I gazed at Wolfe, searched the long strands of raven hair falling over his face, and I did as Arielle had instructed. I thought of what I wanted—time to slow, the sword’s magic to slow.
Slow. Stretch the moments. Give us time, I willed, pressing my intention into the magic as crackles of lightning pooled between my palms.
The magic pulsing around the sword began to shift. It became languid, elongated, and the feeding rhythm stretched like elastic drawn to its limit. Then the flickering through Wolfe’s body stopped, and he was whole.
Blessed Mother. I was doing it.
I was really doing it.
Time was slowing and listening to me.
Bending to my will.
“Now!” I cried.
I looked back at Wolfe just as he lifted his head, and bright blue eyes found mine.
Chapter 11
Wolfe
“The Moment Before Ruin”
Pain had become a constant companion in this place where time moved like sludge and breath came in ragged gasps that never seemed to fill my lungs.
The sword in my chest pulsed with its own malevolent rhythm, each beat sending fresh agony through veins that felt more like ice than blood.
But it was the ghost of the girl I loved that made me question what little sanity I had left.
Hair the color of blood framed her face. Warm hazel eyes gazed back at me with awe and panic.
She stood before me in this desolate wasteland, magic crackling around her hands over the cursed blade.
Impossible.
It couldn’t be her.
Elariya was safe in the mortal realm, far from this nightmare of ash and shadow.
She had to be. The alternative—that she'd somehow followed me into this hell—was too terrible to contemplate.
Yet there she was, or seemed to be, her lips moving in words I couldn't quite hear over the roar of my own failing heartbeat.
Her eyes held that fierce determination I knew so well, the look she got when she'd decided to fight fate itself. Even as a hallucination, she was breathtaking.
My Ziyka.
Let me die seeing her face. If this is madness, let it be this.
But ghosts and hallucinations weren't supposed to make the world slow around them or the pain ease.
Were they?
“Just another ghost, Wolfe,” Zyrra muttered by my ear. “Another person who doesn’t exist.”
I looked away from the image of my mage and glared at the thing who wore my sister’s face.
“No one is coming for you,” she taunted. “You, my dear brother, will die here in the place of misery and absence. It reminds me of the way I died. Though, I think I lost my mind well before the sickness took me.”
