I gasped. “What? I didn’t realize it wasthatlong.”
“Time passes differently here and on the ghost roads. It takes a toll on the body, especially when you’re not used to it.” She watched me carefully. “Do you know where you are?”
“At Vyrenth Hollow.” I let out a slow breath and glanced nervously around the room. “But specifically… this is his room, isn’t it? Wolfe’s.” I said, needing the truth spoken out loud.
“Yes,” Arielle replied, simple and certain.
My gaze flicked to the door, to the corridor beyond it, and then back again, trying to piece together how my feet had carried me here. “How did I find it? Something came over me, a pull of sorts, and I came here.”
Arielle reached for my arm and turned my wrist, lifting my hand so the soul mark on the underside showed. “You’re drawn to him,” she said. “Through the Velastra mark he gave you.”
My stomach tightened, the pull answering her words before I could.
“And I suspect the Seer’s tethering magic is helping too,” she continued, her tone careful. “I’d like to think it’s guiding you back to each other.”
Heat flickered along my nerves at the intimacy threaded through Arielle’s words. She made it sound inevitable, as though this pull between Wolfe and me would draw us together no matter what I did.
I didn’t have the heart to tell her the hollow inside me might stop it.
In fact, I was certain it would.
The pull might be alive inside me, but so was the emptiness—the missing memories that kept me from feeling.
I shoved the thought away. There were more important things to discuss.
“I heard him calling to me, Arielle,” I said quietly.
Arielle went still. Her eyes widened. “You did?”
“Yes.”
“How?” Her voice sharpened with urgency. “Where?”
“In my sleep. It seemed like a dream.” The word felt flimsy the moment it left my mouth. “He called me Ziyka.”
Arielle’s breath caught, like that single detail changed everything. “Blessed Mother.”
“I’m sure it wasn’t a dream,” I added, my skin prickling as the memory surfaced. “Everything was gray, like fog and ash, and it felt like I was being pulled toward him.” I swallowed, forcing myself to keep going. “But then something stopped me.Darkness.”
“Oh, Gods,” Arielle whispered, the words breaking on a breath. “I pray he’s alive. He has to be.”
Her throat bobbed as she swallowed, eyes shining with fear she was trying and failing to hide.
“This is the first sign of anything we’ve had,” she went on, her voice tight. “We’ve been at our wits’ end trying to figure out what happened—beyond the attack. We don’t know anything.”
“My grandmother told me Thayden brought me home.” I held her gaze. “He tracked me to the magical realm and hired Scabbards to get in.” My stomach twisted. “I think he did something to Wolfe.”
Arielle went utterly still, as if my words had struck her across the face. “Are you certain?” she demanded. “Thayden? Your fiancé?”
I nodded. “Whatever magic he took into the realm… it gave him the power to do whatever he did.”
The color drained from her face in a single, brutal sweep. Her breath hitched, and for a heartbeat, she looked genuinely unsteady, like the world had shifted around her.
“It would take great power to go up against someone like Wolfe.” Her words were clipped with a juxtaposition of disbelief and shock. “And to win.”
“Thayden is…” I swallowed hard, his name tasting like poison. “He’s a man of many tricks. He’s resourceful and ruthless. A man without honor or heart.” My hand curled into a fist so tight my knuckles ached. “That’s why I need to get back to Stormfell before he does. He knows my powers aren’t bound.He saw me use them here, and he’s threatening my family with death if I don’t marry him.”
Arielle’s eyes sharpened, shock snapping into something colder. “That bastard.”
