Chapter 22
Blood. Everywhere: on my bed sheets, splattered across Roxie’s terrified face. My entire body quivered as I flew to my feet, but was brought straight to my knees. I receded into the corner, unable to breathe.
“Fey …” Roxie chattered through her teeth, attention hyperfixated on her hands, more black than red.
God, I killed Chaos. I’d done it. Those cries, the screams, I’d …
I … My eyes dropped from Roxie’s. What the hell just happened?
My chest thrashed, excruciating tightness clamping over my heart unlike anything I’d ever experienced before.
I rushed to the bathroom, threw the door shut behind me, and stepped toward the mirror.
Something I could touch: the countertop.
Something I could see: the faucet. Something I could feel: I threw the handle up and splashed cold water against my face.
Something I could smell: iron … blood. Acid clawed up my throat, but I refused to let it spew out.
Nails buried in my palms, another sharp pang zapped through my chest as if flesh and bone were ripping apart inside me. A scream tore through me.
Roxie pounded on the door. “Fey, what’s going on? Are you all right? Let me in!”
Another sharp stab and I ripped my shirt clean off, pulling close to the mirror. All the color drained from my face. There, dead center of my chest, below the skin, something was … moving. Something inorganic. I pressed against it, a shock racing through every nerve ending in my body, and I hissed.
Roxie pounded louder. “Hello? You’re scaring me! What’s going on!”
“N—nothing! I’m fine, just a … a really bad nosebleed,” I said and forced a laugh.
It was the only thing I could think of to explain all that blood.
I pressed against the foreign knot in my chest, warmth spreading beneath it followed by another flood of pain.
I fell to my knees again and bit my lip to conceal my cry from Roxie, who’d grown quiet outside the door.
The room around me spun, embers of light dancing around my vision.
What was happening to me? Am I dying? Was this punishment for killing Chaos?
Death, the end, no more. A loud thud made me jump, stealing my attention away from the hot iron poker in my chest.
“What the hell are you doing here?” Roxie yelled. “Get out! You can’t just come into people’s rooms!”
Her sudden, spine-chilling shriek sent me crawling back into the bedroom.
“Rox—” I gurgled, nails dragging on the hardwood floor. Every move felt like hot brands searing my bones, but her screams … they weren’t stopping.
“Roxie,” a voice said, stern. Cillian. “Look at me, it’s okay, open your hand.”
“I—I can’t,” she sobbed.
When I cleared the bathroom, I choked on my own gasp.
The bedside drawer … it was wide open. And the blood-red stone?
Clenched in Roxie’s hand. Body eerily still, her shrieks fell in time with the fluorescent lights dancing within the stone.
My throat tightened, the burn in my lungs intensifying as I studied the winds whipping about Roxie’s hair despite every window being closed.
A dark mist danced around her face, funneling up her nose.
Eyes drenched in shadow, she began to sing. “A pact of blood and shattered heart befell the mourning mother, for on her daughter’s back the world would track through the open doors of slaughter.”
“Cillian, help her,” I yelled, grasping at the new flames bursting to life in my center.
He grasped at the stone, but her fingers wouldn’t budge. “She won’t let me!”
Roxie’s head snapped toward me, a murderous spark in her eyes.
“Fight or flee the sleeping key and the beasts that claw and tear, for they will not cease until their souls’ release, restoring their rightful heir.
” Her smile grew inhumanly wide. “If it is a war you seek, Feyanna, then it is a war I shall provide you.”
That voice … Bethesda.
“Roxie, please come back to me.” I crawled to her. One hand on her foot, I looked up. “It’s me, Fey! I need you to come back. Just open your hand and—”
A final bloodcurdling cry sent her to her tiptoes before she and the stone crumpled to the ground. Falling to her side, I rest my head on her chest. “She isn’t breathing … Fuck, Cillian! She isn’t breathing!”
“Here, let me.”
He slid between us, built a cloud of wind in his hands, and pushed it through her parted lips. Remnants of black smoke seeped out as Cillian’s hand twisted, and he sent a second burst of air into her. With a gasp, she leapt to her feet, her eyes wide and wild, but alive.
I sighed in relief. “Shit, thank God—”
All at once, my body seized. Arms latched at my sides, my chest creaked as if my ribs were breaking and moving and resetting over and over, the pain so intense I couldn’t muster a scream. The edges of my vision darkened.
