Chapter 27
ADRIEN
“What the ever-loving fuck was that?”
Adrien peered out into the calming night from where he and Sebastian squatted within one of many city storefronts, surrounded by others sheltering from the storm. “I don’t know.”
“I need to find Isla and my father,” Sebastian said, voice edged with concern as the store’s door flew open, and everyone began spilling outside again.
Adrien followed, marveling briefly at the cracks in the windows as he passed. It was a miracle they hadn’t shattered completely. “Isla’s probably with Kai, and your father is probably with—holy shit.”
Gaping, he lifted his head. The cloud cover had nearly masked it, but the aurora was unmistakable. The ethereal ripples of reds, greens, whites, and blues were breathtaking and unlike anything he’d ever seen.
Unlike anything anyone had seen, apparently.
Slowly, everyone ventured out of their shelters, some gasping and pointing, some sobbing and cheering, seeming to view the phenomenon as a blessing—even as the landscape around them lay in tatters.
Lanterns with hopes and dreams had been dashed across the land, entirely broken, and vendor stalls had been reduced to rubble, their inventory scattered over the ground and floating in the nearby river.
Adrien found his gaze now fixated on the water, unable to tear it away from the river’s gentle rock, unable to ignore the steady ringing of a boat’s bell. Once, twice—
The frigidness at his neck bit. Hard. And then the darkness tread his body to his wrist again. Pulling, pulling.
Ta-dum… ta-dum… ta-dum… ta-dum.
Adrien let it lead him and didn’t bother looking where Sebastian had gone.
He wove through the wondering spectators and leapt over debris to the cadence of the shadow’s rapid drumming, using it, using this sense he’d felt earlier to guide him.
When he reached the fraction of the river no longer bracketed by the stone wall at the landscape’s gentle decline, he slid down its muddy bank until he was at the water’s edge. The shadow’s pulsing eased.
It was so silent over here, far from everyone else.
Adrien turned and continued along the bank, steadying himself so he wouldn’t slip into the murky drain.
He squinted at something forming in the distance, a stone in his path, maybe, the darkness not doing him any favor to discern it. But then came the smell.
Blood.
Death.
Adrien’s breathing was hampered, and he ran forward as the rock became clearer—as it became a torso, limp arms, legs, then a body. He stopped short and stumbled… then stared. There was so much fucking blood, even with all that had washed into the river down with the sediment.
But that hadn’t been what stalled him.
There, behind the body, with her clothes stained crimson and her beautiful eyes wide, stood Raana.
Her features remained set like stone as she fell back into the embrace of her shadows.