Chapter 33
Elora
Elora sat curled near the fire, her knees drawn to her chest, arms wrapped tight around them.
The crackle of the flames licked at the silence, throwing shadows across the hollow of the clearing.
They’d covered good ground since the fight, enough to feel like the Snatchers were far behind them now, but not enough to shake them from her thoughts.
She hadn’t said much since they left the bodies behind. Hadn’t shifted back either. The animal in her felt safer than the girl.
She stared into the fire, the heat biting at her face, but she didn’t move. Her thoughts were burning too—too many and too much. And none of them would sit still.
The scent of something savory crept into her senses before she realized Rell had moved. Then a warm bowl was pressed into her hands.
She blinked down at it. Stew. Or something close to it. He’d cooked. When had he—?
“What’s wrong?” He crouched nearby, poking at the fire with a stick, his eyes on the flames but his attention all hers.
“I don’t know,” she said finally, and her voice came out lower than she expected. Rough. “Everything. Nothing. Maybe both.” She wasn’t sure how to explain it. The thoughts weren’t in a line, they weren’t even in the same room. But they were loud.
“I wanted to kill them,” she said quietly. “I still want to. I wanted to feel their throats tear under my claws. And I know they deserve it. I know that.” Her jaw tensed. “That’s the worst part. That I don’t feel bad.”
Rell said nothing. Just listened.
“I didn’t feel scared when you snapped that man’s head against the rock,” she added, voice even quieter. “I should’ve, right? You were ruthless. Brutal. But that crunch…”
Rell didn’t respond.
“My earliest memory is inside one of those cages. I don’t even know how old I was.
But I remember the cold, and the dark, and how the hay smelled like blood.
I remember the chains. I remember being touched like I wasn’t human.
” She swallowed. “So why do I feel like I’ve lost something by wanting justice for that? ”
“Morality,” Rell said, his voice rougher than the underbrush. “Fuckin’ inconvenient.” He stopped poking at the fire, his gaze shifting to her. “You haven’t lost a damn thing.”
Elora kept her gaze on the flames, her body still coiled in on itself, but she could feel his attention shift when he dropped the mask of relaxed mercenary and let something real seep through.
"My father died when I was young. We had a farm—a small place, nothing much.
But it was home." He began poking the fire again.
"After he was gone, things went downhill fast. And when the Snatchers came…
my mother made a choice." He tossed the stick into the flames.
"She sold my sister to them. Said it was necessary to keep us alive through the winter. "
Elora’s hands tightened around the bowl. She knew she should say something, but words felt like they’d only make it worse.
“I tracked every Snatcher I could find throughout Adruimor.” He leaned forward, arms resting on his knees. “I spent every damn day trying to find her," he went on. “Trying to make up for not saving her back then.”
“And you’re still looking?”
Rell shook his head. “Not anymore.” His jaw clenched, and he looked away from the fire, away from her, into the dark woods beyond. “I started hunting them like animals. No longer for answers. Just because someone needed to. Just because they exist.”
“All those kills I’ve made since?” he said.
“Some of them felt good. Too good. And then you stop feeling anything at all. That’s what it does.
You chase justice so hard, it starts rotting inside you.
You forget why you started. You tell yourself you’re protecting people, saving lives, but really… you’re just surviving.”
She looked at him, her eyes flickering with reflected firelight and something darker. “And you think that’s what I’m doing?”
“I think you’re on the edge of it,” Rell said, finally meeting her gaze. “I think you were pushed too far, and now the only way to feel safe is to feel dangerous. To become the thing they’d never touch again.”
Elora’s throat tightened. Because he wasn’t wrong.
“And the worst part?” Rell’s voice dropped, softer now. “You’re not wrong for wanting that. But if you go too far—if you stay there—you might never come back.”
She didn’t answer. Didn’t know how.
Rell let the silence stretch before he leaned back on one hand, rolling his shoulder like he was easing tension out of it. “You’re not a monster, Elora. You’re just human. Feral claws and all.”
"So what do I do?"
“You eat the damn stew before it gets cold.”
Elora lifted the bowl to her lips and took a sip. The warmth spread through her chest, and she tried to focus on that instead of the storm in her head.
"Better?" Rell asked, already knowing the answer.
She nodded anyway because what else could she do?
He watched her for another second before stretching out on his back, using his satchel as a makeshift pillow.
She finished the stew slowly, each bite forcing her into the present and away from the past. When she was done, she set the empty bowl aside and lay back on the ground next to Rell.
The sky above was a scattered mess of stars.
She turned her head toward him, searching his face for something she didn’t have a name for, but Rell kept his eyes on the night sky. She closed hers instead, trying to let the exhaustion absorb some of the things clattering inside her.
When sleep finally claimed her, it came with claws and teeth.
She was running, the beat of her heart synced with the pulse of the woods. She was swift and sharp and free.
But then she saw it. Saw him. Gerard. His face flickered in and out of shadow, then shredded and bloody, eyes wild with fear before she closed them under crimson.
The Snatchers came next, their shadowy forms invading the trees, reaching for her with hands that turned to tattered stumps of flesh and bone.
Symond appeared, his eyes cold as ever, blood streaming from his mouth like a scream. Then Violette, face slick with red and twisted in confusion. Rell too—all of them shredded because of her.
And Tehvan.
He was last. A gash opened across his throat as he stared at her with something raw, something close to betrayal, before the dream swallowed him up.
Her vision splintering into a mess of bodies that felt endless. All of them bleeding because of her.
Then darkness. It washed over her. She stopped, panting, her breath loud and ragged in the nothingness.
Figures emerged slowly from the haze, staggering like drunks with their guts split open.
Symond first, all blood and bone and bitterness.
Gerard close behind him, half his face gone.
Then Violette, then Rell and Tehvan. All walking corpses now.
Reaching for her with hollow eyes and broken fingers barely clinging to their hands.
But Thorn was different. He came through the black untouched. Cruel smile on a clean face, his clothes immaculate as ever.
The corpses charged her at once. She was a full nightglider even before they reached her—a creature of fur and fang and fury—and they didn't get the chance to overwhelm her.
Her claws were on them, through them, tearing flesh and organs to pulp before they could drag her under.
Blood stained the darkness, splattered across her teeth and tongue as she ripped into them.
She was all instinct, the twist of her muscles quicker than thought, faster than fear.
She knew this feeling, this frenzy—the clean nothing of it—even as she shredded the last bodies.
The corpses rose again.
Her claws sunk into Symond's chest, splitting it open with a sickening crack. Her fangs found Gerard's arm, tearing it free before she spun and crushed Violette underfoot.
She was surrounded, suffocated by limbs and dead faces, until she couldn’t tell where one ended and the next began.
Tehvan’s eyes locked onto hers before she clawed them out.
Then Rell. Better to destroy him now, before he saw what she really was.
He crumbled beneath her rage, his body torn into ribbons that tangled around her feet.
Even with Thorn’s laughter ringing in her ears, even as her arms ached from the mayhem—she couldn’t stop. This was all she was now. Monster. Beast. Abomination.