Chapter 31
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
ABBY
A sound pierces through the evening air, but it’s not the scream of a wraith. It’s a howl.
Quinn’s howl.
The last time I’d heard that, it was the sound of his heart breaking as I left Rosewood in Jade’s arms. Only a short time later, I would drive my dagger into that very heart.
I turn on my heel just in time to see a flash of silver dart past the edge of the crowd and disappear into the night. I push my way through the now frozen couples and off the dance floor, which is easier said than done with this ridiculous dress. Petra races in my direction, but it takes only a moment to realize that it’s not me she’s running for.
“What happened?” I demand, because now I’m certain she has something to do with this.
“I knew this was a bad idea,” she mutters, more to herself than me. “I told her not to do it.”
“Told who not to do what?”
Her eyes meet mine, and there’s genuine remorse there. “Teagan asked Quinn to change her. She thinks the wolf will override the siren.”
“ What ?” We’ll have to talk about that later, but right now, I need to find Quinn. I know why he’s running. I saw it in his eyes the moment Jade suggested he bite Ty. I saw the anger, the panic . I see a flash of it every night he’s forced to take this form, and now someone else wants him to embrace the beast he just wants to leave behind.
I can’t hear what Petra’s saying because I’m too focused on the bond. ‘Quinn?’
His answer comes fast. ‘Not a monster. Not a monster. Not a monster.’ The words aren’t for me, but rather, he’s letting me see him spiral. Letting me feel it because, even in this state, he knows I’m the only one who can pull him out of it.
‘Listen to me. You need to stop running. Let me help you.’
‘Not a monster. Not a monster.’
Fuck, can he not even talk to me? ‘ You’re not a monster. You never were.’
And then there’s silence. Either he’s shut me out or he’s too lost in his own head. Or…
No. He was never a monster, so he hasn’t lost himself to it again.
I let out a frustrated cry and move to hit the wall beside me. Before my fist connects with the rock, a firm hand catches my wrist and halts my momentum as if there were no strength behind it at all. The hand is far too warm, and that’s all I need to know that it’s a dragon.
I reluctantly turn my gaze towards who I expect is Petra, but it’s Jade’s red-rimmed green eyes staring down at me.
“Let me go,” I say, pulling my arm from his grip. He releases me with apparent eagerness, as if he doesn’t know why he stopped me in the first place. If that’s the case, I should consider myself lucky that he didn’t set my arm ablaze by accident. Maybe he has more control than he thinks he does.
“A severed finger and a broken hand aren’t exactly a matching set, you know. In case that’s what you were going for.”
Maybe it’s him I should be hitting. “I can’t deal with you right now, so just fuck off.”
His eyes widen in either surprise or amusement. I don’t care enough to tell which. He’s silent for a moment and then his face falls. When he speaks, his voice is softer than I’m used to. “What would Jade do?”
“What?” I’m not in the mood for riddles.
“What would I do if I wasn’t… This .” He gestures to himself, and I know he’s referring to the red lines snaking up his body, the pale hair that was once the colour of sand, and the striking eyes that have dulled since he awoke.
I let myself think about it. At the very least, this is a solid distraction to calm myself down before I figure out what to do about Quinn. He’s panicking enough for the both of us right now.
“I don’t know,” I say, finally. “Make a snide remark about how I picked the wrong mate?”
He doesn’t so much as smirk at my poor attempt at a joke. Not like I know the real Jade would have.
“Not doing that. Next?”
I shrug. “I guess he’d throw me over his shoulder and take me to Quinn.”
Jade’s eyes tighten and his brows crease, as if this is suddenly the puzzle he needs to solve. “He would do that even though it wouldn’t give him what he wanted?”
What he wanted was me. “Even then,” I sigh, because I know it’s true. As much as he probably hated it, as much as he would have denied it, more often than not, Jade did the right thing. He was selfish to a fault, but not when it mattered. I just wish I’d seen that sooner.
“I can’t carry you,” Jade says, eyes cast down at his hands now balled into fists in front of him. The red lines on his skin glow faintly in the dimness, threatening to turn the next thing he touches into ash.
