Chapter 26 #2
The paintings of Aluna stare back at me from where they lean against a bookshelf, her dark eyes fixed on mine, a silent warning I refused to heed.
Without realising it, the blood I’ve drawn from my lip drips down.
It hits the cold stone floor. Almost silently.
Almost.
Luceran shifts.
A low growl ripples through the room. The stone trembles beneath my feet as frost crawls outward, the air freezing so suddenly my breath turns to mist. I squeeze my eyes shut, as if this might all dissolve if I refuse to witness it.
Then something whispers. I open my eyes.
High above, near the ceiling, the sprites hover. One of them holds something dark in its tiny hand, a chunk of charcoal from the fire.
They grin at me and without a word, the sprite hurls it.
The charcoal streaks past my head and smashes through the stained-glass window on the far side of the library, shattering it in a cascade of color and sound.
Luceran moves instantly.
His massive body surges toward the noise, bursting through what remains of the glass. Jagged edges scrape along his pale fur, drawing blood, but he doesn’t slow. He vanishes into the night beyond the window, leaving the library behind in shattered silence.
I sag against the shelf, lungs burning, heart hammering so hard it hurts. For a second, all I want is to slide down the stone and sit there, but the sprites won’t allow it. Tiny hands clutch my arms, hauling me upright, tugging me toward the library doors with frantic urgency.
Then another scream tears through the castle.
I twist against the sprites’ grip and look back through the shattered window toward the rose garden. A Fae male lies bleeding in the snow and bounding away from him onto the frozen lake is Luceran.
Where is he going? Why does it matter? All I should be thinking about is getting away from him, putting as much distance between myself and that wolf as possible before I’m next.
But he isn’t alone on the ice.
I squint through the falling snow, dread tightening in my chest as another figure comes into focus, long black hair streaming behind him, a white ruffled shirt stark against the night.
Pax.
Oh gods. No. Luceran is chasing him.
“He’s going to kill him,” I murmur in disbelief. Panic explodes inside me. “No!” I yank my arms, fighting the sprites’ grip. “Let me go!”
They chatter angrily. They do not loosen their grip. The next time, I don’t shout. I beg.
“Please. I have to help my friend.”
They hesitate, glancing at one another, faces scrunched with reluctance. At last they let go.
I run.
Down the aisles, shoulders slamming into shelves, breath tearing in and out of my lungs.
I don’t slow. I don’t think. I leap through the shattered window just as Luceran did, glass biting into my cheek as I pass.
Pain flares, warm blood streaking the cold air before staining the snow beneath my feet.
I skid to a stop at the edge of the lake, where the snow-covered bank gives way to frost-slick ice.
I remember this place and what waits beneath the dark water.
I lift my head and watch Luceran’s pale shape surge forward, paws pounding the ice, while Pax runs ahead of him toward the lake’s center. The distance between them is closing far too quickly.
I promised him. We will survive this. Together. I can’t abandon him now.
I step onto the ice, forcing myself to believe it won’t shatter beneath me.
That I can stop Luceran, that I can somehow make this right.
I run again, feet skidding, arms windmilling as I fight to keep my balance.
Snow thickens, an ivory veil swallowing the world.
Luceran’s fur becomes a ghostly blur ahead.
I raise a hand to shield my eyes. Cold claws into my chest until every inhale feels like knives. My legs burn. My bones ache. Still, I run.
Even when my strength begins to fail. Even when my lungs scream.
Suddenly I stumble to a stop, doubling over as snow fills my mouth and throat. I choke, gasp, lift my head into the storm.
“Luceran!” I scream, though the wind steals most of it, turning it into little more than a whisper. “Stop!”
The word is torn from me, hurled into the night, and I don’t know if he hears it.
Then I see movement through the sleet.
A shape. A shadow.
I hear a voice, then a growl, then the unmistakable sounds of struggle. A shiver rakes down my spine just as the ice cracks.
I stumble forward and drop to my knees, pressing my palms flat against the ice as if my stillness might somehow stop the fracture from spreading. As if I can will the lake to hold.
Through the sleet. Through the biting cold. I see them.
Pax is in the water.
The ice has split wide around him, black water churning as his arms flail wildly. He fights for purchase, for breath, for the surface, but he can’t reach it.
Because Luceran is holding him under.
Luceran, no longer the wolf, but the Fae male, bare and pale and luminous in the moonlight, beautiful and terrible all at once. His hands press down on Pax’s head, forcing him into the dark.
My lips tremble. A broken sound tears from my chest.
“No,” I sob.
Luceran’s head snaps toward me.
In the same heartbeat, Pax sinks beneath the surface, his dark hair blooming before disappearing into the black water, swallowed whole.
“No,” I cry again.
My body shakes uncontrollably as I rise to my feet, and the ice beneath me answers with another sharp crack. I feel the surface give way, feel myself falling, feel the cold water kiss my ankles, then fur and teeth and power surge around me.
Luceran sweeps me up onto his back, the wolf once more, massive and fast and unstoppable. He races across the ice, outrunning the fractures as they spider and split beneath us. The wind tears at my face as he sprints for the shore.
He leaps.
For a breathless moment, we are flying.
Then he lands cleanly on the snow, as the lake behind us collapses entirely, slabs of ice bobbing once before sinking into the black depths.
I roll off his back at once.
Tears stream down my face as terrified, furious sobs rip free. I scramble away from him on hands and knees, slipping in the snow, desperate to put distance between us.
He watches me.
