Everything about him felt wrong, too large, too still, too present in a way that made it seem as though the world itself was bending around him just to allow him to exist. And for the first time since all of this had begun, I truly felt it…real fear.
Not the kind that made you run, but the kind that rooted you in place, locking your body in defiance of your own survival instincts. Because something deep inside me knew, with a certainty I couldn’t ignore, that this was not something that could be escaped.
“Well now…” he said, his voice smooth, almost amused, as though this had all unfolded exactly as he had expected.
His attention settled on Bo.
“You didn’t disappoint after all Boruta. For you did your job beautifully.”
The words didn’t make sense.
Not at first.
I frowned, my gaze flicking toward Bo, confusion tightening in my chest as I watched the way his expression shifted. Something in him going still, too still, as though the words had struck deeper than they should have.
The man’s gaze moved then and focused on…on me.
And whatever faint composure I had left…cracked.
“Finally,” he continued, his tone almost satisfied now,
“Lord Oblivion has a weakness.”
My breath caught.
No.
The world seemed to tilt.
My pulse thundered in my ears as I turned slowly, my gaze dragging back to Bo, searching his face, searching for something, anything that would make this make sense.
But all I found was silence until the fallen king spoke…
“Thank you for bringing her to me.”
27
SINKING FEAR
Iturned to Bo slowly, the weight of what had just been said settling somewhere deep inside my chest. Because there was only one way those words made sense, and I hated that my mind had already reached it before I could stop it.
“You did this… how… how could you…” The accusation came out quieter than I intended, strained and unsteady, as though even speaking it made something inside me fracture further.
Bo’s reaction was immediate, his head snapping toward me as panic replaced whatever composure he had left. His hands lifted slightly, as if he didn’t know whether to reach for me or defend himself.
“No, no, that’s not what this is…” he rushed out, stumbling over the words in a way I had never heard from him before, his usual confidence stripped back to something raw and uncertain.
“You’ve got it wrong, I swear to you, I didn’t…”
“Silence!”The word didn’t just interrupt him, it took him, cutting through the air with a force that didn’t belong to sound alone. And I watched in real time as Bo’s body locked where he stood. His jaw was clenched as if he were trying to fight it, but unable to move, unable to even finish what he had been saying.
Each passing second felt like I was breathing through something dense and suffocating, my chest tightening as unease crawled its way up my spine.And then I saw them.
At first, they were only shapes, barely visible through the shifting haze of ash and distance. But as they moved closer, the details began to take form, and what I saw made something inside me recoil.
They looked like Bo.
Or at least…they had once.
