He managed to hold back tears, but it was a near thing. “Water?”
“Yeah.”
He leaned over to get it for me, tipped the glass to my lips like he had before. He’d set the pocket watch open on the bedside amongst empty potion bottles and the sachet of paracetamol I’d given him that night he couldn’t sleep for the pain in his leg.
I should have taken him up on round two back then. If I’d known there’d only be three …
The exhaustion of the night wore away at my resistance to sleep. My eyelids were so heavy. I kept shaking awake, focusing on the tiniest details of Kessian’s face, memorizing it like it was the last time I’d ever see it, because it was.
Kessian noticed. He kissed my temple. His warmth, the soft rise and fall of his chest and steady heartbeat were like a lullaby. Distantly, I thought, no, I have to get up. It’s time. When I realized one of the empty potion bottles on the nightstand was the sleep spell I’d given him, it was too late.
I fought it, but I lost.
I woke to Lunaris’s horn blaring, my bed empty except for the divot that once held Kessian. The pocket watch still stood open on the nightstand. There was a note inside.
It read,I’m sorry.
There were three minutes left until midnight.
Chapter 40
Isnatched the watch off the bedside table and shot out of bed.
The note was a cracked whip against my sleep-addled mind. The rest of the waking world came back to me in sharp relief. The brightness of a room that had been romantically dimmed. The horn blaring, the curtains flapping open and shut, the bed rattling. Lunaris doing everything in her power to wake me.
It would have worked sooner, but the dregs of the sleep potion had done their job.
Lunaris conjured a fresh pair of jeans. I hopped into them, stuffing the watch into the pocket on my way into the kitchen. The front door was wide open.
I didn’t have time for shoes. I ran barefoot out onto the grass.
Across the gardens, fifty meters from me, Kessian approached the banks of the spring. Lights from the wedding pavilion winked off the water, music too distant to be anything but bass, mimicking the heavy thunk of my heart as I screamed, “Kessian!”
I’d already started running. I hadn’t played sports since high school, but the past few days had given me a few reasons to practice. My legs ate up the distance. Kessian heard me and looked over his shoulder. His expression was painfully familiar. Stubborn, determined, and in unquestionable pain. The same one he wore when he’d relented about me sacrificing myself. He’d never intended to let me.
“Kessian!” I screamed. “Don’t do it!”
He didn’t listen. He tossed aside his cane on the grass and took a step to wade in. The tainted wild magic surged up from the depths to meet him, a scarlet tide buoying him across the surface. Each step rippled across a bloodred pool. I was closing the gap but still too far to make it.
“Kessian!”
Kessian limped more quickly.
“Don’t!” I screamed myself hoarse. “Kessian, please don’t!”
My pleas were cut short by an unearthly, serrated wail like cutlery scraped across ceramic. I nearly lost my footing as I darted a look into the trees.
The woods were dark, but the wraith was darker still, an inky shape crashing through the brush. It reached the shore in three sweeping strides, ungainly and on all fours. There was no trace of Laurelie in its body language. Its form had changed, hulking rather than lithe and eerily graceful.
Kessian reached the center of the spring, the wraith and I converging upon him. I didn’t slow.
“Tal, go back!” Kessian yelled.
“Like hell I will!”
The wraith and I reached the shore at the same time, but while I waded in, slowed by sodden jeans and the mucky bottom, the wraith slithered into the water like an eel. It pooled like black blood in the water, streaming toward Kessian with the predatory agility of a shark.
“No,” I whispered hoarsely. I was so close.
