My eyes flutter shut for only a second and when they snap open, I see them.
The world around me is laced with threads—woven strings of magic, energy, and life strung through the air like spider silk. Made of different pale shades, some simmer like sunlight reflecting off water and radiate warmth. Others, oily black and foul, are gnarled and coiled too tight.
It’s exactly how Mom described it when I once asked her what it felt like to be a weaver.
But I’m not a weaver…am I?
Rennick’s pack healer called me an oracle.
I don’t have the luxury of time to stand here unraveling what this means—how it shifts everything I thought I knew about myself. It feels akin to a forced trust fall, one where I have no choice but to surrender. So, I let go and don’t fight whatever this is.
One thread in particular catches my attention. Dark as pitch, pulsing with venom and stinking of rot, it snakes from me to the woman stalking behind me.
Malvina.
Instinct, or something I don’t yet understand, urges me to act. It tells me to reach for the thread with my own gift. Before I can think better of it, I visualize metaphorical fingers wrapping around the slithering fiber.
I’m not physically touching it, but still, a wicked current of sinister magic vibrates into my skin, scorching my palm and up my forearm as if it’s a tangible thing.
I don’t let go. Reflex has me holding on tighter with my own magic and following it. Following it back toher.
I trace it to the very center of her being where more threads wait. They form a warped tapestry. Each one humming with power, dark and volatile, and stitched in a jagged pattern that makes my skin crawl. Still, I don’t look away.The tangled strands are made of shades of black, deep blue, and bruised purple. Every last one of them is devoid of light. It’s as if someone has systematically stripped Malvina of anything good. Every flicker of warmth, every trace of joy or innocence, hollowed out until nothing was left of her butthis. Even the scraps of satisfaction buried in her are spoiled, their very existence dependent on the pain of others.
There’s another inky thread that draws me in.
It pulses in a way the others don’t. As if it’s waiting for me to take notice. And without thinking, without knowing what will happen, I reach for it.
The moment my figurative fingers brush up against it, my blood runs cold and the hairs at the base of my neck lift. This fiber isn’t made of hunger or power. It’s fear in its most pure and unfiltered form. It’s the kind of terror that makes your heart forget how to beat. It’s soul deep and unrelenting. It howls through me, but I don’t let go. My newly awakened power tightens its grip, and with everything I have, Iyank.
In my mind’s eye, I see myself crush it, curling it into my palm and grinding it into dust without mercy. I tear it apart as if it’s the only thing standing between us and freedom. Because maybe it is.
Behind me, Malvina gasps. The sound is raw and sharp. Filled with terror that doesn’t fit her unflinching persona.
Her pained noise is a light switch being flipped. The threads disappear around me, the one still in my power’s clutch melting away, leaving behind no evidence that any of them ever truly existed.
I whip around just in time to catch the way her already colorless face leeches even paler, as if the last of the blood beneath her skin has been stolen. Her too light eyes dart wildly, tracking something in the trees. Instinctively, I curl my body tighter around Ivey and scan the woods, bracing for a new threat.
There’s nothing there. NothingIcan see.
But Malvina can.
Her breath catches as she stares at something invisible to me. Whatever it is, it’s petrifying, causing her whole body to tremble.
“What are you doing?” she rasps, voice catching on the edges of panic. Her chest heaves. “What is this? What are you doing to me?”
It takes me a second to realize she’s speaking to me.
I don’t respond. Even if I wanted to, I wouldn’t know what to say. I have no idea what I’ve just set in motion, but that doesn’t mean I look away as the ruthless and cunning witch all but wilts before me.
She stumbles back a step, the heels of her leather boots catching on an exposed tree root running across the trail. She barely manages to catch herself before she screams. It’s a sound torn from her throat like it doesn’t belong to her at all. Her knees hit the dirt. The curved blade she’d been wielding slips from her hand and thuds to the forest floor. She doesn’t notice.
Her fingers claw at her face, nails dragging down the pronounced ridges of her orbital bones. “No. No, this isn’t real,” she sobs. “It’s not real. Make it stop. Make it stop.Please.”
Her pleading doesn’t spark joy in me—I can’t revel in whatever victory this is supposed to be. I’m too stunned, too unsure of what’s happening.
I take a stiff step back, then another, Ivey still whimpering softly in my arms. The witch lifts her head again and this time her eyes are gone. No color. No pupil. Nothing but white. She doesn’t see me. I don’t think she sees anything real at all.
Whatever world her mind’s fallen into, it’s cruel. A living nightmare.
