He opened his mouth to speak, but a gale shoved by, hooking him around the waist, ripping him away. Her shirt tore as his fingers were pulled from it.
Back came the storm. Freezing rain slashed like swords, bleeding her. The wind pitched her up and out and over until she didn’t know where she was anymore. Lightning blinded and thunder deafened, and then...
She was back in the forest.
The storm had only happened inside. Her shirt hadn’t really torn, and yet, somewhere deep in her chest, she felt as if she’d been gouged. And that empty space seemed to be growing, as if an invisible creature were gnawing away at her with icy teeth.
“That was foolish.”
She gasped, refocusing on the living world, where Kaelan lay limp. His eyes were vacant and lightless, body sprawled in a damp hemlock forest on a small island in the gulf.
Dead.
“You should’ve told me you didn’t kill the Elf,” Damion snarled down at Magda, who was too busy prodding at her chest to check for a wound to respond. Other than sweat and dirt and tacky old blood from the battle, and the edge of the Enneahedron still between her breasts, there was nothing, no wound. But that’s not how it felt.
Ilene crouched on the other side of Kaelan’s body, her green eyes flashing, giving Magda a vicious smile.
“He gave you a piece of his heart before he died,” the Elf said. “Now you will always feel it, missing. Everyone knows you don’t make a living being your heart-place. I wonder what Endreas will think of that.”
Gur growled.
Damion stepped into view. Swords drawn.
Magda gazed at Ilene blankly. “You have the same color eyes as him... Kaelan.”
Ilene’s smile faltered.
Magda laid Kaelan’s lifeless hand down on his chest and rose to her feet, unleashing her knives with a cold click andwhish.
“Go tell your father,” she said, “that I will be coming for him. And you can tell Endreas, there will be no peace.”
Ilene sneered, her hands twitching as if she was thinking about drawing a weapon.
Gur roared and the Elf flinched. And then she turned and ran, disappearing into the trees.
“You shouldn’t have let her go,” Damion said.
Magda drew back her daggers, touching her chest where the hollow ache continued to spread. What was this? She’d never felt anything like it, as though she was being consumed from the inside out. What had Kaelan done to her?
Honey bounded back up the slope. “Oh no,” she said, hurrying to Kaelan’s side. “He’s not dead, is he?”
Magda turned her back, choking as the empty ache reached her throat, closing around it like dead frozen fingers.
“Yes, he is,” Damion stated. “Too bad you were off picking flowers or you might’ve been here... What are you doing?”
Magda glanced over her shoulder. Honey’s mouth covered Kaelan’s.
Magda spun on her heel and hurried away.
“Mistress!” Damion called after her. “Where are you going?”
Stumbling down the slope, she slammed to her knees by the stream's edge and plunged her face under the cool water, holding her head there until her lungs burned for air. When she came up, she was gasping, but at least she was breathing.
“Still alive,” she told herself, as the air seared into her, “still alive.”
She didn’t feel it though. Something was wrong. This wasn’t grief. This was something else—a parasite eating away at her, leaving nothing but a brittle shell. Everything else fell away, like he had.
Clarity of purpose etched into the hard walls of her new hollow self. A man who would kill his own son out of fear of some prophecy was not fit to rule, was not fit to live.
