The voice was everywhere. In my bones. In my blood. In the spaces between heartbeats where time stretched thin enough to see through.
You carry what was forgotten. What was promised. What was owed.
The warmth in my hands ignited. Not gradually. Not gently. It roared up through my arms, through my chest, through everycell of my body like I'd swallowed lightning and it was trying to get out.
Rise.
The world went white.
Silver-green light erupted from my palms. Not like a flashlight. Not like anything I'd ever seen. This was liquid moonlight made solid, a force that poured out of me with the weight of centuries, with the echo of voices I almost recognized, with power that tasted like my grandmother's stories about stars and the sea and things that watched from the dark.
The corrupted wolves didn't have time to scream.
The light hit them like a wave. Like a cleansing fire. Like judgment rendered in silver and salt. They flew backward, bodies twisting, dissolving before they touched the ground. Shadow and rot and the last desperate shrieks of things that had been dead long before I killed them.
But the power wasn't done with me.
It kept pouring out. Kept building. The light spread from my hands, traced lines across the frozen ground that glowed like veins of molten silver. It reached the corrupted ward stone and wrapped around it like healing hands, like prayer made visible, like something that had been waiting a very long time to be asked.
The corruption screamed.
I felt it more than heard it. That hungry, patient wrongness recoiling from the light, fighting against the cleansing, trying desperately to hold onto the magic it had been poisoning for years. Dark threads stretched and thinned and finally snapped, dissolving into the same shadow-rot that had consumed the wolves.
Well done, the voice whispered.
My vision went gray at the edges. My legs buckled. The frozen ground came up to meet me, and I didn't have the strength to catch myself.
“Michael!” Alaric caught me before I hit the dirt. His hands were shaking, his face pale beneath the blood and grime. “Michael, look at me. Stay conscious.”
His face swam in and out of focus, streaked with blood and dirt and something that looked almost like fear.
I touched my face. My fingers came away wet. Crimson.
“That's probably bad.”
“You think?” He was pulling off his shirt, pressing it against the wound on my leg, his hands shaking badly enough that he had to try three times to tie a proper pressure bandage. “You stupid, brave, idiotic human. You threw yourself in front of me. Why the hell would you do that?”
“Seemed like a good idea at the time.”
“It was a terrible idea.” But his voice broke on the words, and when he lifted me, his arms were gentle. Careful. Like I was something worth protecting. “The corruption's in your blood now. I can smell it. If we don't get you to Gideon?—”
He didn't finish. Didn't need to.
The forest blurred around us as he ran. Human form but moving with wolf speed, branches whipping past, his breath coming in harsh gasps that said he was pushing himself past any reasonable limit.
“Alaric.” My voice was barely a whisper. “Your side. You're hurt.”
“I've had worse.”
“You're going to make it worse carrying me.”
“Then I'll make it worse.” His arms tightened around me. “You just saved my life. You think I'm leaving you in that clearing after that?” A sound escaped him. Half laugh, half sob.“Daniel would never forgive me. And I'd never forgive myself either, so shut up and let me return the favor.”
The darkness was creeping in now. That gray fog at the edges of my vision spreading inward, turning the world soft and distant and unreal. I could feel the corruption in my wounds, feel it trying to reach my heart, fighting against whatever the moonlight had done to push it back.
“Just stay with me, okay? Stay conscious. Talk to me.” Alaric's voice cracked.
“About what?”
