Chapter Twenty-One
Kade
Kade landed with a bone-rattling thud. Brutal cold nipped at his skin, and above, snow lollygagged from a fathomless gray sky.
The ground beneath his knees scorched through his traveling leathers.
Wails joined the chorus of thunder, and Kade’s werewolf wrestled with the presence of death lingering in the slinking mists.
He stood in a desolate wasteland, the Nūa Library gone.
As was his mate.
“Evelyn!” Kade righted himself on shaking legs, searching wildly for her.
“Kade!” His name traveled from beyond the blanket of thick clouds.
A sharp pain lanced through his head, like a blade had been wedged into his skull. He gritted his teeth, his wolf raging inside his blood. Circe had entered his mind. But how?
He growled at the scent of licorice filling his nose. Inky. Oozing. Slithering against the crevices of his mind. He stepped forward, charging mentally ahead against Circe’s hold. He needed to wake up and get back to Evelyn.
But as he became aware of its presence, the dark magic sank its power deeper.
Bile rose up Kade’s throat, and he almost wretched onto the battlefield. Ravens descended out of the mists, landing atop piles of dead bodies. They picked at flesh, feasted on the dead. Arrows protruded from stiff limbs. One raven perched atop a sword’s hilt, cawing incessantly at Kade.
Familiarness settled across Kade’s skin like morning dew. The wasteland came and went as he blinked, shifting from the vastness of Sorin back to the rolling hills of rot.
Move. Do something.
Yet, no direction Kade traveled mattered.
The same bodies lay around him. The mists lingered, trailing him like hungry serpents.
And the raven remained ahead, and Kade’s wolf couldn’t discern if its cries were a taunt or a warning.
Kade roared. He was stuck, caged in the dark crevices of his own mind.
“Please! Let me out!” a young voice said, thick with tears.
He whirled. Yards away, a terrified girl beat against the hazy walls of a transparent box. Obsidian hair tied in braids. Large gray eyes she’d not yet to grow into.
Evelyn.
Kade’s heart cracked. What sick mind game was this?
He rushed to her and beat his fists against the box. Its firmness rivaled stone, yet its transparency mirrored water. “Evelyn, can you hear me?”
“I’ll try again! Please!” No older than seven, the child-version of Evelyn sobbed. She clutched one bruised, shaking hand to her chest. Two fingers jutted at crooked angles, and Kade flushed with a level of anger he’d never tasted before.
Stars above, he begged the gods this wasn’t real. Fear. That’s what Kade had endured when he’d burned Evelyn with his power. But this . . . This was different. Wilder. Monstruous. His mind battled sense and reason. Was this real? A memory? Or a trick to unravel his sanity?
I should’ve disciplined you harder, Circe had shouted.
“Let me out!” Evelyn’s crying worsened. She was so young and frightened, and Kade sat with her, gutted.
“Look at me, it’ll be alright. I’m going to protect you.” Always. Forever. Even if this wasn’t real, he couldn’t deny his innate instinct.
Thunder boomed over his words, as if the wasteland knew how useless they were.
“Kade!” Evelyn’s adult voice rang from above. “Push her out! Fight!”
Circe’s hold tightened, and Kade’s inner beast whimpered. He couldn’t leave this version of her behind, not when she was hurt and in pain. It was too real. Was he a protector if he didn’t do something? He leaned into Circe’s magic, gave in, and—
The mirage ahead of him faded, lifted with the winds and drifted from existence.
“No!” Kade’s banged his hands into the scorched earth. The remnants of vanilla and cedar tickled his nose, and the dying moans around him grew louder.
“You, you, you,” they chanted.
The pulse of his power threatened to release. The sounds, sights, and pressure was all too much.
Dirt-covered toes appeared ahead of Kade. He peered up and bared his teeth.
“Tenebris.”
The dark witch wore a tattered cloak, the hood pulled over his head and casting his stonelike expression in shadow. No chains ringed his ankles or wrists, but instead he held a metal scythe, it’s curved metal blade the brightest object for miles.
“This isn’t real,” Kade told himself.
“What if it is?” Tenebris’s lips didn’t move, but his voice carried across the wasteland like a thousand versions of him said it all at once. “Can you not smell the future in Circe’s visions? Can you not taste the death you will bring?”
Stars above, Tenebris’s words planted seeds of doubt. Kade shut his eyes. Dug his fingers into the earth. He was meant to protect his homeland, not destroy it. This wasn’t him. He refused to believe it.
He thought of Evelyn. Envisioned her strength, the look of pure determination he loved so fucking much. Her smell, touch, everything. He pushed against the notion he was darkness, fought against Circe’s hold. The dark witch faltered, and Kade rallied his honor like a blade.
The raven soared across the wasteland and landed on Tenebris’s shoulder. It fluttered its wings, restless. Dark, bottomless eyes bore into Kade. Far away, a warrior’s roar bellowed, and Kade’s wolf howled alongside the likeness, answering the ancient call humming in his blood.
Dark magic fled Kade’s mind, and the raven’s beak opened unnaturally wide and swallowed him whole.