Chapter 21 #3
One moment I'm staring at the mark on her face. The next, a surge of fury rips through me so violently that it steals the air from my lungs.
Wrong. The thought isn't even coherent. It's instinct. Wrong.
A roar explodes from my lips. The sound tears out of me with enough force to shake my ribs. Pain explodes through my body. Not from Thorian's punches. From within. Bones crack. Muscles tear and reform. My clothes split apart as my body swells larger. The world becomes red.
I dimly hear Nyx gasp. I hear Thorian curse. But they're already fading beneath the rush of rage flooding my veins.
Everything hurts.
Everything burns.
Yet beneath the pain is relief. Release. The beast has finally found its way free.
The last thing I see clearly is Nyx climbing back onto Thorian's back, one hand pressed against her bruised cheek while her wide eyes lock onto mine.
Then the world shatters. And the beast takes over.
Her voice sounds distant. Very distant. I hear fabric ripping. Bones shifting. And the last coherent thought I have is that she needs to get across the swamp. No matter what happens to me. She needs to get across.
I barely register the splash of the water against my thighs, barely register the weak pull of the magic against my skin. But it doesn’t meet the same porous, soft outside of the knights. This time, it finds me. Thick. Strong. Impervious.
Coherent thoughts fade away. A red sheen covers the world. My heart pounds in my ears, and then I’m someone else. Something else.
The thing that hurt her is running.
Good.
Run.
Hunt.
Chase.
Kill.
She is mine.
I Leap from stone to stone. He’s fast. Faster than most prey. Faster than prey should be.
I roar and lunge after him. The swamp splashes around me. Black water surges against my legs. The strange draining magic reaches for me, but it feels distant. Unimportant. Like insects biting through fur.
There is only the chase.
Only the pounding of my feet.
Only the scent of prey.
The dark-haired male lands on another platform. Breathes.
Weak.
I swing.
Miss.
My hand crashes into the water instead, sending a wave rolling across the swamp.
Rage explodes through me.
I roar again.
The sound tears across the water.
Run faster.
Run harder.
Catch him.
Kill him.
Something screams nearby.
Another creature.
Another prey.
It doesn't matter. The swamp doesn't matter. The other competitors don't matter. The only thing that matters is the male fleeing from me. Then the scent changes.
Nyx. The realization crashes into me so suddenly that I nearly stumble. Nyx.
The dark-haired male isn't alone. He carries her. Protects her. Keeps her above the water.
The image cuts through the rage briefly. Nyx on his back. Nyx holding onto him. Nyx safe. Safe because of him.
Confusion works its way through the fury.
The dark-haired male hurt her.
But he also protects her.
The thought hurts. It doesn't fit. It doesn't make sense. The certainty I've been chasing begins to crack. The dark-haired male reaches the far shore. He sets her down carefully. Carefully.
The rage falters. Just for a second. A terrible second. And suddenly I feel the swamp. Really feel it.
The water grips my legs. It pulls at me. Drags on me. The magic that seemed so distant before rushes back all at once.
Hunger. Need. Consumption. The swamp wants me. It wants everything inside me. My strength. My life. My soul.
I stagger. The water surges around my waist now. No. Too deep. Too slow. Wrong.
Something brushes my ankle. Then another thing. Then dozens. The swamp is full of hands. Not real hands. Dead hands. Soul hands. Ghost hands. I don't know. I only know they're there. Reaching. Clawing. Begging. A million desperate voices rise beneath the water.
Stay.
Stay.
Stay.
The sound isn't spoken aloud. It's felt. A pressure. A longing. An endless misery.
One voice is stronger than the others. The knight. The one who fell. Cedric. His grief crashes into me like a wave. His terror. His loneliness. His desperate need not to be alone. He wraps himself around my legs and pulls.
Not physically.
It’s something worse.
Spirit against spirit.
Despair against hope.
I stumble again. The red haze begins to fade. The beast weakens even more. No. No. Not yet. Need to—
Nyx.
I look up.
The far shore swims in and out of focus. Nyx stands at the edge of the water. Her hands are cupped around her mouth. She's shouting. Screaming. Calling for me.
The sound can't reach me through the voices beneath the swamp. But I can see her. I can see the panic on her face. The fear.
And for the first time since changing, I remember why I'm here. Not Thorian. Not rage. Not revenge. Family. My family. Her family. The promise we made. The reason we're fighting.
I take another step.
The beast slips further away. My body shrinks. Weakens. The swamp immediately tightens its grip.
Another step. Harder. Heavier. The far shore still feels impossibly distant.
A terrible realization settles over me. The berserker form is ending. The swamp is winning. And despite all my promises, all my hopes, all my certainty that I would save them… I'm not going to make it across.