My breath came rough, more from panic than wind now.
I wiped at my eyes with the back of one hand, furious with myself for losing sight of the square.
They’re not alone, I told myself in a shaky internal voice. Stella’s there. Nova. Your dad isn’t exactly fragile. Keegan’s mom has teeth like daggers. Twobble will set something on fire accidentally, and it will probably help.
I believed… maybe half of it.
The broom drove on, steady and relentless, like it had been given a GPS location by a very bossy universe and refused to deviate.
The land beneath us changed.
Stonewick’s forests gave way to wilder trees, taller and thinner, their trunks gray and their leaves strangely silvery inthe odd light. Shadows pooled under their branches even where sunlight still tried to filter through.
I recognized the geography with a sick feeling.
The Wilds.
Not the part we’d used as neutral ground or that were close to the Academy. This was further out, to the side, along a line I’d only seen in a vision and nightmare. The Hunger Path glowed faintly below, visible to whatever part of my magic had decided it liked to see trouble.
To anyone else, it would look like an ordinary strip of land. To me, it was a black vein, pulsing slowly, stretching out ahead.
The broom followed it.
Of course it did.
“Sure,” I muttered hoarsely. “Why not. Let’s joyride the cursed highway. Great plan.”
The path cut through the Wilds like an old scar, leading toward the hazy, darker smudge on the horizon that was Shadowick.
I’d never flown above it before.
It felt wrong.
Like hovering over an accident scene, promising to help but only gawking.
Time went strange.
Minutes stretched, then snapped.
Wind roared around me, loud enough to drown out thought, so my brain helpfully filled the silence with its own highlights reel.
Keegan’s blood on his fur. My dad’s yelp. My mother’s face when she realized her own mother had made it into the village. The priestess’s calm, cruel smile. Gideon’s voice hissing my name through the torn path.
Maeve—
Tears tracked down my cheeks, hot only until the wind froze them.
“How long is this thing?” I shouted at the broom.
It did not answer, because it was a broom and also a jerk.
Eventually, after what my bones insisted were eons and my rational brain informed me were probably only minutes, the air shifted again.
Colder.
Heavier.
Tired.
