In the middle of the clearing stands Shea.
“I’m sorry,” he hears her cry. She’s not speaking to him. She’s looking out into the trees, transfixed by the gaped mouths of the ancient trunks, their limbs humanoid. Old oaks, the bones of their prey tangled in their branches. Ancient leshiye, hunting for their next meal. He wonders what it is Shea hears, calling from the dark. He doesn’t have to wonder for long.
“Ellie, I’m sorry,” she cries. “I’m looking, I swear.”
He steps out in front of her, cutting off her view of the forest. “Shea.”
She stares clean through him, the vision dancing in her head. Her cheeks are wet, her eyes fractured in tears. He pinches her chin between his thumb and forefinger, lifting her face to his.
“Shea,”he says again, firmer than before. “Look at me.”
Her stare pulls to his. Her pupils are blown, her gaze unfocused. Still caught in the forest’s thrall, her expression contorts into one of fear. She moves with surprising quickness, shifting so that Asher’s crossbow sits flat between them, the tip of the stake jabbing neatly into his sternum.
“Get back,” she whispers. “Get away.”
In the quiet of the clearing, he hears her heart give a single loud thump.Hideous, he thinks. He has never coveted anything so badly in his life. Reaching a hand between them, he adjusts the crossbow until the stake sits between his fourth and fifth rib.
“If you’re planning to shoot, you’d better not miss.”
Something in his voice calls her back. She blinks up at him, her eyes clearing. Slowly, recognition crawls into her features. She doesn’t lower the crossbow.
“I saw her,” she whispers. “I saw Ellie in the woods.”
“It wasn’t her. It was a trick of the trees.”
“Itlookedlike her.”
“It wasn’t,” he repeats. “And you know it.”
Each time he draws breath, the stake digs into his chest. Just a little. Just enough to make him shiver. On the other end of the weapon, Shea is his mirror. Her hands shake, and not from the cold. Her knuckles are white against the foregrip.
Quietly, she says, “Egor van Haut said you and I are going to destroy each other.”
It hurts to breathe. “He’s probably right.”
“Doesn’t that scare you?”
“It terrifies me.”
It’s the most he can give her—a jagged confession. He can hardly tell her the truth—that she’s already destroyed him. His heart feels as though its clawing out of his chest to get to her.
It will, before the end.
“What if you Turned me?” she asks, and he should have seen the question coming. “Would we destroy each other then?”
He doesn’t want to talk about this. Not here. Not now. Not when he can hear the nearby burble of a stream, its running water laced with Rot. Not when he thinks he might have changed his mind.
“Maybe,” he says thinly. “Maybe not.”
“So then Turn me, and let’s find out.”
“Not yet.”
“Why?”
“Because.”His voice is gruffer than he’d meant for it to be. “I’m not ready.”
Whatever she sees in his face makes her drop the subject. It’s a small mercy. She lowers the crossbow and he staggers forward as though he’d been leaning all his weight upon it, crowding her without thought—swallowing up her space until there’s nothing left between them but a shredded breath and a sliver of dark.
