Chapter Forty
Kade
Kade blinked, a purple haze blurring his vision, and stretched out his stiff muscles. A sensation gripped his knees, as if the world had been sucked hollow. An eerie emptiness skated across his wolf, and he peered up at the sky, searching for the moon.
Snow fell from above—no, not snow, ash. It piled into his outstretched hand. The gray flurries didn’t sting as they hit his skin, nor did they melt as they landed on his bloodstained leathers. It blanketed the endless hills around him and danced on the wind.
Kade inhaled, scenting destruction, burned flesh, and infection. His stomach churned with nausea from his flooded senses and from worry—where, in the stars above, was he and where was his mate?
“Evelyn!” Kade’s desperation cracked in his voice. Fear coursed through his blood, racing his heart. This isn’t real, he tried to tell himself.
But it felt real.
He was back in the dark, desolate wasteland Circe had made him see. How had she reached him this far away? Was she near? But he found no answers, no ability to wake up. Only ash and smoke covered the ground.
Boom. Boom. Boom.
War drums echoed in the distance, and so Kade walked.
To find someone, to get out of this horrific dream.
Step after step. Miles passed. Wind whipped.
His legs and resolve ached. Occasionally, he felt the sensation of rising, up and up, only to come crashing down, the unseen impact making him falter a step.
His body thinned. His throat dried. Kade stared at his bloody, broken hands.
Tiredness took over, and Kade crashed to his knees. His power flickered like a lantern. Cold, paralyzing anxiety rooted him in place, and yet all wished to do was run, to be free of this horrid cage inside his own mind.
You did this.
A voice he knew in all its forms. Disheartened.
Joyful. Resilient. Evelyn’s words snaked through the air.
Kade clamped his eyes shut, pushing away the voice, the pain that came with it.
Behind his eyelids, a powerful light glowed from his hands.
He tried to rein in his new magic, tried to gain control.
Kade!
A thousand voices grated across his skull. His fear amounted to a tidal wave.
Wake up, he chastised himself. He pictured steely blue eyes, obsidian hair, and a laugh that brightened the darkest days.
He imagined her rare, beautiful smile, and the way her left brow furrowed so deeply.
He thought of the little time they’d spent together, and yet how magnificent it had been no matter how short.
He inhaled her courage and exhaled the promise of them, and the future they were fighting for—
“I wondered when we’d meet again.”
Kade whirled, finding Tenebris, the dark witch he’d encountered in Tùir, standing a few feet away, a mirth-etched smile spreading across his face.
“You’re not real,” Kade growled.
Tenebris laughed and stepped forward with hands clasped behind his back.
His scythe was nowhere in sight, but he wore the same cloak, but this time, less tattered.
Pressed, freshly washed, crisper. With his hood back, he revealed dark hair cut to his shoulders.
The color drew out the half circles rimming his two-colored eyes.
The milky-white one latched onto Kade, while the other observed the wasteland.
“I’m a messenger, Kade,” Tenebris said. “Your line of connection to the darkness.”
He stumbled back, tripping over a body. He didn’t dare look at their faces or wounds. Flies buzzed around him as he continued to retreat from the dark witch.
Thunder rumbled in the distance, mixing with the moans of the dead.
To the east, a village that shared a likeness to his home burned, but it was the flames of pearly blue that danced in the wind and devoured the cottages.
The center fortress crumbled, its descent sending a ground-shaking boom across the land.
To the west, birds circled a long-since destroyed city.
The Carson coven’s banner, ripped and bloody, swayed on the breeze.
You did this, the thousands of voices rasped again.
Get up, Kade screamed. Snap out of it!
The sky trembled, but there was no pain lancing through his head like when Circe had controlled his mind. He was simply here. Like his mind had visited the horrors that had never truly let him go.
“Aren’t you the least bit curious why the darkness has called upon you?”
Kade said nothing. He thought of the things that mattered most: Evelyn, their love, his parents and brothers, the Gray Fenris, the prophecy and his destiny.
Tenebris laughed again, wet and sticky. “How can one fulfill their destiny when they don’t even know who they are?”
Kade growled, charging towards the dark witch. “I am Kade Drengr, third born and Son of the God.”
Tenebris didn’t flinch.
LIES! Evelyn and Circe’s voices both shrieked like thunder across the sky.
Kade’s heart dropped like a stone to his gut. Tenebris circled him, and his scythe appeared from the shadows.
“Have you ever wondered why your power doesn’t feel right?” Tenebris asked.
“Stop,” Kade hissed.
“It is because you haven’t accepted where it came from.”
“You’re wrong,” he bit out.
Tenebris tilted his head and sneered, revealing his decaying teeth. “It is chaos and destroys. You are darkness.”
Kade’s chest heaved. It wasn’t this place that was hollow; it was him. Uncertain, frightened. He was losing the one he loved most in all this world, and he didn’t know how to help her or fix it because he didn’t know who he was.
The realization paralyzed him.
“No.” Kade shook his head. “I’m prophesied to defeat it.”
Tenebris tsked, snaking out his tongue to lick his bottom lip. He leaned on his scythe like a walking stick. “Only you can accept this, Kade. Until you do, I will visit. Messenger and helper! Ah, yes. The darkness’s task for me is so sweet and honorable.”
“Honorable?” Kade charged, grasping hold of Tenebris. Surprise shot through—the man was real. The fibers of his cloak itched Kade’s palm, felt the male’s weight as he held him off the ground. “That doesn’t exist within those who follow darkness.”
“Until tomorrow night.” Tenebris snapped his fingers and disappeared.
Kade woke with a start, the rush of panic lingering in his limbs. He throat tightened, and he gasped for air, like fear was a hand grasping his throat. He ran a hand down his face, the feel of ash still at his fingertips.
He turned, reaching for Evelyn, to feel her against him and find some comfort as the hours ticked by before began their journey to the Sun Temple, only to find her side of the bed empty.