They all laughed when nothing happened.
“Dokombriva, mortiulim, carpe liveum,” I cried again, louder.
Zerch grabbed his belly, ready to howl with laughter, but he stilled as if someone had shut him down. He lifted his hand tothe bright sunlight, and it turned to dust, blowing away in the wind.
That was all that happened. There was no dramatic ripple of power that attacked them all.
But that didn’t mean my attack had no effect on the others.
The grip from the guy holding me loosened as Zerch wailed and released a stringline of curses.
“You fucking bitch.”
“Dokombriva, mortiulim, carpe liveum,” I shot back. I’d hoped to do more damage, but nothing more happened, probably because the magic within me was fried.
The connection withered every time I tried to sense it, and I knew I’d completely drained myself.
With his remaining hand, Zerch backhanded me across the face. Stars crowded my vision, and pain exploded inside my head.
“Look what you did to me. Fucking little bitch.”
Hands gripped me hard once more, but then a blanket of darkness poured over the forest.
I thought night had come, but this…it wasn’t that. It was something else.
Somethingwrong.The darkness rolled through the trees like smoke, thick and suffocating, swallowing the light whole.
It was unlike anything I’d ever seen. Given that I’d just returned from Morgäven and the Land of the Dead, that was saying something.
The Fae males froze. Their laughter died. Their grips loosened. Their aggression evaporated, replaced by raw terror.
"What the—" one of them started, but he never finished.
The ground beneath our feet began to crack.
Thin lines spiderwebbed outward from where I stood, glowing faintly with an eerie, sickly light. The earth groaned, a deep, resonant sound that vibrated through my bones.
"No—"
The ground gave way, then long wispy fingers in the form of shadows reached up. Alive andhungry.
The instant the guys saw that, they ran.
All of them. Without another word. They bolted through the trees like the hells themselves were at their heels.
I ran, too, but I wasn’t fast enough. The darkness grabbed with hands hard as steel.
I screamed as it dragged me downward into a widening chasm in the earth. I clawed at the edges, my fingers scraping uselessly against dirt and stone.
The world vanished into black.
And within the darkness… something laughed.
Chapter 28
Wolfe
“The Price of Destiny”
