There isn’t even time to lift my head before I’m flipped over, my wrists pinned to the ground. Helena’s face stares down at me, lips drawn back in a hungry snarl. She’s not a small girl—built to be a fighter, not a waif—but she isn’tthisstrong.
Shadows bleed from her, filling her eye sockets and nostrils and mouth with red smoke. Those scarlet shadows wriggle and squirm, coiling and spiraling toward me.
I press the back of my head into the snow and jerk my hips to buck her off me, but there’s nowhere to go, and she doesn’tbudge.
Instead, she leans close and kisses me deeply.
At first, I gag around her invading tongue, her nipping teeth, even her soft but hungry lips. She smells and tastes of pungent death and the bowels of the Nether Reaches. But something inside me changes. The smell burning my nose and searing my throat vanishes, and my disgust and fury slip away, leaving me filled with wanting.
Helena lets go of my wrists and grasps my face, bearing down on me harder. I don’t fight her anymore. I can’t—because I don’t want to.
Need builds inside me, a need to inhale her, to let her flood me, filling my every cell with her presence. Wanting more, I slide my hands up her body and thread my fingers into the black curtain of her hair. I fist the silkiness and crush her to me, my own hunger taking over, craving something dark and carnal only she can give. I’m thirsting, and her mouth is a fount, my only relief.
She drags her teeth across my lower lip, easily bringing blood from the wound Raina gave me at the stream. Drawing back, she licks crimson from her mouth, and in that small expanse of time, I’m left with an ache inside my chest but also a moment of realization.
“Oh, itisyou,” the thing says. “I wasn’t sure. Didn’t believe. But I taste the ancient shade within you, sorcerer.”
The wraith’s spirit spreads out in a cloud and folds around me like a nebulous hand. When it uses Helena to kiss me again, I’m helpless to fight, even though I feel its oily presence pouring into me, crawling and curling beneath my skin, obscuring all the light until I fall, plunging into a bottomless abyss.
It’s no abyss, though. I’m tumbling backward through the years, a long lifetime of memories passing by as illusory as ever.
The falling slows, and there, in this place of nothingness, I’m met with the darkest parts of myself. They’re illuminated in bold and breathtaking light, the moments of my life that will surely one day see me bound to the pits of the Shadow World, along with all the other monsters.
I try to fight it, to claw my way free.
I can’t endure this.
That thing gives me no choice, forcing me to watch as every life I’veever taken slips from existence—including the woman who once held my heart so completely, and the son she bore in my name.
It’s like I’m there all over again, standing knee-deep in midsummer crops, hearing their screams chase over the vale. I run, sickle in hand, desperation clenching my heart while the hot sun beats down upon my back.
I see the slice of the blades before I can reach them, the bloody slits smiling at their throats, their empty eyes watching a blue sky for the last time. I feel my love’s auburn hair in my hands, my son’s tiny body cradled in my arms.
I didn’t save them. I’m the reason they were killed at all. A man with magick who wanted to be a nobody farmer yet tangled with the wrong king. Over time, I’ve forgotten the details of their precious faces, but now, in this infernal creation of a shadow wraith, they stare back at me with excruciating clarity.
Evie and Quinn.
Misery washes through me, intense and violent. The shadow folds around the deepest part of me, the part I must keep locked away at all costs. There’s a prison inside me, and the shadow rattles the cage, agitating the thing my magick has held captive for so long.
No.No, no, no.
Don’t stir him,I plead.Don’t weaken me. Nephele, please. I beg you. Where are you?
From somewhere beyond, I sense pain, knowing inherently that it isn’t mine. It’s only mingled with my consciousness. Suddenly, I’m falling again, this time toward a dim but present light surrounded by shadow.
I open my eyes to find Helena still atop me. A grimace of disbelief twists her face, and her hand is raised, her bleeding palm folded around the edge of my sword like she caught it mid-swing.
Because she did.
Raina stands above us, hands tight around the hilt, rage hot in her eyes.
With the taste of the Shadow World still thick in my mouth, I rise on my elbows, but before any of us can make another move, the earth quakes, and the wood beyond the shadow wraith shifts.
I squint into the ghostly wood, unsure what I’m seeing. Even the shadow wraith turns a glance over Helena’s shoulder. Raina looks, too.
The dense tree line opens, one tree after another unfurling from the tangle, creaking back to where it belongs. A groan fills the night, the sound of wood waking, followed by unnatural sighs whispering through the air on a hushed moan.
The earth shakes again, so hard the wraith tumbles off me. Raina’s knees give, and she falls at my side. I curl my arm around her waist, pull her close, and hold tight as deep drifts of snow dislodge, the vibrations causing the dense layers to break apart and settle, scattering through the wood.
