The town below us was a bruise on the land.
From this height, the buildings crouched around their crooked streets like guilty secrets. Smoke oozed from chimneys and cracks in the ground, but it didn’t rise; it curled low, clinging to rooftops and alleyways as if scared to brave the sky. Magic shimmered along the streets in dull, oily streaks—residue from rituals and bargains that never remembered how to end cleanly.
The Hunger Path pulsed under us, a black vein threading past the village and back toward the Wilds, toward Stonewick.
Every beat of it hurt.
Not physically, not like Keegan’s pain, but somewhere behind my eyes, where the Hollows had decided to make its permanent home. It throbbed in my mark. It nagged against the Hedge that lived under my skin. It hummed against Gideon’s ribs.
It waited for something I wasn’t sure I could give.
Gideon made a rough sound as the broom crossed directly over the path, like the two were magnets scraping past each other.
“You okay?” I shouted over the wind, my mouth close to his ear.
“No,” he rasped. “Keep going.”
I wrapped my arm tighter around his waist.
The ache in my own body was catching up, layer by layer; the adrenaline was wearing off. My muscles shook from bracing against the wind, my hands were numb, my shoulders screamed from hauling him up off the marble.
But underneath all that, there was a different pain.
Keegan.
It pulsed through my chest in sharp little flashes, not constant, not steady, but like a bad connection crackling in and out.
Images hit without warning.
His wolf flinging itself between me and a wave of shadow, eyes bright with fury. The line of his jaw set in that stubborn way he had when he’d already decided to be stupidly brave. Blood soaking into fur. The sound, half snarl, half choked-off yelp, that had ripped through him when the priestess’s magic struck too deep.
Every time a memory spark jumped the line, my lungs seized.
He’s alive, I told myself. I’d know if he weren’t. The bond would go dead, not painful.
We soared past Shadowick and into the Wilds again.
The trees below grew thicker, taller. Their twisted branches threw long fingers of shadow over the land. Pockets of old magic glowed faintly, like coals left to smolder for a century.
Ahead, the sky darkened.
Stonewick.
Even from this distance, I could see the dome.
Where before it had been a thin, shadowy lattice, now it was a solid shape that was thick and heavy, like a bruised-black shell draped over the town. The shadow net the priestess had woven had swelled and fused, its lines no longer just a pattern but a solid mass.
Fog clung to it, pressed against it from the inside and outside both. It wasn’t normal fog. There was no gentle, shifting mist. It moved like thought, eddies and swirls forming shapes that never fully resolved. Shadows crawled along the inside of the dome, trying to find seams.
Gideon sucked in a breath, and I felt his whole body tense against me.
“Too much,” he muttered. “She poured too much into it.”
“How are they still?” I swallowed the rest.
Still fighting? Still breathing? Still there?
The broom slowed, circling.
