CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
I didn’t tell the boys what happened in the cave.
I’m not sure why. Maybe because I didn’t understand it myself.
And would it have helped anything, really, for them to know I was being hunted by shadows, possibly gods, possibly myth, possibly just another thing out to kill me?
I had no answers for any of the questions they might’ve asked. So I kept it to myself.
I was dreaming, maybe. Or just floating. That soft place between memory and sleep where nothing hurts. And then someone touched my shoulder.
I nearly punched him in the face.
Aran flinched back, holding his hands up like he expected it.
“It’s just me,” he whispered. “Don’t kill me. I have something to show you.”
I blinked up at him. He was crouched beside me, lit in flickering firelight and the glow of the moon, holding the spellbook in one hand. His hair stuck up like he’d run his fingers through it a hundred times. His boots were only half-laced. A vision of chaos, as usual.
“What is it?” I rasped.
“I was taking a piss,” he murmured, “and I saw that—”
I squinted. “Taking a piss?”
He huffed, almost smiling. “Yeah. And I looked up… and saw that it’s a full moon.”
I stared at him. “Okay?”
He held up the Grimoire of Herbs and Healing like it was something sacred. “The book says we need a full moon to make more moon drops. And you’re almost out.”
That woke me. Fully.
Like ice water down my spine.
“You’ve been… reading?” I asked, quiet.
“Just come on.”
The field was soaked in moonlight. Grass brushed against my legs, damp and whispering.
Above us, the moon hung low and round, painting the world in silver.
Aran crouched in the center of the clearing and set down a dented metal bowl.
He unscrewed the cap of his waterskin and poured, slow and steady, until the bowl shimmered with silver light.
I sat beside him and opened the book, the cracked leather soft beneath my fingers.
It smelled like dust and rain and something older.
Something forgotten. I flipped through slowly.
The ink was faded in places, but the handwriting was delicate.
Precise. Almost reverent. There were spells I didn’t recognize—protection wards, charms for rain, for sleep, for truth-telling.
And sketches. A tree with roots like veins. A woman cloaked in smoke. A bowl held up to the stars.
I kept turning. And then I found it. A full-page illustration of a glass bowl glowing beneath a silver moon, petals drifting across the surface like tiny stars, and at the bottom, a violet stone pulsing faintly with light.
Of course it was beautiful. Of course the recipe for magical sedative water looked like something torn from a fairytale.
I looked at Aran. “You have all of this?”
He nodded, already rummaging through the bag.
“Winter rose—that’s the blue petals.” He placed them into the bowl, careful, like they might bruise. “Sleeping whisp,” he added, holding up a cluster of delicate purple strands. “That’s the other one.”
“The spell calls for amethyst, too,” he said. “You still have the one from the market?”
“Yes,” I murmured, pulling it from my pocket.
The amethyst caught the moonlight as I let it slip into the bowl. It sank to the bottom, and the water shimmered again.
“And it needs to be in the moon—” I began, eyes on the page.
“The moonlight charges the crystal,” Aran finished softly. “Releases into the water.”
He noticed me staring.
“What?”
“You actually read a book.”
He shrugged. “I still can’t sleep, so… might as well make myself useful. And keeping us from burning to death seems like a good use of my time,” he said, nodding toward the book, “Now, what’s next?”
I shook my head a little. Aran had actually read a book. That still astounded me.
I ran my finger down the page. “We need to bring it to a boil.”
He glanced toward the fire pit, where the embers had faded to a soft orange glow.
“Guess I’ll have to start another one. Unless…”
I looked sideways at him. “Unless what?”
“You do it,” he said.
My eyebrow lifted. “Start the fire?”
“Or be the fire,” Aran said, like it was obvious.
I stared at him. “I… I don’t think it works like that.”
He gave one of those shrugs that somehow managed to look both lazy and smug. “I think it does.”
I looked away, heart already tightening. “Maybe I don’t need moon drops. Maybe I’m okay now.”
He snorted, no softness in it. “No, you’re not. I’m not risking waking up surrounded by fire ever again.”
That hit harder than I expected.
I swallowed the lump forming in my throat. “Fine,” I muttered.
I knelt beside the bowl and pressed my hands close to it, not touching, just hovering. The water rippled slightly with my movement. I tried to picture it—flames curling, rising, dancing. Not burning. Not hurting. Just warmth. Controlled. Gentle.
Nothing.
Not even a flicker.
Aran leaned in beside me, his voice unhelpfully curious. “Anything?”
I shook my head, jaw clenched.