“No one is asking you to.” I don’t even know why we’re talking about this. As far as I know, this Jade is still very much resisting the urge to snap my neck. I don’t expect him to help me.
“I can’t carry you,” he says again, this time bringing his eyes up to gaze somewhere behind me. “But Rhett can.”
Rhett must have heard his name—which is an unfortunate reminder of just how many people here have hearing well beyond my capabilities and have probably overheard this entire thing—because he trots over. Kaylee follows close behind him, a faint hint of concern on her face. If that’s for Quinn, then we need to find him fast. She can’t see his future, and that may very well be worse than if she knew his fate.
“We don’t even know where he’s going,” I say. If it weren’t the middle of the night, flying through the forest might be easy. Even if I asked the wolves to be my eyes out there, Quinn is hard to track when he wants to be.
To my surprise, Jade summons his wings. “I do.”
The flight isn’t as long as I’d expected it would be, and even less uncomfortable. Rhett is gentle with me in his arms, and as much as I hate being carried, this is probably the most pleasant experience I’ve had in the air with any dragon.
Despite the darkness, I can make out enough to recognize the open clearing we’d come to before. Both Quinn and I had dreams that led us to this place, so it makes sense that he would come here, but it doesn’t explain how Jade knew about it.
As if answering my thoughts, he says, “This is where I found him.” I know he means the night Quinn brought me that rose. “This is where he’s heading.”
We must have been flying faster than I realized, because if Jade is right, we’ve somehow made it here before him. There’s an unease to this place, and it has as much to do with the dragon at my side as it does the mysterious ash roses and potential of a rift opening.
“There!” Rhett says, pointing off to our left.
A silver wolf that can only be Quinn bounds through the trees and nearly stumbles into the clearing.
“Quinn!” I call to him, and his head whips around to face us.
There’s nothing but fear in those eyes, and I feel it all the way down to my core. But it’s not fear of this place, the roses, or even the wraiths that hunt him. This is fear of himself. ‘I don’t want to be a monster anymore.’
I blow out a breath because at least he’s talking to me. He warned me this would happen. Warned me that at some point, the panic would overwhelm him and replace logical thought with the thing he fears most.
I move to take a step towards him, but Jade moves first. “We both know why you came here, but it’s pointless unless you’re willing to go through with it.”
‘What is he talking about?’ I ask Quinn, not caring that neither of the dragons can hear us.
Quinn’s gaze shifts from me to Jade, and then back to me again. ‘I thought about pushing him into the rift. To save myself from this. I’m a monster no matter what I do. How am I back to this?’
I can feel his resolve crumbling. The same resolve he’s maintained since finding out he was fated to die. Since learning that his only way to live was to kill another or spend his nights embracing the curse that made him wish he were dead.
‘Petra told me. I know what Teagan wants you to do.’
His body tenses, and I know if he were human he’d have his hands balled into fists, tugging at his hair. ‘I don’t want to lose myself again.’
I take a step towards him. ‘You won’t. You don’t have to do it. You don’t have to do any of it.’
‘Yes I do.’ An audible whine punctuates his words. ‘But I don’t know what happens when I cross that line.’
“There’s another way,” I say aloud this time, because if he makes this choice, we’ll need at least one of the dragons to help. I have to swallow to prepare myself because there’s no right answer here. Someone has to die, and I’m not going to let it be Quinn. “Push the Guardian.” I know his name, but I can’t say it. I have to separate myself from him. From the knowledge that he was one of the good ones and that he deserves this less than any of the rest of them. “Or any Guardian,” I add on the off chance we can find another—not that it makes this much better.
Jade cracks his knuckles. “I’m happy to go hunting.”
“I think that will have to wait,” Rhett says from behind us. His voice is shaky, and when I see the corporeal mist floating out from the tree line, I immediately know why.
The wraith moves towards us, its form shifting into a man I’ve seen once before, on a night just like this.
Rhett’s father.
Jade confirmed that, once. Though Rhett was too young when he was killed to remember his face, the wraith somehow knows it. The wraiths always know the faces of the ones we’ve lost.
Rhett trembles and I take a slow step towards him, clasping his hand in mine. “It’s not real,” I whisper, and the faint squeeze of his hand tells me he knows.
