My speech is cut short by the bird’s earsplitting shriek.
I’m startled by the way it jolts backward, its eyes wide, its focus turned to the sky.
A second later, jagged, red lightning slashes across the dark air above us, snapping and snarling like a living thing.
Thunder crashes immediately after it, so loud that I slap my hands over my ears, my cry of alarm drowned out by the noise.
I drop to a crouch, and Erik drops with me as a storm of crimson snowflakes washes across the tops of the trees, heading toward the clearing.
They’re swept up in swirling tornados that rage overhead and smash against the rock face behind the cabin.
The bird drops low to the ground, its wings held tightly to its sides, pressing itself down beneath the onslaught like we are.
Despite the raging thunder and the sudden snowstorm, I’m aware of Erik’s hand on my arm, anchoring me where he remains crouched low beside me.
His head is turned to the left. The direction of the city.
The lightning, thunder, and snowflakes are all coming from that direction. And they don’t seem to be letting up anytime soon.
Beneath the maelstrom of sound and the snowflakes raging overhead, I make out a whisper in the air.
Wake up…
My shoulders tense, and my heart begins to pound as the echo continues.
Wake up, wake up, wake up…
Another sound joins it. Faint and far away, but it makes my heart sink.
Bells are ringing.
Familiar bells.
Singing out into the air like they always would when a monster was about to rise from the wasteland. The humans would hide in their homes, and I would be called to fight the beast.
Only hours ago, I struck my hammer down onto this very snow and commanded the dead to rise.
Wake up, I screamed.
And now I wonder…What the fuck have I done?
Chapter 21
“The bells are ringing.”
I don’t realize that I spoke my thoughts aloud—hell, I can’t hear much of anything right now—until Erik leans in close, his lips at my ear.
“For years, I forced you to fight monsters,” he says, his voice a low growl. “I won’t compel you to fight them again. You can leave. Find Graviter. Make a medallion. This doesn’t have to be your fight. It’s your choice.”
I turn to him, searching his eyes, trying to read his thoughts because I don’t know why, but I’m certain he was about to end with ‘but’…
All around us, the snow swirls. From within it, the bird’s silhouette appears. It crawls toward us, remaining hunched down on the ground, no doubt trying to stay beneath the worst of the icy tumult.
Erik returns my gaze, his own steady.
“Butyouwill fight,” I say.
I can see it in his eyes. He will choose to battle whatever monster has risen, even if he won’t ask me to do so.
