Oxygen whooshes from my lungs as unbearable weight presses on every side, burying me alive. Dirt fills my mouth, nose, eyes—it crushes my chest until my eyes feel like they’ll pop out.
“Let’s continue our game of finder’s keepers.”
I can’t move as the wraith’s shadowy hand slides into my chest, rooting around for the heart he won’t find. What he does find are my crushed lungs, which he begins to tear out slowly.
But just as the internal pain and horror begin to eclipse my every thought, I hear it.
My matches. Screaming.
No.
Gideon's demented laugh scrapes inside my head as if he's trying to gut my thoughts from the inside out.“They were never yours, broken raven. Now they’re mine.”
“No,” I rasp, desperate to get to them.
They'remine.
I'm not letting this twisted echo of my past hurt them more.
They. Are. Mine.
All the adrenaline, fear, and darkness crashing through my veins reaches a fever pitch when my anger crests. But it feels different, somehow—less the heady buzz of death and more like…something powerful I’ve never experienced before.
Whatever it is, the next time my psyche lashes out against Gideon’s control, I break free from the horrors he's forcing into my head. My vision clears as I roll to my feet, instinctively withdrawing the only knife I have left on me without getting a chance to look at it.
Silas is writhing in the snow beside Baelfire, both of them tangled in shadows that are sliding into their ears, mouths, and noses and warping their minds as they cry out. Crypt is motionless in the blood-stained snow surrounding him. He’s missing an arm and leg like he was being ripped apart slowly before Gideon decided to focus on?—
Everett. Who is in silent agony as the wraith delves into his mind. One of the blade-like shadows lifts in the air, an onyx-like guillotine poised above my elemental’s neck.
My vision goes red.
“No!” I scream, launching forward and driving the knife into the shadow fiend.
It shouldn't work.
But it does.
The wraith shrieks in pain as I stab it again and again, rage rushing through my system. That strange new power burns me alive as I bury the blade deep in the wraith’s center.
Gideon screeches loud enough that my ears ring before wrenching away from the knife and dissipating, his shadows slithering into the distant darkness of the polar night.
I drop to my knees, shaking in the aftermath as the adrenaline and strange new strength slowly calm. A dark liquid coats me, and I realize it must be wraith blood.
But how?
The blade in my hand starts to crumble. I blink down just in time to see the bone knife Everett gifted me crumble away to ash.
Just like a blessed bone weapon.
What the hell?
Maybe…shit, maybe I’m a saint after all.
I don't understand, but right now, I don't fucking care. I crawl through the snow to Everett, who lays utterly still with ashen-gray skin. My hands tremble as I check his pulse.
He's alive.
So are Silas and Baelfire, when I check them. Only Silas is vaguely conscious, but he can't seem to focus on me with those beautiful crimson irises. And when I hurry to my Nightmare Prince, hot liquid dripping from my chin, I nearly choke at the amount of blood he's lost. His beautifully marked, dismembered arm and leg are beside his body.
