Chapter 31
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
SELENE
Iclung to Bren as I searched the sky.
The moonlight was too concentrated, and it seemed to pull toward a single point directly overhead where the canopy opened, as if that could even be a thing. But at that exact point, the darkness had a seam in it.
And it was open.
I gasped in horror at what I could only describe as a tear in the atmosphere. It was as thin as a knife’s width at first, but grew wider, and from it came tendrils of black mist. “Bren.”
My voice trembled, full of dread, and I pointed upward. He whirled around as the black mist descended, curling down toward the clearing in slow swirls, inching ever closer to us.
What came out of him was not a word I recognized, but the force of it needed no translation. His guttural curse warned me we were in grave danger.
I gripped his sleeve, trembling, my whisper barely audible. “What is it?”
Bren took both my shoulders and gave me a little shake. I blinked in surprise at his dark expression, but I quickly jerked my gaze back to the tear in the sky that now pulsed. “Dear God.”
Another tendril of dark mist slipped through, thicker than the first, and my mind fought to comprehend. My lungs constricted as I sucked in air in short and useless breaths.
Bren took my face in his hands this time, firm and warm, and turned us so that he now faced the surreal mist. “Look at me.”
Primal instinct forced me to try to glance back, but he wouldn’t allow it. “Selene. Look at me.” His voice was low and even. Not calm exactly, but he was far more in control than I was. “Breathe.”
I tried to follow his command, but it was of little use. Moments ago, I thought the clearing was the safest place in the world. It was not.
“Run.”
Bren slid his hands to my upper arms, holding me in place as he spoke with a firm tone. “Do not run. Just listen to me. Everything will be all right.”
His eyes held mine, steady and certain. “Focus on your breathing. In and out. I’ll handle the rest.”
I forced a swallow past the tightness in my throat and nodded.
“Good.” He flicked a quick glance over my shoulder and then met my gaze again. “I want you to stay right here, and don’t look back. I promise you will be fine. Trust me.”
I managed a small nod as I struggled for another breath.
He left me then, and terror consumed me. I couldn’t hear anything. Not Bren’s footsteps and not the black mist. It could do anything, and I wouldn’t know.
Only seconds passed before self-preservation forced me to turn, and what I saw stole the breath I’d just managed to draw.
Moonlight moved toward Bren. Not like falling on him the way it fell on everything else in the clearing. It moved toward him.
Ribbons of it rose from the pond’s surface and the pale stones, heading straight for him. I dropped my jaw as it gathered at his hands, along the line of his shoulders, and curled around him until the air near his body was brighter than the rest of the world.
Without warning, the moonlight at his fingertips formed into a long, thick silver blade. I blinked, certain my eyesight had failed me, but the sword was still there, looking dangerously lethal and unmistakably real.
I gave my head a little shake, as if I could wake myself from this nightmare. It did no good.
Bren stalked forward, and I shifted my gaze to the unreal opening overhead that gaped and convulsed. “How?” I whispered. How could I have lived my whole life in a world where such a thing was possible and not known?
I wanted to believe I was dreaming once again. But I wasn’t.
Fearful trembles wracked my body when something dense, no longer only mist, poked through the rupture. A cry formed in my throat, and I clamped my hand over my mouth as something solid climbed through the opening.
It unfolded itself downward in stages, and my mind kept trying to reframe it as something ordinary. A mass of debris, storm-thrown branches, or root systems upended by wind. But it kept expanding past the point where any of those explanations made sense.
Thorns and bark and black vines arranged themselves into a shape that was almost human in its proportions and entirely wrong in every way.
Where a face should have been, there was only a hollow of woven root and shadow, and inside that hollow, something green burned with a cold and formidable light.
Every place the creature touched the ground, the grass darkened. Ferns curled inward, and the moss along the nearest stones shriveled.
It turned its head.
Not toward Bren, but…toward me.
Something ancient and cold slithered through my body.
Bren moved before I could finish that thought.
His sharp blade caught the moonlight as it arced through the clearing, and he struck the monster’s chest, leaving behind burning light. Bark and thorny brambles split with a sound like wet, cracking timber, and green light spilled through the wound.
