Chapter 8 - Aurela
When I wake up, Soren is slumped in the chair beside the bed, his head lolled onto his chest.
I can’t stop myself from staring at him for a moment.
The freckles over his cheeks are so boyish, so contradictory to the harsh tone he used with me earlier.
His copper curls are brushed out and slightly less coily than they usually are.
A stretch of dark copper scruff runs along the sides of his jaw, up to his ears.
I want to reach out and cup his face in my hands, feel that scruff against my skin, but I resist the urge.
Right now, the most important thing is that I get out of here. I have no idea what Soren wants, or what he’s doing with me, or why he’s asking me these questions, but it’s obvious that he’s not going to let me go until I tell him something.
And I can’t do that.
I’ve survived the past fifteen years by saying nothing, just like my mother told me to. By laying low and being quiet, by existing in the way other people wanted me to. Telling Soren anything about Tara is just going to bring everything back.
I have no idea how she isn’t dead, how she came to be in the woods, how she called to me.
And why she called to me now.
But what I do know is that I need to get back to my parents. They protected me the last time something like this happened. If I break and tell Soren something I shouldn’t, I might not make it out this time.
Back in the woods with Tara, I was almost happy to let her drink me dry, take all my magic until there was nothing left. But now, I feel the itch of survival, of wanting to make it through another day.
More importantly, of wanting to get away from Soren.
Because every moment I spend looking at his face is another moment that I want to reach out and touch him, get closer to him. Let his scent pull me in, his arms swallow me, his warmth comfort me like it once did.
But that was a lie. He left me. And right now, he’s trying to get me to confess to a crime, probably so he can take me back to Xeran and show his supreme that he’s doing a good job.
Now that I’ve slept more, a bit more of my magic has returned to me, pooling in my belly.
I reach for it, drawing it up and going through the same motions I did earlier to unlock the mechanism.
This time, though, I have the forethought and magic available to muffle the sound as the handcuffs fall, making sure it doesn’t wake Soren.
When I get on my feet this time, my legs feel like jelly, weak from how long I’ve been in bed.
Surprisingly, my face feels relatively clean, and I notice a new cup of water on the nightstand.
Still using my magic to muffle the noise, I creep over to it, picking it up and bringing it outside with me.
The moment I’m standing outside, I drop the muffling spell, already feeling depleted from the magic I just used. Whatever Tara did is having a lasting effect on me, making my entire body feel a little more sluggish than normal.
Outside, it’s beautiful. The foothills stretch out in front of the cabin, visible through the patches in the trees, places far below where the fire has eaten away.
Everything up here appears to be untouched, and when I reach up, running my fingers over one of the trees near the cabin, I realize it’s coated in an almost sticky residue.
I remember my father saying something about a substance the firefighters developed to protect the trees from the heat and the blaze. That must be what this is.
Which means Soren comes up here frequently to treat these trees, to protect this cabin.
Without my consent, my mind flashes back to high school, a teenage Soren sitting with me outside the greenhouse, his knees folded up under his chin.
“My grandpa has a cabin up in the woods,” he said back then, those glinting brown eyes focused on me as he did. “But I can’t tell you where it is.”
I laughed. “Why not?”
“It’s a family secret,” he whispered. “You can only know if you join the family.”
The sound of that made shivers break out over my skin. And now, I can’t ignore the fact that even though I’m not a part of the family, I know where the cabin is.
He brought me here.
Even back then, I felt drawn to him, pulled to him in a way I thought I was starting to understand. But I clearly didn’t. I clearly thought the thing between us was a lot more than what Soren thought.
I push the thoughts away—focusing on the past right now isn’t going to help me. I need to focus on getting the hell away from this cabin, away from Soren, and home so I can talk to my parents about what to do next. So I can take a single breath that’s not thick with the scent of Soren Riggs.
Slowly, I drink the water from the cup and set it on a stump outside the door, scanning the area around me and trying to determine which path might be the best one back toward town.
Then I shift into my wolf form, relishing the feel of my paws against the dirt, the pine needles softening the ground for me as I weave between the trees, making a bit of headway back toward town.
Ten minutes later, I feel like I’ve been making decent progress when I hear something echoing through the trees, something haunting and drifting.
It sends a shiver down my back, and all at once I remember that daemon fire—and the daemons that dance along with it—are not the only things to fear in these woods.
Aurela.
My name drifts through the trees along the lips of something long-dead, something desperate for life. Something empty and sucking, kind of how it feels when Tara is near me.
But this thing isn’t Tara.
When it rolls out from between the trees, it’s an amorphous black shape, little tendrils of energy reaching out from it like a giant, deep black bacteria, its cilia reaching toward me.
I shift back into my human form, feeling the magic bubbling up under my skin. “Not tonight,” I whisper, raising my hands and blasting energy right at it.
But just like Tara, it doesn’t get hurt at the blast, just absorbs it. When it lets out a low, mirthful sound, I realize I’ve taken the wrong approach.
But there’s no time for me to shift gears because it’s coming toward me, and I have to roll out of the way.
But in my human form, I’m not nearly as agile, and the thing gets one of its reaching tendrils around my ankles, throwing me to the ground and starting to drag me toward it, like an octopus pulling a fish slowly toward a huge, gaping maw.
“Fuck, fuck,” I pant, reaching for anything that might help me, might keep this thing from eating me alive. Tree roots and rocks bite into my skin, and I wince, biting my tongue to keep from screaming out at the pain.
Then, all at once, its hold on me is gone, and I’m stumbling away, turning with my hands raised to watch a giant copper wolf tumbling into it, the little black embers of energy sticking to the wolf’s coat.
Soren.
“Get back!” I scream, but he either doesn’t hear or doesn’t care because he continues to fight the thing, tumbling around and hissing each time it slices one of its tendrils into his flesh.
Running as fast as I can, and acting with a confidence that I probably shouldn’t have, I bury my hands in the center of the thing, taking advantage of its surprise and pulling as hard as I can, sucking at its own energy, power, and magic.
I feel the thing blink out like a light, its last dying scream swallowed by the sonic pop it makes when it disappears, leaving nothing behind but a couple of black spots on Soren’s fur.
“Aurela,” Soren says the moment he’s shifted back, but I’m already leaning on a tree, exhausted from the fight, black spots moving into my vision.
“Don’t touch me,” I protest weakly, but he’s already scooping me up, undoing my path back toward town with a steady march in the direction of the cabin.
“You could have been killed,” he hisses, jaw set tight as he stares straight ahead, holding me effortlessly despite the fact that I weigh well over twice what I did in high school. I try not to be impressed with the fact that Soren has no qualms about scooping a woman like me up into his arms.
“Why do you even care?” I mutter, head lolling against his chest despite my best efforts to hold it upright and off him.
“Because I do,” he says, and for some reason, I’m inclined to believe him. “I need to know what happened, Aurela. In order to protect you.”
“I don’t need your protection.”
“Yes, you clearly do. Just tell me the truth—did you start that fire?”
“No,” I snap, jerking in his arms, but obviously too weak to get away from him. “I would never do something like that. I would never try to hurt the people in this town. And fuck you for even thinking that of me, Soren Riggs.”
Apparently, that little speech takes up the rest of my energy, because in the next moment, the world goes black, and I relax completely into his arms.