“When you touch this, you’ll be free of my mother’s compulsion.” Her jaw tightened. “And you’re going to feel angry. You’re going to remember everything she’s done to you. Everything she made you feel. And you’re probably going to want to kill her.”
She dragged a hand through her hair, fingers trembling.
“I know, because I’ve wanted to kill her for years. Some days I imagine it in vivid detail,” she went on, voice cracking. “Other days, I convince myself that if I just endure a little longer, she’ll stop. That something in her will soften. That there has to besomethingmaternal in her somewhere.”
Her laugh was short and hollow.
“That’s what people like her survive on. Hope. I didn’t stop her when she hurt me,” she said. “Not because I couldn’t, but because Ibelievedher when she said everyone else had abandoned her. I believed that if I left, she’d truly be alone. And that if she left... I’d be alone too.”
Her eyes flicked briefly to Ashra.
“Now I know what she’s capable of. I know she has to be stopped. But I need to know the truth first. I need to know if my father really abandoned her. I need to know who he is, and if he’s still alive...” She swallowed hard. “Because once my mother is gone, that last thread to him is gone with her.” A single tear tracked down her chin. Her voice was barely above a whisper when she said, “And I don’t want to be alone in the world anymore.”
With a deep breath, she held the pendant out once more.
“So I’m asking you for two things, Ambrose. Save them by making them leave, because shewillbe coming for them.” She sucked in a breath. “And give me a chance to find out what became of my father.”
You won’t leave me, Ambrose,Isadora’s voice called, curling through my mind.
I clutched my outstretched hand to my chest, my breath hitching. I felt for Priscilla—I truly did—but Icouldn’tabandon Isadora. The very idea made my body recoil. Panic skittered beneath my skin.
I needed to go back.
I needed to make sure Isadora was alright. I needed to return to my place on the couch, to wait for her to wake, to make her breakfast and—
“Touch the shell, Ambrose.” Priscilla’s melodic voice carried on the wind, winding gently around my thoughts.
The pressure in my chest eased just enough to breathe.
My hand moved before I consciously decided to let it, reaching out once more. Morning light caught on the iridescent black shell as my fingers closed around it, its surface cool and unfamiliar against my skin.
Then the world exploded into inky black.
My shadows tore free of me, reacting to the bloodlust that surged through my body before my mind could fully catch up.They speared through the forest with lethal intent, hunting the dead-witch-walking who had held me under compulsion for so long.
“Ambrose, please!” Priscilla pleaded, her hands stretching out, grasping at shadows she couldn’t see through.
The hob was no longer beside her. It had dropped to the forest floor, eyes wide with terror as it scrambled backward toward its hollow.
Every beat of my pulse screamedKill, kill, kill.
Every second that witch remained alive was another second she could be planning her next move. Another second closer to coming for Blaise.
Blaise.
My shadows faltered.
She’d turned the man I loved into a fractured afterthought. Reduced him to something distant and blurred, pushed aside in my own mind as if he’d never mattered at all.
The bloodlust fractured, diluted by something sharper.Need. A yearning so fierce it sent a stabbing pain through my heart.
My shadows snapped back to me, recoiling and reforming. The command in my mind shifted, singular and overwhelming.
Find him. Find him. Find him.
I pictured Blaise with painful clarity, willing my shadows to carry me to him. They coiled around me, the world tilted, then the darkness peeled away.
And I was still standing in the damned forest.