The creature recoiled, and Bren drove forward with precise strokes and zero hesitation.
He was no longer the same man who’d held my chair at dinner and smiled quietly over wine.
This Bren was a fierce warrior who handled that blade like someone who’d been doing this exact thing for a very long time.
I shook my head slowly as I watched in stunned disbelief.
Bren struck low and severed a thick rope of brambles from the horrendous monster’s side. It hit the ground, writhing. The tear above pulsed once, sick and greenish.
I thought that might be the end of it, but no. The creature shuddered and thickened, pulling more of itself through the breach, and the wound Bren’s sword had rent closed over as new growth fed into it.
“No,” I whispered in a soft breath.
The streams of moonlight cascading on the clearing wavered and then solidified again. I didn’t need anyone to tell me that was not a good sign.
Bren didn’t even blink. He cut through a lash of vine, a savage, determined look etched on his face, and drove the monstrosity back.
But the rupture kept feeding it and kept pulling the grove’s own light toward the opening.
The surrounding mist dimmed, and the waterfall sounded harsh and strained. Bren struck again, the blade biting deep into the unholy creature’s shoulder, and brilliant fire burst through the bark where it landed.
The sound it made was not a voice.
It was branches tearing apart in winter ice.
An overwhelming urge to run surged through me again, and it took everything I had to remain rooted. Despite the fact that it might cost me my life, I simply couldn’t leave Bren, even though I was of no help at all.
The monster flung an arm, and Bren easily cut through the first strike, but a second strike by its other arm caught Bren across his chest.
The impact drove him back, and he landed hard on the pale stones at the pond’s edge. A crack echoed through the clearing and tore at my heart.
“Bren.”
His name came out of me without permission. It also drew the creature’s attention toward me again.
A second later, Bren jumped to his feet faster than I’d thought possible, his blade still in hand. The two faced each other for several long seconds, Bren’s breaths coming hard, enough to worry me. Then a thick, thorny vine slid from the creature’s hand and buried itself deep into the ground.
I gasped as roots pushed up from beneath the surface as the monstrosity moved. Bren struggled to maintain his balance on the shifting ground, and his next strike went wide. A lash of black thorns caught his sword arm, and though he kept his grip, the creature’s strike took a toll.
My heart lurched painfully in my chest.
The realization that something in the clearing had shifted so far out of balance hit me like a blow.
It wasn’t just the creature’s presence, or even the tear.
It was as if the atmosphere near the pond had collapsed inward.
The roots beneath the ground were moving against the natural slope, and before I realized what was happening, one emerged and snapped at me, tearing my sweater and catching me across the back of my hand.
Bren stabbed it, causing it to retreat into the ground as he battled on.
My hand felt as if a wasp had stung me, and I cradled it against my chest.
The nearest oak, massive and burning with green fire, held itself at an angle that made no sense given the pull of the terrain. It appeared to be suspended on a fault line that I could suddenly feel as though my hands were pressed against it.
I tilted my head, searching for the misalignment. And there it was, stuck like a pin on a map in my mind.
My instincts took over without thought, and I lifted my hand toward the tree. Everything in me narrowed on the exact point where things were out of balance, and I tilted my hand as though to correct it.
The oak gave.
It snapped sideways with a violence that tore its roots free from the saturated earth in a single massive groan. The tree crashed across the clearing in the precise direction it had been straining to go all along.
And it struck the monster full in the side.
I stared in abject shock as the impact ripped the creature’s feeding roots from the tear in the sky. Green light burst through gaps in the beast’s torso.
Bren didn’t hesitate. With moonlight surging through him, he drove the powerful blade straight through the center of the thing’s chest.
The creature convulsed.
Then it came apart.
Bark split, thorns crumbled, and the green light extinguished in a single sharp inward pull. What remained collapsed to the ground and began immediately to rot into dark, ash-like fragments that smelled of iron and old water.
The black fissure narrowed, folding inward on itself with a slurping wet sound, and then it was gone.
Absolute silence filled the void.