“No, you’re right. Emril enjoyed that a lot more than I did.”
The cool breeze carried only silence.
“Sometimes I worry about his sanity, too.”
Not even a blink from the skeleton. Still, she shivered.
“Me the crazy one? I didn’t actuallytryto spike Oni with Cilverath. I just wanted to scare him. It’s not my fault he flinched.” She smirked. “My aim’s a lot better these days. Ask Cas—” She cut herself off as a chill tickled the shard in her collarbone. “Oh, once a tricky suxa, always a tricky suxa. I see what you’re doing.”
Brela stared at the small gap in Ceirdephal’s front teeth, where her sixteen-year-old body had barely fit without the hips and muscles of her current shape. Where deep shadows danced between the crystal sparkling with starlight. She bared her own teeth to snarl at the dead beast.
“Shut up. You’re worse than the shadow wolf under my bed.”
She sucked in a breath and froze.
Stupid, stupid, stupid.
The cool breeze and shivering. The Veil shard humming in recognition.
Those shadows really were dancing in the vaarasuxa’s teeth.
Tendrils of black and purple smoke enveloped Brela. Cold nipped at the exposed skin of her wrists and neck as she didn’t dare move. Didn’t dare breathe.
Gods, it was just as terrifying as it had been in Gerrart’s home.
The celvusa prowled around her, circling, claws curling deep into the ground as it dug a trench in the desert sand. Each drip of black liquid off the creature’s teeth turned to smoke the instant it hit sand. It wrapped around them, creating a living wall of liquid fire and smoke to trap her.
The purple eyes didn’t meet her gaze, yet she knew they were still watching her.
Her lungs burned. She couldn’t hold her breath any longer.
She gasped.
And the shadow wolf was staring her down in an instant, cold black flames licking inches away from her nose. It was just the head, because she could feel the body like a cold mist around her. But the eyes weren’t glaring at her. It was almost hypnotizing to look into that purple, shining with moon and starlight.
She held still as the celvusa’s black smoke curled closer, its nose nearly against her neck.
Brela choked on a breath as the shadow wolf tugged its head through her and sat at her back. She let her eyes look through the ring of black shadow flames to see if anyone sensed the danger, but she knew it was useless. Her friends were on the other side of the Wilds. Oni was off running a fool’s errand. Cason wouldn’t feel anything with her magic dulling his senses, even at this distance.
Not like anyone else would come to her rescue when they’d have to fight a celvusa.
Seim veis, chaseil?
A voice like ancient thunder. Rumbling so loud in her head that her eyes watered with the effort to keep from throwing her hands over her ears.
“I don’t know,” she whispered, not caring that her voice trembled.
The last time she faced the creature, she’d had the adrenaline to stand up to it. Now? She wished she’d jumped into that vaarasuxa pit.
The celvusa inhaled, huffed an icy breath against her neck, and snapped its jaws around her.
* * *
Dead.She was dead.
She’d felt the teeth pierce her body, swallowing her left shoulder in such a cold, smooth movement that she’d barely noticed until the canines were firmly embedded in her back, around her chest, and just above her abdomen.
There was a sharp sting along her throat as a tooth dug deeper, but that was nothing compared to the pressure of the celvusa’s jaw clamped onto her body.
