Chapter 12
RAANA
Everything felt wrong. Breathing felt wrong. Existing felt wrong.
A hacking cough fell from Raana’s mouth as she rose from where she’d been splayed, drying mud covering her from head to toe, weighing down her oversized nightclothes.
She blinked against a mist rolling through the withering trunks of decrepit trees, the sulfuric taste of it coating her tongue with every inhale.
Was this another nightmare?
Her watering eyes adjusted to the world around her. Devoid of color, of flourishing life, as if everything good and vibrant had been sucked right out.
Moving her hands beneath her, then her knees and bare feet, she tried to get up—but fell again. She cursed at the pain that shot through her body, so weak and exhausted and covered in… blood. It was all over the front of her shirt and crusted beneath her nose.
Raana inhaled. Exhaled. Every breath made her feel more lightheaded. With a soft whine, she forced herself to lift her head and take in her surroundings again.
Where the hell was she?
Deep in her bones, she knew it wasn’t safe—wherever this was.
Last she remembered was being in Adrien’s arms. Last she remembered was his soft snoring as she’d muttered another prayer to whoever would listen for more time with him. Then darkness—sleep. She’d fallen asleep, hadn’t she?
Her head fell, and more coughs rasped through her throat. As she became lightheaded, she focused on her conduit, still dangling from her neck, and then her eyes drifted to her hand, where the iron ring was caked with mud.
Still there. Good.
Too late, she heard something shuffling through dried leaves, and then, the feeling of warmth against her back.
Raana jumped, gasping, and weakly tried to spin away from whatever it was.
The world tilted and turned as she scrambled, ending up on her back anyway.
She waited to die in this horrible place, but instead, she was staring up at a woman.
Raana blinked, her vision spotty, her current state of mind questionable.
The woman—stunning with long, inky dark hair spilling from the hood of her cloak and eyes such a bright blue Raana could see them through the shadows—reached out a hand.
Raana’s eyes slid over what sat perched on each of her fingers.
Rings of crystal. Crystal, she recognized.
Her eyes widened, and her gaze flew back to the woman’s face. Her nose and mouth had been covered, perhaps to make for better breathing.
“Witch,” Raana rasped with the most certainty she’d ever had in her life.
From the crinkle of her eyes, Raana could tell the witch smiled slightly. “As are you—partly, at least.”
Raana couldn’t focus on what the woman had alluded to, instead honing in on the brutal scar spanning her face, straight down from her hairline and disappearing beneath her covering. It looked painful, though healed enough that it was a puffy pink. It looked as though she’d been clawed by an animal.
Maybe one out here?
Ignoring the witch’s outstretched hand, Raana tried and failed to get to her feet herself. “Where am I?” Another hacking cough sent her body shuddering.
Rather than wait for Raana to accept her gesture, the woman crouched to her level and lowered her scarf to reveal her thin mouth and exactly how far that scar spanned. Straight across to her chin, right through her lip. “I believe they call it the Wilds.”
The Wilds. The Wilds? Raana had heard that once before.
With her breath shuddering, Raana inclined her head and turned, seeking a wall of stone, seeking some sort of gate, but all she saw before her was forest. And behind her—ruins. What was once a village was obliterated.
Now she knew what was so unsettling about this place. It was as if she could sense the dark, corrupting magic infecting her everywhere she came in contact with the earth, and with every breath she took. Even the shadows felt worse here, more biting and foreign.
“How the hell did I get here?” she asked, turning to face her. “What are you doing here?”
“I was about to ask you the same, child,” she said with a matronly softness before reaching for Raana’s hand. Her skin was warm as she held it and observed the iron ring. “You know, if you cease to dampen your true power, all of this will likely be easier to tolerate.”
Raana recoiled, now fully coming to terms with the fact that this witch knew what she was. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
The woman grinned. “You evaded the High Witch’s seers, but you can’t evade me. Especially not here.”
Raana nursed her hand and ring as if she’d been burned. “Why not here?”
“Because here, all we witness is the truth.” As if to make a point, the witch glanced at the destruction, though Raana hadn’t known what she meant.
Spots began to crowd her vision, but not the familiar empowering darkness she was used to. Fear struck a deep part of Raana with the knowledge that the woman was right. If she didn’t take off her ring, she’d die.
