Chapter 38 August
AUGUST
“Where is she?”
August tried to shove the guard out of his way, but two others emerged, forming a barricade at the tent’s entrance.
They each held curved shadow-drenched sabers in their hands, though their show of force didn’t rattle August. He knew that if he called upon his own shadows, he’d rip the three of them apart in a matter of seconds.
He’d tear their souls out by their bloody throats.
But using shadow magic had to remain his last resort, no matter how tempting.
“Don’t make me repeat myself,” August warned through gritted teeth.
“High General Hughes has requested the catalyst remain alone for the time being.” The guard’s top lip curled into a sneer. “No visitors. And that includes you.”
August stepped closer, peering down at the guard’s scornful face.
“I’d like to see you try to stop me.”
And there it was. The brief flicker of fear behind the guard’s performative act of force.
Go ahead, August challenged with a quirk of his brow. Fucking try me.
But the guard must have sensed that he was woefully out of his depth, as he sidestepped out of August’s way with a petulant roll of his eyes. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you,” he muttered.
August didn’t pay the cautionary remark any mind, pushing past the guard and striding into the tent. But the second he walked inside, he stumbled to a halt. Shock coursed through him when he saw what waited for him.
Wren was standing with her back to him. Silver-encrusted armor adorned her torso, sharpened spaulders placed upon the curves of her shoulders.
As August took the first few tentative steps inside, he half expected Wren to face him.
He imagined that beautiful smile of hers spreading over her lips.
The way she’d run to cross the distance between them and throw herself into his arms.
But she didn’t. She didn’t do any of that.
“Loughty.” August’s voice was barely louder than a whisper, but against the piercing silence, it was a thunderous echo. “Are you…are you hurt?”
Finally, upon hearing his voice, Wren turned.
But the person staring back at him was almost unrecognizable.
Shadows swam beneath her veins. They poured out of her, enveloping her in a cloak of darkness. The whites of her eyes flickered to black every few seconds—one moment there, the next gone. Inky shadows swam up her neck, crawling over her face, a pulsating energy traveling up and down her skin.
This wasn’t Wren. This was something else.
Half shadow. Half human.
“I’m fine.” Wren’s voice felt like rusted nails. Sharp. Lethal. “I’m more than fine.”
August stilled. He flexed his fingers by his sides. “What happened to you?”
Wren took a step forward. As she moved, the shadows moved with her.
“I saw the truth,” she said simply. “The betrayal that ties us all together.”
August shook his head. “I don’t understand.”
“Silas murdered us.” As Wren spoke, the shadows trailing beside her morphed, merging to form the vague silhouette of a man. “He ripped us from our lives. Stripped us of a choice.”
“Loughty.” August approached, his movements careful. He wanted nothing more than to take her in his arms. To hold her. But he couldn’t bring himself to touch her. “I wasn’t killed by Silas. I…I died in a fire.”
Wren cocked her head, smiling.
“Did you?”
August flinched at the mocking lilt in her voice.
“Yes,” he muttered defensively. “My father attacked me. It was an accident. A candle fell, and…” August’s voice trailed off. Something was tugging at his subconscious. A prickle of doubt. The faded seams of a memory lashing across his mind.
“And…what?” Wren echoed. The shadows forming the outline of a man ebbed and flowed, and suddenly August was staring at the silhouette of his father’s office. A perfect re-creation of the night. “What happened next, August?”
“I…tried to get up.” August choked on his own words.
He saw himself in the shadows, his body lying on the floor.
Something was rising inside him, tearing through the darkness, breaking free after centuries of restraint.
A face. A figure. August watched, horrified, as the shadows formed that same silhouette of a man standing at the doorway of his father’s study.
The man approached. He placed his hands upon August’s chest and held him in place as the fire roared around them.
The memory of his death came rushing back in.
His head slammed against the floorboards, as though he had been knocked to the floor by an invisible weight.
Wren smiled and the shadows around her purred.
“You remember now, don’t you?”
A strange pressure built behind August’s eyes. A wave of dizziness.
“I don’t…he couldn’t have—” But August saw it then. Clear as day. The figure standing at the doorway. The hands holding him down. Pushing him. This is where your story ends, Silas had whispered into his ear. This is where I set you free.
His death had never been his choice to make. Silas had made it for him.
August fell to his knees. His hands fought to loosen the top buttons of his shirt, breaths heaving, a strangled sob tearing at his throat. All this time. All these years. How could he not have known? How could he not have remembered?
“We were never meant to go to Blackwood.” Wren knelt beside him.
“He violated the natural order. Tore us from our lives and forced us into an eternity that never belonged to us. Even in Blackwood…we were never meant to stay here for more than a decade. All of us. We were meant to cross over. We were always meant to have a choice.”
August stared up at the monstrous version of Wren. Hot tears burned behind his eyes.
“So what?” he sputtered. Even her eyes looked different. Those glacial blue eyes of hers were marked with deadly anger—a primal rage. “Now you’re just going to burn it all down? Destroy Blackwood and everyone in it?”
Wren’s lip twitched.
“That’s exactly what I intend to do.”
