His expression faltered.
Keegan growled low in his chest, the sound vibrating through the link.
“You never owned it,” he said, voice rough. “It owned you.”
The Hunger Path recoiled, a wave of pressure slamming into the circle. The sky split with a crack of thunder, lightning spiderwebbing through the clouds without striking. The mushrooms dimmed dangerously low, as if they were about to be extinguished.
Chapter Six
“Do not mistake resistance for failure,” I said with a weight that pressed through memory. “The Hunger Path doesn’t vanish when confronted. It must beunmade.”
The ground shuddered beneath us. It wasn’t enough to knock us down, but enough to remind us that this place was alive and paying attention. The sky removed the stars again, clouds folding over one another like bruises blooming in slow motion. Wind curled through the clearing, tugging at cloaks and hair, carrying with it the bitter tang of something ancient and resentful.
Pain flared anew in my birthmark and through us all.
It wasn’t the sharp, searing agony from before, but something deeper and more insidious. It crawled through me like a memory trying to reassert itself, whispering of bargains struck in desperation, of shortcuts taken when the long road felt unbearable.
I tasted ash and iron and the hollow echo of wanting without an end. It felt like insanity as the pull for something more that would never come. Was this what drove Gideon all those years?
Gideon gasped, his fingers digging into the soil as if he might anchor himself by force alone. The shadows surged back toward him in a rush, but they didn’t attach. They circled and clawed at the edges of his magic like starving things denied their meal.
The Hunger Path.
“No,” he rasped, more plea than defiance. “Not again.”
Keegan’s grip tightened on my hand, his knuckles whitening. The curse inside Keegan stirred violently, thrashing like a trapped beast. His eyes darkened again, though not fully this time.
Flickers of shadow raced through the hazel of his gaze like storm clouds refusing to break.
My dad staggered, as a low sound tore from his chest, and the echo of Malore’s influence surged back toward him, furious at being stripped away. His breath came fast and shallow, and for a terrifying moment, I felt the circle strain under the weight of so much resistance.
This wasn’t the end.
This was the reckoning.
“By the path walked in shadow and darkness, by the lie that hunger sustains. By the truth that fills the hollows that darkness creates,” I recited with everything I had.
The mushrooms responded, and their glow shifted again. Brilliant patterns bloomed across their caps like sigils waking from a long sleep. Roots of trees pushed upward through the soil at the circle’s edge, not breaking the boundary, but reinforcing it, braiding together as if the Wilds themselves were knitting the Rite tighter.
The Hunger Path lashed out.
I felt it slam against the circle like a wave against a boulder.
The air grew thick and cold as voices layered and overlapped each other, promising relief, power, and certainty.
Just take one step. Just choose once more. Just feed.
Gideon screamed raw and furious sounds that ripped from his throat as the murmurs found him. His gaze snapped upward, and his eyes blazed with a horrifying clarity.
“You don’t understand,” he shouted, voice cracking. “Itgaveme things. It gave me purpose. Direction.”
“And it would have taken everything else.” My voice rose despite the pain grinding through me. “Including you.”
The shadows recoiled slightly at my words, rippling as if struck.
Keegan growled, the sound low and feral, vibrating through the link that still bound us.
“It lied,” he said, teeth clenched. “It always does.”