The creature’s attention shifts to me, but it’s not Porter’s face I see this time.
“...Mom?”
I only recognize her from the single portrait that remained of her in Lunae. It was painted in the book that detailed the royal line, and even then, her image seems so different here. Older, in a way, but I see myself in her features and that’s all I need to know that it’s her.
She moves closer to me, her head tilting ever so slightly to one side, as if she—or the wraith—is trying to puzzle me out.
I shut my eyes, not wanting to see that face any longer. It’s a face I’d longed to see nearly every day of my life, but not like this. Not when it’s a stolen mask worn by the very creature that seeks to devour the man I love.
A warm, solid form presses against my leg and I know that it’s Quinn. He shouldn’t be anywhere near this wraith, but here he is. For me.
My eyes snap open as I ready myself to move in front of him, but find that Jade has already claimed the space in front of all of us.
The wraith has changed, too. Only, I don’t recognize its form at all this time. It’s not the man I’d seen before when a wraith set about enticing Jade to walk into the veil. It’s a woman.
A woman with long hair as black as ink, yet her eyes shine redder than any dawn. Redder than fire or blood.
Jade turns his face away from her, as if the image alone pains him. “Go get Merrick,” he says to Rhett. His teeth are clenched and neck is arched so sharply to the side in an effort to keep his eyes off the wraith that it can’t be painless. He’d stared at the image of his father once, as if entirely unbothered by it, and Quinn told me that when they were in this very clearing together, the wraith took Jade’s form. The old Jade.
So why is this different?
“But—” Rhett starts to object, but Jade cuts him off.
“You can only carry one and I don’t have the control.” He may believe that to be true, but I’m not so sure. And even if it were true, why does he care? This is the man who has openly admitted to wanting me dead. The man with no memories and very few emotions other than rage and sorrow. He doesn’t know me, know Quinn, so why has he planted himself in front of us when clearly he wants nothing more than to get as far away from this phantom as he can? Even the Jade I knew was more calm and collected than this.
“Wait!” I call as Rhett readies to take to the sky. “Take Quinn.”
‘No.’
I snap my gaze to Quinn and forget to speak through the bond. “You’re the one it’s looking for and I can’t marry a corpse.”
I can swear he flinches, but it’s masked by his reluctant stride to the waiting dragon. My words were harsh, and I’ll apologize for them later, but for right now, he needs to get his ass back to Marein.
“Marriage. Congrats,” Rhett says as he scoops Quinn up into his arms as if he were nothing but a giant dog.
‘Shut up, Rhett,’ Quinn mutters even though I’m the only one who can hear it.
And then they’re off and Jade and I are alone. Unless you count the phantom woman directly in front of him.
“You going to tell me who she is?” I ask after a while. Who knows how long we’re going to be stuck out here with this thing, so we may as well make the best of it.
“Nope.” I should have expected as much.
I study her face, looking for even the faintest hint of recognition, but there’s nothing. Nothing in the crimson eyes, the gentle slope of her nose, the somewhat-cruel smirk on her lips. And yet there’s something about her… It’s not familiar, exactly, but I feel as if I should know her.
“Just stop,” Jade says, and for a moment I think he’s talking to me. But he’s not. “I’ve had enough.” He’s pleading with the wraith. This Jade, nor the one I knew, would never pleads with anything.
Who the fuck is this woman?
Jade’s had enough, so I move out from behind him and the wraith jerks with my movement. It flickers between the mother I never knew and the woman I’m certain I don’t know, as if it can’t decide which form is stronger. From what little I know of these creatures, they take the form of the one you’re most likely to follow into the veil, but what happens when it’s trying to lure multiple people? Would it pick the strongest form? Does it even have that level of intelligence? The bitch who took my finger said they can be tricked, but they’ll learn.
How long will it take this one?
I don’t know how long we stay like that, but after what feels like forever, I hear the forceful flapping of wings above us. Without so much as a warning, Rhett swoops low and scoops me up into his arms. Jade is in the air not half a heartbeat later, racing ahead of us in his desperation to get far away from this place.
I just can’t decide if it’s the wraith he’s running from, or the woman whose form it took.