Chapter 29
Twenty-Nine
Adelasia
“Adelasia?” Rowan says softly.
I blink and look up. We’ve stopped again. I don’t know how long we’ve been walking. The days started running together a while ago.
Rowan gently grabs my arm “You’re shivering.”
I hadn’t noticed. My arms are wrapped around myself so tightly I might crush my own ribs. Kaius is beside me before I can respond, pulling off his cloak and draping it around my shoulders. His fingertips graze the back of my neck, and I lean into them automatically.
It’s so easy, still, to find comfort in their touches. But part of me doesn’t feel like I deserve it.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper.
They both freeze.
“For what?” Kaius asks carefully.
I squeeze my eyes shut. “For dragging you into this forest with me.” I lower my voice. “It’s not safe. You’re not safe here with me.”
“You’re not a monster,” Kaius says, voice tight.
I meet his eyes. “Aren’t I? Look at my hands.”
I present them to make my point. The rot has darkened. The veins around it have turned a sickly violet, and it now extends so high it touches my shoulders. It looks like something diseased. Cursed.
Rowan reaches for one hand and turns it over in his.
“It’s not who you are,” he says. “It’s something that’s been done to you.”
“I don’t know how much longer I can hold it back,” I confess, my voice shaking. “It’s louder now. All the time.”
Kaius his hands frame my face. “It’s not you, it’s the Blackwood. Remember, it plays tricks on you, feeds on your weaknesses.”
I nod. He helps me take a few deep breaths as I try to fight the urge I have to run and hide.
Not because I’m scared of them–but to protect them from what I’m capable of.
This power I have feels ancient and terrible and uncontainable, and no amount of breathwork will ground me. It wants to lash out.
Still, I try.
I picture the rot in my veins as vines, and I try to pull them back into the soil. They only grow. The forest darkens—not from clouds, but from me.
“Adelasia,” Rowan says slowly. “Focus.”
“I am,” I bite back.
The air thickens. My breath shortens. The wind kicks up, and suddenly—
The ground explodes.
Cracks spiderweb through the dirt. The trees nearest us groan. A blast of shadow bursts from my chest, knocking Rowan and Kaius backwards with a force that sends them skidding through the leaves.
My ears ring, my skin burns, and when I look up…they’re staring at me like I’m something they don’t recognize.
Their eyes that once softened with every look in my direction are wide with something I haven’t seen in them before.
Fear.
Rowan, ever the braver of the two, slowly gets to his feet, brushing dirt from his trousers. His voice is low. Cautious.
“We should stop.”
I stagger back. “No. I didn’t mean to…I’m sorry.”
“It’s fine,” Kaius says.
That hurts more than I can say. I know he doesn’t mean it cruelly, but something inside me recoils like a wounded deer. I feel a snarl rising in my throat, not from anger, but from terror.
I didn’t mean to.
I didn’t mean to.
I’m sorry.
Before I can speak, a branch snaps in the woods.
Rowan’s head jerks to the side. Kaius steps in front of me immediately. Then the shadows move. Figures emerge. Lean. Fast. Armor blackened with soot and old blood.
“Demon hunters,” Rowan hisses.
The leading hunter pulls down his hood. “Well,” he says, eyes flicking between the three of us. “Isn’t this a lovely little gathering of monsters.”
Another dozen step from the woods behind him.
Rowan drops into a crouch beside me, wings unfurling. Kaius glances back. “Run.”
But it’s too late. The air split open with steel and screaming.
Demon hunters rushed from every direction. Some had whips laced with silver. Others, curved daggers meant for splitting bone from muscle. Some with crossbows loaded with wooden bolts.
And in the center of it, I stand, heart hammering, power still pulsing in my bones from earlier. I don’t want to hurt anyone. I don’t want to be the monster the magic wants me to be.
But I can’t just watch Kaius and Rowan fight this battle alone.
I close my eyes, grit my teeth, and grab a string of magic deep within my soul. It erupts from my palm, slicing between Rowan and a charging hunter just in time. The man falls backward, his armor crawling with angry, hungry shadows.
Behind me, Kaius lets out a grunt of pain. My eyes snap to him, where a blade slashes across his ribs. His blood hits the forest floor, dark and thick.
And suddenly, I don’t care if the magic consumes me whole.
I turn, calling it again, summoning it from the deepest part of myself, from the place that always burns. It comes too fast, too violently. My hands tremble.
But before the magic can explode, a whistle cuts the air.
A stranger dives into the chaos from the trees, cloak billowing like smoke.
I blink. No—not a stranger.
“Saddiq?”