Stone, my soul whispered. A held breath. A sigh.
And when I looked at his face, he was already staring back at me. My chest was snatched up by his eyes, heart pounding out steps as if it had legs and feet that wanted to bolt across the chamber and into his arms.
But I couldn’t move. Not before, and not as it began to dawn on me.
Stone was here, in a sacred chamber, with the Heathens as if he was their friend. Hurt buckled inside me. Betrayal.
“I don’t think we’ve met,” Augustine said, eyes on my secret. “A new visitor in Weeping Hollow. At a time like this. I loathe surprises, Blackwell.”
“You can speak to me directly,” Stone insisted, his black eyes holding me with no intention of pulling away. “My name is Stone Danvers. The lost descendant of the Danvers bloodline.”
“The fifth Heathen to complete Norse Woods,” Julian confirmed.
It took longer than it should have to process it.
Painfully slow. Deathly slow. Tragically slow.
Like drowning.
The. Fifth. Heathen,my mind echoed, hesitant.
I shook my head, teeth grinding, trying to turn these words into dust.
Why are you doing this to me? my heart screamed, devastated.
Augustine threw a sharp look at Clarence. “Is this true?”
I held my breath, waiting for something more to be revealed.
That this was all a mistake. Stone couldn’t be a Heathen.
“It is,” Clarence confirmed with a celebratory smirk.
I curled my hands into fists, my nails piercing my palms.
“Adora,” Stone said, just standing there, gauging my reaction with dread flashing across his face, and something else ... A knowing, like he was waiting for me to do something. Insult him. Scream at him. Attack him. Shake the room and explode, even. He was ready for me, seconds counting down.Tick, tick, boom.
And a hot tear slid down my cheek.
Then another.
And another.
I wasn’t shouting or cursing or hitting him this time.
I was defeated and crying. In front of everyone.
And I couldn’t get the tears to stop.
This hurt was different.
“Adora,” he said again, softer that time. And my heart went insane every time he said my name. I hated that it did. Because he was a Heathen. And I was weak for him.
I could feel Cyrus’s worried eyes on me. “Adora, what’s going on?”
But he already felt the truth, I was sure. But I didn’t care because paralysis swept through me, despite my heart pounding hard enough to feel.
There was only one other time I felt like this. Dad had hazelnut peanut butter sandwiches waiting on the counter when I got home from the academy. Mouthful of bread and peanut butter, I’d heardAdeline died, andthe Heathens killed her, and then the sickness devoured all his next words. Time had just trapped me there. A frozen picture of me crouched on the tile, my cries muted, as though that was all that happened for hours, stuck in suffering, unable to stand. There was so much more to it, I was sure, but I forgot the rest.
