I snort in disbelief and thrust my hands into the hay. Am I really searching for a key in a hay pile?
“Emery?” Even Declan’s muffled voice seems so far away.
Shapes move inside the fog. Long, wrong shadows sliding through the hay.
“These are next level effects!” someone shouts.
The ground thuds. Heavy hooves hitting the ground.
Shudders wobble the wagon.
The woman next to me screams in terror and scrambles off her hay bale, landing hard on the floor.
I glance up and the fog seems to part.
A black horse moves in lockstep with the wagon.
An impossibly large horse, its eyes empty and endless.
And sitting astride it—the Rider.
There’s nothing else that shape could be.
He’s real.
Ink bleeds across my vision.
Iron gates.Screams without sound. Tears on stone.
Declan shouts my name again.
A gloved hand shoots out of the fog.
Cold clamps around my waist.
I’m yanked backward and over the railing.
“Declan!” I finally find my voice.
Declan shoves half his body over the railing, reaching for me. His fingers grapple with the edge of my sleeve, pulling, tugging. I try to grab his hand, but my limbs are frozen.
Finally, Declan’s hand closes around mine.
For a second, we’re locked together.
The Rider tugs harder.
I’m lifted, my world spinning as the fog wraps around me.
“Declan!” Lucy screams. “Grab her!”
“This is amazing,” someone cheers.
Darkness squeezes in around me. Bitter cold. Hooves thunder under me.
And the night swallows me whole.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
