I grab the coat Kenzie borrowed, slipping it back on to cover my stained sweater. “Sooner, not later.”
“Well, things just got a bit more complicated than strolling up to Everbound Castle.” He holds up his arm until the thick coat slides back to show off a scrying brand. “Because I just received word on Commander Frost’s whereabouts. He’s in the middle of a massacre on the front lines about seventy miles east. Intel marked him as still alive an hour ago, but that’s a rough area known to be plagued by wraiths. We’ll go once we track down blessed bone?—”
“No,” I cut him off, storming toward the door as dread and adrenaline make me push through the injuries still staining me. “We’ll go now.”
And when I get there, my beautiful elemental had better be unscathed.
7
EVERETT
Ice bloomsfrom each step I take, spreading over fallen Reformists and monster corpses as I pass them. Wind howls, so thick with snow that I can’t see three feet in front of me.
Underneath my ripped trench coat, blood drips heavily despite my body trying to freeze over the wound that I clutch from where an ally bear shifter clawed me earlier. Exhaustion helps me ignore the sparks of physical pain as I wander down Main Street through this abandoned town.
I’ve been awake for over three days straight, ordering Reformists around and fighting and killing fiends the same as I've done every day since Brigid Decimus appointed me to this station. She insisted I was someone people look up to. An influential figure to give others hope in a dark time like this.
What a fucking joke I turned out to be.
I love you.
I cough, pain ricocheting up my torso. Going through the motions for six months has left me psychologically, physically, and mentally depleted. Now, I’m just…empty. Injured. Unmoored.
Hopeless.
How long am I supposed to just fuckingexistlike this? I may as well be one of the Undead. Besides, no matter how hard I've tried to keep them safe, what's left of my quintet is gone in every way that counts.
Squawk.
I nearly trip over a day-old corpse when I hear a raven caw somewhere nearby. Changing direction, I skirt around an abandoned car with busted windows. Now and then, shrieks and other inhuman sounds of fiends are carried to me on the wind. Beyond this blizzard, twilight is falling over what’s left of this razed town, which, ironically, used to be called Snowy Ridge. Now, it’s an active combat zone. I’ve been sending Reformists here weekly to maintain our hold.
The most recent troop was just massacred before my eyes—by each other, mostly. The wraith who got to them is still here, trying to find a way to get inside my head and feed on my fear.
But the wraith doesn’t stand a chance, because all my biggest fears have already come true, yet here I fucking am. Utterly alone as I walk without purpose, the nevermelt saber in my hand dragging loudly across the frozen road.
Gods, I’m so tired of this. Of everything.
A sudden wave of dizziness from blood loss sends me stumbling, the saber clattering out of my hands as I hit the asphalt. I cough again, grimacing as I roll over. My body isn’t able to keep the pain in my side numb anymore.
Killed by a wraith-crazed bear shifter. What an anticlimactic way to go.
But if I’m moments from the Beyond…
“Just let me find her there,” I whisper at the sky I can’t see, pretending like someone is listening to distract me from the doom closing around me.
And if Crypt beat me to her, Sachar had better assign that asshole some kind of punishment for leaving me alone like this, after all the shit we went through together.
As if the cruel gods decided this really is my time to go, I hear grunting and heavy footfalls before a massive figure appears standing above me. A ghoul. They linger in areas like this to feast on the fresh dead. This one is covered in gore like it was doing just that.
When the shadow fiend’s attention drifts down to me and it makes a hideous sound, I decide this is it. I’m too damn tired and tapped out to defend myself—and so what if a ghoul does me in? It’s all the same at this point.
I close my eyes and speak under my breath, willing these words to carry me to her quicker.
“I love you, too.”
So much that it's killing me.
It’s what I should have said when she was in my arms. It’s what I’ll say to her over and over again in the Beyond as I beg for forgiveness for failing her in every way possible.