“No.” August shook his head. “This—this isn’t you, darling. The Soulless One is poisoning you. He’s controlling you—”
“Controlling me?” Wren echoed, laughing. She raised her hand and one of her shadows coiled around her wrist, shifting until it had formed a sharpened blade. “No, my darling. For once in my godforsaken life—I’m the one in fucking control.”
August flinched at the venom in her voice.
“No. I know you, Wren Loughty. I know you. And this”—he gestured to the shadows with a defeated wave—“this isn’t you.” But the moment the words left August’s lips, Wren’s expression hardened. She raised herself back onto her feet, staring down at August with a leer of disgust.
“Edith is coming.” There wasn’t an inkling of remorse in her voice. “Once she arrives, she will know of your betrayal. You’ll be marked as defected.” Slowly, she dragged the edge of her blade toward August’s neck. “My last sliver of mercy is this…leave. Leave the encampment and never come back.”
August remained kneeling. He stared up at Wren.
“I won’t leave you.”
“I won’t offer you this mercy again. This is your last chance to leave with your soul intact.”
“Then take it.” August splayed his palms over his chest. “Take my soul, Wren. I told you before…it’s yours. Every part of me. My soul. My heart. My eternity. It always belonged to you.”
Her expression changed. It was so small, so inconsequential, that August might have missed it.
But it was there. A morsel of anguish. A tiny glimpse into the emotions he knew were lingering beneath the surface, locked behind the Soulless One’s shadows.
But Wren swallowed it back, the whites of her eyes blotted out by darkness.
“There is nothing left of the girl you once knew, August.” Her voice rumbled, deep and foreboding. “So leave.”
August reached for her. One last time.
“Wren—”
LEAVE!
The word echoed in his mind with such intensity that he was thrown backward.
The voice had been Wren’s—but not this twisted, warped version of her voice.
It was her voice. Desperate. Pleading. In front of him, Wren’s shadows had sprung to towering heights, a web of billowing darkness twisting, rupturing with startling violence.
I’m sorry, August whispered into her mind. Forgive me, darling.
August gathered himself onto his feet and did the one thing he could think to do.
He ran.
His vision blurred as he strode out of the tent and into the bustling cavern.
He paid no mind to the Demiens around him.
Their piercing stares and curious whispers were a meaningless speck in his peripheral vision.
They didn’t matter anymore. Nothing mattered anymore.
He just kept moving. One foot in front of the other.
He needed to leave. To get as far away from the destruction he had caused.
He didn’t even notice he was nearing the entrance to the encampment until he was walking out into the cool night air, the expanse of Widow’s Forest stretching in front of him.
August had taken the first step toward the forest when a voice rang out.
“Where the hell do you think you’re going?”
Quinn was standing behind him, chest heaving as she caught her breath. Had she been following him?
“I’m leaving,” August replied. He didn’t even recognize the sound of his own voice.
Quinn furrowed her brows. “Leaving? You can’t leave. What about Wren?”
“That person in there”—August pointed toward the encampment, head shaking—“that thing…it isn’t Wren.”
“So that’s it, then?” Quinn’s accusation was a sharp slap across August’s face. “You’re just going to leave? You’re just going to give up on her?” Shame twisted inside August. He averted his gaze, drawing his eyes back toward the forest.
“I’ve done enough.”
Quinn stepped closer. “She needs you, August.”
“I know.” God, of course he knew. But what would his presence change? What could he offer Wren other than more damage? “I know she fucking needs me. And I tried. I tried to fix it. But all of this—all of it—it’s my fault.”
A tense beat of silence swept over them. Quinn glanced over her shoulder, searching to see if anybody was approaching. When she turned back to look at him, she lowered her voice.
“Where are you going to go?”
“There’s a Resistance…in the outskirts.” August’s eyes drifted to the edge of the forest. “Maybe they can help. Maybe they know how to snap Wren out of it before she destroys Blackwood.” He turned back to face Quinn. “You could come with me.”
But Quinn’s response was instant. “I can’t.”
August wanted to protest. To find a way to convince Quinn to leave the encampment. She wasn’t safe here. Her heart would be her downfall. But he knew it was for that very reason that she’d never leave Wren behind, despite what Wren had become.
“Take care of yourself.”
Quinn smiled, but it was hollow. “I’ll try.”
August turned away from Quinn and stepped toward the forest. He closed his eyes, looking inward. He hadn’t used his spacial magic since leaving Blackwood, wasn’t even certain it would work. But he had to try.
He scoured his internal map. Searching. Pushing through the dark, ebbing nothingness stretching out before him. And then—deeper and farther than he would have hoped—something familiar lingered. A soul. Multiple souls. He recognized them. August knew, with unwavering clarity—It’s them.
He’d have to use more shadow magic than he wanted to in order to relocate across such a distance, but it didn’t matter.
As he called upon his shadows, summoning the relocation spell, he couldn’t help but think back on the words that were burned into his memory, etched into his soul.
The one thing he had vowed to hold on to until the very end.
Find me. Wherever you are, wherever we end up, don’t stop looking for me.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered.
And then Augustine Hughes summoned the relocation spell and tore his promise to shreds.