“Hey, hey, look at me,” Cillian whispered, pushing the sweaty hair from my face. “Look, right here, all right? You’re going to be okay. Breathe through it.”
In, out. In, out.
Cillian latched onto his talisman, laid a hand on my chest, and an icy chill took hold, soothing the flames inside me.
“That’s it,” he cooed. “Keep breathing. Focus on me.”
I did, until the last wave hit: molten fire and red-hot magma. I feared I might split in two as my back violently arched, tears rolling down my cheeks. Trapped in my own damn body.
Cillian pressed his hands down, his magic chill sinking deeper, and my body relaxed—the anguish gone as quickly as it’d come. I rolled my head to the side in a silent sob. Roxie’s teeth chattered in the corner, but one wave of Cillian’s hand and a blanket whipped off the bed, wrapping around her.
He stood, snatched a towel from the bathroom, and came back to pat at my face. “You’re all right. It’s over now.”
What? What was over now? When my heartbeat finally settled, I pushed to sit. “What the hell just happened?”
He raised a hand, a small stone pinched between his finger and thumb. I snatched it from him, turning it over in my palms: smooth, no larger than a marble with an otherworldly sheen.
“That’s Chaos’s stone …” My face snapped back up to Cillian. “How did you know?”
His brow creased. “I … I didn’t.”
“Enough with the bullshit lies! How did you know you needed to come find me, Cillian?”
“We … we have a bond,” he stuttered, hand wrapped around the back of his neck. “I wanted to tell you, but it hasn’t always gone over well in the past.”
I looked him square in the face, twisting the stone in my fingers. “What kind of bond?”
“It’s not that easy. In time, I can explain more, but—”
More omission. I stood and pointed at the door. “Get out.”
“Fey, please—”
“I said get out!” My hands clenched at my sides.
His shoulders slouched as he started for the door.
I had no time for his games anymore. His half-truths and evasion.
I could hardly understand myself right now, let alone whatever sick game he and Celine were playing with my head.
He pulled the door open, glanced once over his shoulder at me as if he hoped I’d change my mind.
And with that hopeless look in his eye, I almost did.
Almost. The door clicked shut behind him, and I stepped toward Roxie.
I prodded her face gently. “Are you all right?”
“What is going on?” she muttered.
Shit. How was I going to explain this? Oh, yeah. So, I killed this Ancient Lore in a nightmare, except it’s not really a dream; it’s another world, and I’m not really sure what that even means, but its essence tore through my chest in the form of this rock here.
Dread threatened to grip me again, but I held it in as the increasingly familiar warmth began to roll through me.
It spread out into my limbs, and I felt this …
this pull to reach out; to shield her from the darkness whose true aim was to devour me.
I set my hand on her shoulder, looked her straight in the eye, and said, “It was a really bad nosebleed, that’s all. ”
She blinked, brows creased, but repeated, “A bad nosebleed, right.”
My stomach turned as I noticed the light in my fingertips trickling out in time with my rapid heartbeat.
Chaos’s stone glittered in my left palm, and I realized in an instant: Chaos’s essence stone was playing talisman.
I was wielding magic. I swallowed and watched the glow trail along Roxie’s collarbone, settling atop her head like a crown.
It spoke to me then: my magic. But not in a voice, in a feeling.
What I wanted, it wanted. I shifted at the thought, but left my hand intact.
Roxie couldn’t know the truth. She was too pure, too wonderful to pull into the darkness with me.
So I rolled my shoulders, cleared my throat, and focused on what I wanted: to make her forget.
I met her gaze. “Cillian was never here.”
She nodded. “Never here …”
“You had a bad nightmare and I woke you up. My nose started bleeding and you helped me clean it up in the bathroom. That’s all that happened.”
“Right … nightmare … bloody nose … all that happened.”
I drew my hand back to my chest with Chaos’s stone gripped vise-like. A second later, the light retreated from her skin, and she blinked the fog from her eyes.
She surveyed the bloody sheets and turned to me. “Damn, that’s one hell of a nosebleed. Need some more tissues?”
Her words were genuine, every bit of terror she’d shown minutes before now gone.
As if it had never happened. I studied my palms. Magic …
me? How was it even possible? I’d never had anything remotely magical happen in my life before.
No signs whatsoever, and yet there it was, twisting beneath the surface like tiny golden waves.
“Uh, hello?” Roxie snapped her fingers. “Did you lose too much blood or something? What’s up with you?”
“Sorry. No, I’m—I’m good.”