He grinned. Smug bastard. “Want me to… help?”
I didn’t even bother answering. Just glared.
He leaned a little closer, too pleased with himself. “Worked before.”
“Aran—”
“Flower. Tree. Come on,” he said, voice full of mock innocence. “Let me help.”
I closed my eyes, fingers curling tight around the crystal at my neck. I focused. Or tried to.
Still nothing. Just cold. Just silence.
Then Aran’s voice dropped low. Almost too quiet to hear.
“Think of those robbers.”
My body tensed.
“They beat me near to death,” he murmured, too calmly. “Would’ve killed Will too, if they’d had time.”
I tried not to hear it. Tried to let the words slide past.
“But not before they made us watch what they did to you.”
My stomach twisted.
“They wanted you to die screaming,” he whispered, soft and sharp, like a knife pressed just beneath the skin. “Not for any reason. Just because they could.”
My breath caught.
“Because men like that feed on it,” he went on, barely louder than the wind. “They take and take and take until there’s nothing left but silence. That’s the part they love. The ruin.”
His words slithered under my skin, found the cracks I tried to forget.
“Just like the Eredians,” he said, voice lower now, almost reverent. “You saw them in your home. You knew what they were going to do to your family. And you couldn’t stop it.”
”Stop,” I said. My heart pounded, each beat like thunder inside my skull.
“They enjoyed it,” he continued, leaning in. “Hurting you. Breaking you. You saw it in their eyes. You still see it, don’t you?”
I shook my head, but the memories were already there.
“You survived,” he said. “But they never left.”
My hands were shaking now, the crystal at my throat warming against my skin. The air shimmered, thick with heat.
“They’re not even here anymore,” he breathed, still so quiet, still too close. “But they still have their hands around your throat, don’t they?”
My chest rose and fell faster. I could feel it—fire, rising.
“They still haunt you,” he said, like he was praying. “Still choke you. You breathe like they’re still watching.”
The image hit me like a wave.
Their faces.
My mother’s scream. I didn’t want to remember.
But I did.
The water popped—once, then again, louder.
I opened my eyes. It was boiling. Violently. Bubbles surged to the surface in waves, the liquid flashing silver-gold under the moon. But that wasn’t the worst of it. The grass beneath the bowl had caught fire. And it was spreading.
Fast.
Flames raced outward in all directions, devouring the dry grass like it had been waiting for an excuse.
I scrambled back, heart slamming against my ribs.
“How long does it need to boil?” I gasped.
Aran flipped through the book with shaking fingers. “One minute. Count to sixty.”
The fire reached a nearby log and caught, flaring high. I yanked off my cloak, ready to throw it over the flames.
“Wait!” Aran snapped. “Just wait. Let it finish.”
We didn’t have sixty seconds. We didn’t even have ten.
So I grabbed the bowl. Lifted it off the ground with both hands, the metal fizzling as it scorched my palms. Pain ripped through me.
Sharp. Immediate. Blinding.
“PUT IT OUT!” I screamed, choking back the sob that climbed up my throat.
Aran lunged for my cloak and his, throwing them down over the flames and beating them into the dirt. Will came sprinting from the tents, a metal pail in his hands. He didn’t stop—just dumped it over everything. Steam exploded into the air, curling white and furious.
“YOU GODSDAMN IDIOTS!” Will barked, hair dripping, face flushed with panic. “What the hel were you thinking?!”
I stumbled to the fire pit and dropped the bowl inside, collapsed beside it, my whole body trembling.
My hands—Raw. Red. Blistered and shaking.
I sucked in a sharp breath, ready to cry, scream, anything—
But then I saw it.
The skin was healing.
Right in front of me.
───── ????? ─────
We’d been drifting through the countryside like ghosts.
Slipping through the cracks of the world.
Days lost their names. Trees gave way to open fields.
The stars felt heavy and close, and every night grew colder, like the sky was preparing to freeze over.
My body moved, but my mind was somewhere else.
It was back in that cave, and I could still feel the quake tearing through me.
That sudden surge, that raw power that ripped out of me like it had been waiting. Like it had a mind of its own.
I should’ve drowned down there.
But I didn’t.
And somehow, that’s what scared me. Since then, I’d been practicing, trying to understand whatever the thing inside me was.
Aran called it a curse, Will called it a gift, and I didn’t know what to call it.
But that raw power, the quake, or the surge, it hadn’t come back.
Maybe that was a good thing, because letting go like that had felt…
dangerous. Like I was opening a door I wasn’t sure I could close again.