It’s as much as I can rasp out. Time is much better spent right now concentrating on getting breath in and out of my lungs.
“Alright,” he mutters, though he doesn’t sound happy about it.
The light in the Veil shifts from silver-white to green.
Callum steps us through.
14
Callum
I stumble out into the human realm with Seren clutched tightly against me. She’s fading fast, breath wheezing in and out of her lungs. Panic crawls up the back of my own throat, and I have to remind myself to breathe through it.
“Hey.” I jostle her slightly. “Are you still with me?”
Her eyelids flicker, but don’t open, and I jostle her again. Another flicker, another wheeze, and I look wildly around the clearing.
Seren said witches would find me, didn’t she? She wasn’t making a lot of sense before we stepped through the Veil, but I think that’s what she said.
“Hello?” I call out, and my voice echoes through the darkened woods surrounding the Veil.
No voice calls back.
The magick here is different, the air thinner, less power coursing through it.
Still, as I close my eyes and try to summon a portal, I think I could do it. It would take a little more concentration and effort, and likely be much more uncomfortable than the easy magick back in the demon realm, but I could do it.
If only I knew where to take her.
“Is anyone there?” I try again, and again, no one answers. I take a few steps away from the Veil, toward the forbidding forest, and run right into some kind of barrier. It crackles a warning against my skin, alive and pulsing with magick.
Seren shifts in my arms, breath coming out in a choked gasp, and I bite back a curse.
Enough of this.
No matter how skilled these witch healers might be, it won’t make a damn difference if she doesn’t live long enough for them to help her.
I’ll take her back to the demon realm and to the court. They have a healer there, Vayla, who can help her.
Fuck, I hope she can help her.
Panic again rising hot and sour in the back of my throat, coating my tongue, twisting my stomach, I turn to head back for the Veil.
“What are you doing here?”
The witch who steps into the clearing has bright red hair and a smattering of freckles across her pale face. Her hands are raised, and living flame licks around her fingertips.
At least until she sees Seren.
“What happened to her?” The witch rushes to us, takes in the sight of my mate struggling for breath, and must decide her question doesn’t need an answer because she immediately takes my arm and tugs me toward the woods.
“This way.”
I’m about to tell her I can’t, that there’s some sort of magick caging me here in this clearing, but as soon as we reach the same spot I was struck before, the magick recedes.
“You can’t get through the wards without a member of the Crescent Coven.” The red-headed witch says in answer to my surprised inhale. “Well, unless you’re Seren.”
I’ve got no idea what she means, but there’s no space left in my mind to question it as I follow her through the thinning woods. We reach the edge of them in short order, right where they meet the base of a long, sloping hill.
