Chapter 42 #2
But some last fragment of human sense stops me. I find a staircase instead, taking it multiple steps at a time, and burst into the wide, grand entry hall at the bottom.
“Stop her!” I hear Kestrel shout from somewhere far above and behind me.
The guards lining the space look confused but follow the order, converging toward me from both sides.
The first one who reaches me suffers the full force of the primal creature I’ve become, catching me before I have a chance to rein myself in; I hit him with enough force to send him flying into the far wall.
As soon as I take my gaze off him, two more guards are already grabbing for me.
The first misses as I swerve right. I hook my fist into his stomach as I go by, flinging him down, sending a hairline crack splintering through the floor where he lands. The second starts to slow, reconsidering, eyes wide—but her arm is still outstretched, still reaching to block my path.
My hand moves without thought, grabbing and snapping bone as if it was nothing more than a tree branch.
The agonized cry that rises out of the guard is enough to turn my stomach, but I still don't stop.
Because the doors are right there.
And Sesca is somewhere beyond them.
“Owyn! Stop!” Briar's voice, ragged and barely recognizable through the roaring in my ears.
I don't look back.
I don't know how she manages to get in front of me.
But she does, stepping into the doorway with one hand raised between us, her whole body shaking.
“You can't go.” Her eyes cut briefly to the guards groaning in pain, then back to my face.
“You can't. You aren't thinking clearly. Something is wrong with you.”
Wrong.
No. I’m not wrong. The wrongness isn’t coming from me, but from somewhere in the distance. Somewhere I need to go. Now.
“Step out of her way.” Kestrel's voice comes from behind me, quiet and sharp as a blade. “Unless you want her to do to you what she did to the guards. Or worse.”
Briar shakes her head. “I'm not moving.”
The pain through the bond spikes. My vision goes briefly, brilliantly white.
“She's losing herself.” Kestrel again, her sharp voice splintering now, something more desperate bleeding through the cracks. “It's the bond. They've done something to her dragon, and it's making her sick and driving her mad. Trying to stop her is only making it worse for everyone—including her.”
They've done something to her dragon.
Why am I still standing here?
“We can't just let her go!” Briar cries. “This is obviously a trap!”
I hear trap, and my world collapses around the word until all I can think of is Sesca with her wings bound, her golden eyes dimmed, her body tied up in heavy chains.
“Briar,” I say, in a voice that doesn't sound like mine. “Move. Now.”
She doesn't move.
Pressure blazes through my fingertips, sharp and sudden, a heaviness that needs to go somewhere. I reach out, meaning only to push Briar aside. She makes a terrible, gutted sound as I do, and the pressure in my fingers turns to a strange tingling.
I look down at them.
Claws.
Dragon claws that are dark and curved and dripping with my best friend’s blood.
They’re retracting, pulling back into my regular nails even as I watch, but the damage is already done; Briar is on the floor, one hand pressed hard against her stomach, scarlet seeping between her fingers as she gasps for breath, her face white with shock.
Everything dims for a second, then pounds back with a clarity so sharp it's agonizing. But it doesn’t feel like my clarity. It doesn’t focus on the things I want to focus on; it’s only aware of the set of doors before me.
I fling them open and flee into the storm-ravaged daylight.
I’m not even looking where I’m going any longer. I’m just sprinting with the same borrowed speed as earlier, the bond feeding it, Sesca's panic and my own fusing into something that pulls me along for mile after mile.
Ten miles, twenty, maybe more. I lose track of the distance.
The palace falls away behind me, then the fields beyond it, then the fields give way to the dark tree line of the forest, and I plunge into that darkness without slowing.
My divine speed carries me through undergrowth and over roots, across shallow streams brown and churning with the storm's runoff.
I don't stumble, don't tire, don't do anything except follow the thread of anguish pulled tight between me and my dragon.
It's getting stronger.
She's getting closer, or I am. Or we're converging together, heading toward some point in the grey dark between us, and I can almost, almost—
Something hits me from behind.
Then from the left.
Then something is pressed over my face and my arms are being wrenched behind me.
I fight and scream and fight even harder, even as my knees begin to buckle. But there are too many attackers, and whatever they've put against my face smells like cold iron and bitter herbs and it’s dissolving every thought I have—even the divine, primal ones.
I slump down, my cheek meeting the wet earth. The cloth over my face slips a bit. Bits of stormy light slip into my vision only to flicker away as my consciousness drifts.
The last thing I'm aware of is Sesca roaring. Not through the bond but out loud, somewhere far in the distance. I don't know if the words that follow in my head are mine or hers. Just that they're soft. Broken. Defeated.
I'm sorry I couldn't reach you.
Then the darkness comes back, and this time, it's permanent.