Wait...
Not normal.
I skidded to a stop.
Whisper snarled and lurched to a halt beside me.
Something was wrong.
Something had changed...
I tried to get my bearings.
I had no idea where I was or where I was going but...the mountain peak I’d been running toward—the compass needle leading me straight to Lucien—was no longer kilometres in the distance but...right here.
No longer in thick forest. No longer buried beneath a thick canopy. I stood on the ridgeline of the very mountain I needed and...
H-How is this possible?
Spinning back to face the icy sheet I’d run through, I caught glimpses of the trees glittering with hoarfrost as the rift healed. The scar sealed with a hiss of steam and my heart stuttered because...Ifeltit.
A graveyard of moments. A future of possibilities.
I felt time itself—a living, dying, forever changing layer that ruled every creature and person on this planet.
Snow filled my lungs. Ice burrowed into my marrow. Pain tore through my skull as I sank into the devouring hunger of cold.
I felt deatheverywhere.
In the roots beneath the forest.
In the fox that died three summers ago.
In the bones buried deep inside the mountain.
The bond yanked hard—wrenching me from the agonising trance. Saving me.
I bolted.
My bare feet glided as if I wore ice-skates.
Whisper kept pace.
Closer.
Nearer.
Lucien.
The sky glowed blood-red...
And the night started burning.
Chapter Sixty-Seven
EVERYTHING WAS CHAOS.
The men and women, children and animals all gathered in the bottleneck outside the cave’s entrance. Five guards blocked the broken hole in the fence, weapons drawn, their faces twisted with disgust for the very people they’d tortured.