“Who are you?” Raana asked, her fingers running over the metal.
The witch turned back, and now, her smile was bitter and sad. “Nerissa,” she said. “Of the Althary witches in Ehime. “
“You’re from the mainland?”
Nerissa laughed through her nose. “We are all from the mainland.”
Raana was about to ask how Nerissa had gotten here, but bile had risen in her throat, and she turned to vomit. It was only Nerissa’s grip that kept her from falling into it.
“You need to take the ring off,” she spoke gently as if cooing a lullaby. “Clearly, you’ve used magic you need to recover from, likely what got you here, and the atmosphere isn’t helping much either.”
Raana didn’t need to hear anything else. She took hold of the ring and removed it.
Silence.
For a moment, everything was silent and hollow as Raana stared at the raw, paling skin where her ring had once been. She’d dropped the metal in the dirt, not wanting to see or think about it.
It felt like hours passed. Maybe all of eternity.
The glamor had gone first. In one blink to the next, her flesh had healed, and her skin took on the slightest glow.
Ethereal. Otherworldly. She hissed at a tinge of pain when her ears arched, and she felt the points of her teeth press against her tongue.
The stunning clarity that came with her heightened senses, she could’ve done without, but she knew she’d get used to the reek of the world. That had been the easy part.
Because then came the power.
When Raana gasped now, fortunately, the air did not sting, but it burned. In the way an icy wind burned. She reeled, bowing over her knees as her magic erupted, a torrent of shadows rushing towards her body and drowning her beneath them.
She hadn’t known she was screaming until she stopped. Her throat was raw, and the only iron she tasted was her own blood.
Looking down at her hands, the night in the tunnels of Deimos came back in flashes.
When she’d pushed her magic too far and tapped into this piece of her she’d never fully understood.
As they had then, her fingertips shone with an iridescent light that felt alive, dimming and brightening, traveling and retracting with every breath she took.
It bled into a night-dark black that inched up her arms like elbow-length gloves.
Darkness made flesh—it was the Imperial Alpha’s voice in her mind, and she felt a pulse as her power responded to her rage.
The darkness crept higher, her body becoming impossibly cold.
If she allowed it to consume her, she would become shadow itself.
It had only happened once, and she’d vowed to herself she’d never let it happen again.
“Remarkable.”
Raana lifted her head, having forgotten Nerissa’s presence entirely. She walked back towards her, dropping her hood to give Raana a full view of her face. Somehow young and aged at once. She had to be about twenty years older. And that scar—
“What happened to you?” Raana realized too late how inconsiderate the question sounded.
But before she could apologize, Nerissa said, “I’ll tell you the whole story once we—”
“We?” Raana jerked back, shadows dancing around her, ready to protect and strike. Though she felt no safer. “I—I’m not going with you. I need to get back to…”
Adrien.
In her haze, she’d forgotten, and now, he was all that mattered.
She looked down at the blood-stained shirt she wore. One of his that she’d thrown on after she’d been wrapped up in him last night. But she wouldn’t let her mind get lost in those moments. Not now.
Nerissa’s features darkened, and her tone dripped with malice. “Don’t be foolish, girl.”
Raana’s sharpened teeth pierced her tongue as she felt a gnawing in her gut.
It was as if a veil had just been lifted, and she could finally sense Nerissa’s aura.
How bleak it was, but also how powerful.
Something about it felt forged, not entirely what it had once been. She’d never sensed anyone like it.
At that moment, a wave of shadows slid over her back, reaching her ears with their whispers. And as they spoke, Raana felt it.
They weren’t alone.
Her blood chilled, and she got to her feet with immortal agility and strength.
Pairs of red eyes watched them from the darkness. When she spun to Nerissa, the smallest trickle of blood leaked from the older witch’s nose that she dabbed away with her sleeve. Somehow, she was exerting power.
Raana nearly buckled as the bak emerged from the trees—three of them.
Her stomach bottomed out. They appeared worse than she’d ever imagined, their bodies nearly five times her size, crafted of solid muscle and seeming to leak a putrid, dark aura from their pores.
It was peculiar, that aura. The fact that they had one, and even more peculiar, that they did not attack.
No, they stood as dutiful soldiers. Waiting. Waiting for…
Everything made sense, then. Everything.