didn’t want her to see me like this.
I portaled out of the room with the aim to head to the kitchen but instead I ended up outside face down in the dirt.
“Fuccckk,” I groaned.
A rough set of hands gripped me. I fought against the grip until I realized Bastian was holding me.
“Wolfe, what’s going on?”
I transformed into the wraith, and the pain tore through me so violently my head snapped back and a savage cry ripped from my throat. Then he world fractured at the edges and went black.
I came to with a violent inhale, the world slamming back into place.
Air burned my lungs as I breathed in, and the stone ceiling swam into focus.
Bastian leaned over me, jaw tight.
“Where…” My throat was too dry.
“We’re in the medicine room,” Bastian informed me.
Someone else lifted my head.
I looked to the side and met Sirril’s worried stare.
He nodded as if quieting some inner fear, then he hoisted my head high enough so I could drink from the flask of water he gave me.
It soothed my throat almost immediately and it helped me rebalance my mind. I looked down my body and saw I was myself again. But it felt…temporary.
“How are you feeling?” Bastian asked.
“Like I’m not me anymore,” I rasped, my voice still hoarse.
I hated the fact that Bastian didn’t say no or try to refute me. Fuck I would have even preferred him calling me a jerk or an asshole over the silence.
“How did you stabilize me?” I decided to break the silence. I couldn’t stand it anymore.
“Mutterweed brew,” Sirril replied.
“Sirril, why don’t you go make some more.” Bastian gave him a weak smile. “I need a moment with Wolfe.”
“Of course, my Lord.” He dipped his head and made his way out of the room, but he looked back at me and in his eyes, I saw grief.
The closed and I looked back at Bastian. I tried to sit up but I couldn’t.
Feeling defeated I gazed up at the ceiling and rested a weary hand to my head.
“I’m turning into a wraith, aren’t I? The Deathwalker. Death.”
“Yes.” Bastian sighed. “But there’s more.”
I turned my head and met his haunting eyes. “Tell me.”
“The light of the Fae is leaving you, taking your essence with it. Something accelerated it. Or a few somethings.” He paused for a beat.
“I can only assume that the hundred years you gave up to save Elariya is taking its toll on you. Add that to the piece of your soul you gave her after the Ruskiel’s attack and um…
you don’t have that much left in you Wolfe. ”
Despite the pain, I sat up.
“You’re not exactly Fae anymore,” he continued, his words breaking me more and more. “Your blood is different too. Everything is different.”
I sat hunched and we stared at each other, wordlessly, mindlessly.
This was what we always feared.
“How long? How long until it takes me?”
He shook his head. “I can’t say. The only thing that could stop it is getting the ring. But even then, that might not be enough anymore to fully reverse it. It would be your only hope though.”
“Merciless Gods, there is always something.”
“The brew restores vitality. For now, it will hold what little essence remains steady. But it is also feeding wraith side.”
“Shit, now that’s what you call fucked.” I smirked without humor.
“Wolfe, please.”
“I’m right. I’m fucked.”
“We just need to take precautions for now. You can’t use your Deathwalker powers any more. I fear that if you do, you may not be able to change back. And it will weaken your Fae essence even more.”
“This was why the spell rejected my blood.” That was what I’d suspected.
Bastian nodded.
“Does anyone else know?”
“No. Just Sirril and I.”
“Don’t tell her. Elariya.”
His brows snapped together. “She has to know Wolfe.”
“No. Not now. I couldn’t do that to her now. She has too much to worry about.” I couldn’t get the image of her face out of my mind. “Let’s get through the rest of time, the days leading up to her reset. I don’t to her spending the time worrying about me.”
Bastian hung his head then dragged a hand over his face. “Okay. I won’t tell her. I’ll make sure the others don’t too.”
“And Arielle. I don’t want her to know either.”
“Now you’re just asking me to be an asshole. How am I supposed to keep something like this from her?”
“Because she was right the other day.” I gave him a firm stare.
“She and Elariya are friends. They’re friends and her duty to me always keeps getting in the way of that.
She values her friendship with my mate. I will not rob her of that.
I don’t want Elariya to know what’s happening to me.
If Arielle knows, I’ll be one more thing she has to keep from her friend. ”
He understood.
He breathed out a heavy sigh. “What the fuck are we going to do Wolfe? The ring seemed to be within our grasp, but we couldn’t reach it.”
I couldn’t even answer.
What could I say when I had no idea what to do.
And it looked like I was already on my way out of this world.