Chapter 29
CHAPTER TWENTY NINE
The taste of dirt on my tongue made me gag, pain burning my limbs as the Lost Children pinned me down again and dragged my arms so far behind my back that I was certain they’d tear them from their sockets at any moment.
Hendrix looked lost to the song once again, a throaty laugh leaving him as he called to someone in the forest. “I know you’ve longed to take my hand,” he croaked to no one.
“Hendrix!” I cried, and his eyes met mine. They widened, clarity finding him between the woeful lyrics.
He bellowed my name, his muscles straining as he fought to free himself in a sudden bid of effort, blood running down his chest where his shirt had been torn from his body.
The wild look on his face suggested he was still partly lost to the madness of the forest, but he could see me within it now too, every piece of him fighting to get free, not for himself, but for me.
The Bear and Fox were racing through the trees around us, their bodies little more than a blur of flames and water, their bellows echoing in the dark spaces, but they seemed unable to do anything to help.
I didn’t know if Hendrix had lost control of them entirely or if it was the song of the Lost Children which had summoned them from his grasp.
I could feel the Dragon stirring beneath my skin, the beast agitated and furious but still refusing to reply to my commands as I bellowed at it to do as I bid from within the confines of my mind.
Hendrix roared in pain as the Lost Children looped more tethers around his body, so many of them clambering on top of him that I almost lost sight of him altogether beneath their tangled limbs.
They were going to haul him into that dark abyss at the base of the oak any moment and I wasn’t certain I’d be able to reclaim him once they did.
The echoing beat of his pulse seemed to call out to me in the small space which divided us, each thump sounding like the strike of a clock nearing midnight.
I didn’t know if I was imagining it, but I could feel the weight of his death looming like a stranger in the room, stalking closer with each moment.
And I found I couldn’t bear the thought of him meeting with his end.
“Please,” I begged, my voice ragged over the rawness of my throat. “Save him.”
A rush of potent energy filled me with such raw abandon that I was blinded by the force of it as it burst from a place deep within my chest.
Silver light exploded from the pendant at my throat, shot through with bolts of teal lightning which blasted the Lost Children away from us, flinging them into the surrounding trees.
The Dragon bellowed powerfully, and the leaves were torn from the branches overhead, the trunks bowing back like stalks of wheat blasted in a storm as the might of its power swept through the moonlit glade.
I choked out Hendrix’s name, crawling through the dirt to him as wind whipped my hair around my shoulders and lightning sparked against my skin.
But it didn’t hurt me. If anything, it filled me with more energy, aiding me as I scrambled to the male who I held such knotted emotions for within my heart.
The Fae warrior groaned as I caught hold of his hand, his green eyes lifting to pierce my own, his fingers fisting over mine.
“I’ve got you,” he growled, as if he’d been the one to make it to me instead of the other way around, and a manic, fevered laugh burst from my lips.
Movement all around us had the sound dying as fast as it had come, the Lost Children racing back at us from the trees, though there was no sign of Rissa nor the Serpent among them.
Hendrix pushed himself up so that he could cradle me in his arms, the bulk of his body curving around mine as if that might be all it would take to save me from the death racing our way.
I cringed against him, the thump of his heart a wild beat against my ear as I pressed it to his chest.
“Please,” I begged again, tipping my head back to look up at the Dragon which had made it into the heart of the heavens overhead.
“I see you finally found your manners, fated one,” it replied.
Clouds swirled all around the spirit as it twisted in the sky, its serpentine body undulating, shards of teal electricity spearing in every direction as it dove towards us at a furious pace.
I threw up a hand to shield us as thunder ripped the sky apart and lightning blasted down into the glade, raising screams and curses from the Lost Children as it struck them.
I was blinded by the blazing light, Hendrix’s arms tightening around me as we were lost to the rush of the Dragon’s magic. Then suddenly we were flying, the spirit capturing us in its talons and heaving us from the ground in a rush of motion.
The Dragon flew into the darkness between the trees, the forest rushing to bend and twist out of its way, leaves slapping against my skin as we swung back and forth in its clutches.
Two blurs of red and blue light chased after us as Hendrix’s spirits followed, the weight of their combined magic making the air buzz around us.
I lost all sense of direction, all notion of where we were within the Taking Trees, but I didn’t care. The heat of Hendrix’s arms around me were all I needed, the solid thump of his heart the balm my aching soul required.
The Dragon turned sharply, then dropped us to the dirt where we were sent tumbling across leaves and mud before skidding to a halt before the door to a house dressed in moss and tangled ivy.
I practically sobbed as the three spirits all twisted out of their corporal forms, returning to their amulets and leaving us on the threshold of salvation.
Hendrix muttered something about making sure it was safe as he stumbled through the door to the house and it was all I could do to stagger in at his back and bolt the heavy wood behind us, barring out the night at last.
Someone had closed shutters over the window and the two of us sagged against the door, slumping down to the floor as one.
Hendrix banded his arm around my shoulders and I leaned into him, my head finding its place against his chest as though his body had been carved just for me to rest it there.
“You’re a fucking nightmare, lightwing,” he growled, his lips against the top of my head, stubble tugging at strands of my hair, his grip on me so tight I had to think he might never let me go again.
I opened my mouth to protest but he only drew me further into his embrace.
“But you’re my nightmare now.”
Perhaps we should have risen from our place at the door. Perhaps we should have spoken of all the horrors we’d just endured and survived against the odds. Perhaps I should have told him of all the things Rissa had divulged.
But as I sat curled in his arms with the night pressing close beyond our small refuge, I found I had no energy to do any of those things.
So instead I pressed myself more tightly against the brute I claimed to hate so dearly and wondered how I would have been able to go on without him had he met with death in those trees.