Eyes fixed with a predator’s focus as he stalks forward.
“No,” I choke, scrambling to my feet.
My gaze catches on something beyond him. The dead Fae male near the shattered library window, his glassy eyes wide, staring straight through me.
“Leave me alone!” I scream.
Something changes.
The wolf falters. His eyes soften, confusion bleeding through the feral intensity. A low whimper escapes his massive jaws as his body shifts, bones cracking, fur receding.
When he stands again, it is on two legs.
Luceran stumbles, barely steady. He reaches for me, hands shaking, but I retreat.
“Neve,” he says, his voice ragged, broken, threaded with pain. “It is not what you think.”
“Liar!” I scream. “You murdered Pax. You killed all those people.”
My throat tightens, the last accusation bursting free with everything I have left.
“Just like you killed your wife.”
He grips his hair at the roots, shaking his head violently. “That isn’t what happened,” he says. “You must believe me. That wasn’t Pax out there. It was the demon wearing his skin.” His breath stutters. “It was Pax who killed those people. Not me. I was trying to stop him.”
He drops to his knees in the snow before me, shoulders collapsing inward as though the weight of centuries has finally crushed him.
“Just as I tried to stop Aluna,” he whispers. “It called her name. Drew her to the water.” His head bows, grief carving deep lines into a face once as still and implacable as the frozen lake. “It took her. Twisted her. Turned her into something that killed before dragging her down.”
He looks up at me then, and the tears in his eyes hurt more than the blood soaking the snow.
“I loved my wife, Neve,” he says brokenly. “I would not allow the world to believe her capable of such evil. I would not let that be the memory she left behind.” His voice cracks. “So I became the monster they needed to blame.”
I want to believe him.
I want to fall to my knees and pull him into my arms, to comfort him, to take his pain into myself.
But my body refuses.
Not now. Not with the snow stained red. Not after everything I have seen.
“Neve, please,” he begs, crawling toward me, his trembling fingers brushing the toe of my boot.
I stumble back. “Don’t touch me,” I gasp.
“Neve.”
He reaches again, then recoils suddenly. His hand curls into a fist and slams against his chest, claws digging into the flesh above his heart. He gasps sharply, eyes going wide, then pitches forward, catching himself in the snow.
Still, I don’t move. Even as his heart fails before my eyes.
Then footsteps crunch behind me.
I turn, bracing for another horror, but it is Atilia.
She rushes past me without a glance, dropping to her knees beside Luceran. She gathers him into her arms, pulls off her coat, and drapes it over his bare, shuddering body. He looks up at her, gasping, words trapped in his throat, unable to form.
And suddenly I can move again.
What am I doing? I love him. I can help him.
“The tonic,” I begin desperately. “I can…”
“Go.”
Atilia’s voice is sharp as broken glass.
“Leave. Now.”
“I…” I stagger, limbs shaking like a newborn deer. “Please. I can help.”
“I said leave!” she screams, teeth clenched, the sound ripping through me. I stumble backward at the force of it.
Her eyes burn into mine as she cradles her son.
“You are freed from your bargain, Neve Devlin,” she says, and in that moment, it feels as if an invisible chain snaps free from around my ankle.
The weight lifts. The pull releases.
I am free.
My family. My father. We are free.
So why won’t my feet move?
Just as doubt claws in, just as I realize freedom may be the last thing I want, Atilia’s ice-blue eyes pin me in place.
“You are not what he needs.”
The words strike hard and clean, sharp and blunt all at once. She is right.
I shiver, nod once, and turn away. I leave the rose garden without looking back.
I pass through the castle as if in a dream.
Past overturned tables and shattered glass.
Past blood smeared thick and dark across marble floors.
Even outside, the chaos hasn’t ended. Fae carriages jostle violently for position, drivers shouting as they fight to escape the courtyard, each desperate to be the first, the fastest, the farthest away.
Humans scatter around them, boots pounding stone, bodies swarming toward overloaded wagons bound for the Aurevault.
I have no carriage.
Only my feet.
I walk away from Frostwyn slowly, the uneven trudge of someone who has gained her freedom and lost the one person she wanted to share it with.
The weight of it presses down until I stumble, catching my blood-slick boots on loose stones, nearly falling as I wander aimlessly toward something that might resemble home.
That’s when I hear a familiar chirping.
A white mare emerges from the dark beside me, her ivory mane too painfully familiar to ignore. On her bare back sit the sprites, clutching that same silken mane as reins. They pull her to a halt, and she stamps her hooves against the road.
They speak to me, their voices a rush of sound I don’t understand, their tiny hands curling toward me, beckoning.
I can barely stand, my legs brittle, ready to give way, so I stumble to the mare and haul myself onto her back. The sprites help, clutching my arms and tugging me upright. When I am finally seated, they perch on my shoulders, so light I barely feel them, as I gather the mare’s mane in my hands.
“I suppose you’re coming home with me then,” I ask weakly.
They nod.
“Thank you,” I murmur. My brow furrows. “I don’t even know your names.”
The sprite on my left coughs delicately, as if clearing its throat.
“Mink.”
I jerk in surprise just as the other tugs my earlobe sharply to get my attention.
“Fitz,” it says, the word shaped awkwardly but unmistakable.
“Mink and Fitz,” I repeat.
They nod again, satisfied.
“Alright then,” I whisper, giving the mare’s mane a gentle tug. “Let’s go home.”
But after everything, after all this time, the words don’t taste as sweet as I once imagined they would.