She looked at him, her eyes flickering with reflected firelight and something darker. “And you think that’s what I’m doing?”
“I think you’re on the edge of it,” Rell said, finally meeting her gaze. “I think you were pushed too far, and now the only way to feel safe is to feel dangerous. To become the thing they’d never touch again.”
Elora’s throat tightened. Because he wasn’t wrong.
“And the worst part?” Rell’s voice dropped, softer now. “You’re not wrong for wanting that. But if you go too far—if youstaythere—you might never come back.”
She didn’t answer. Didn’t know how.
Rell let the silence stretch before he leaned back on one hand, rolling his shoulder like he was easing tension out of it. “You’re not a monster, Elora. You’re just human. Feral claws and all.”
"So what do I do?"
“You eat the damn stew before it gets cold.”
Elora lifted the bowl to her lips and took a sip. The warmth spread through her chest, and she tried to focus on that instead of the storm in her head.
"Better?" Rell asked, already knowing the answer.
She nodded anyway because what else could she do? He watched her for another second before stretching out on his back, using his satchel as a makeshift pillow. She finished the stew slowly, each bite forcing her into the present and away from the past. When she was done, she set the empty bowl aside and lay back on the ground next to Rell. The sky above was a scattered mess of stars.
She turned her head toward him, searching his face for something she didn’t have a name for, but Rell kept his eyes on the night sky. She closed hers instead, trying to let the exhaustion absorb some of the things clattering inside her.
When sleep finally claimed her, it came with claws and teeth.
She was running, the beat of her heart synced with the pulse of the woods. She was swift and sharp and free.
But then she saw it. Saw him. Gerard. His face flickered in and out of shadow, then shredded and bloody, eyes wild with fear before she closed them under crimson.
The Snatchers came next, their shadowy forms invading the trees, reaching for her with hands that turned to tattered stumps of flesh and bone.
Symond appeared, his eyes cold as ever, blood streaming from his mouth like a scream. Then Violette, face slick with red and twisted in confusion. Rell too—all of them shredded because of her.
And Tehvan.
He was last. A gash opened across his throat as he stared at her with something raw, something close to betrayal, before the dream swallowed him up.
Her vision splintering into a mess of bodies that felt endless. All of them bleeding because of her.
Then darkness. It washed over her. She stopped, panting, her breath loud and ragged in the nothingness.
Figures emerged slowly from the haze, staggering like drunks with their guts split open. Symond first, all blood and bone and bitterness. Gerard close behind him, half his face gone. Then Violette, then Rell and Tehvan. All walking corpses now. Reaching for her with hollow eyes and broken fingers barely clinging to their hands.
But Thorn was different. He came through the black untouched. Cruel smile on a clean face, his clothes immaculate as ever.
The corpses charged her at once. She was a full nightglider even before they reached her—a creature of fur and fang and fury—and they didn't get the chance to overwhelm her. Her claws were on them, through them, tearing flesh and organs to pulp before they could drag her under. Blood stained the darkness, splattered across her teeth and tongue as she ripped into them. She was all instinct, the twist of her muscles quicker than thought, faster than fear. She knew this feeling, this frenzy—the clean nothing of it—even as she shreddedthe last bodies.
The corpses rose again.
Her claws sunk into Symond's chest, splitting it open with a sickening crack. Her fangs found Gerard's arm, tearing it free before she spun and crushed Violette underfoot.
She was surrounded, suffocated by limbs and dead faces, until she couldn’t tell where one ended and the next began. Tehvan’s eyes locked onto hers before she clawed them out. Then Rell. Better to destroy him now, before he saw what she really was. He crumbled beneath her rage, his body torn into ribbons that tangled around her feet.
Even with Thorn’s laughter ringing in her ears, even as her arms ached from the mayhem—she couldn’t stop. This was all she was now.Monster. Beast. Abomination.
Chapter 34
Symond
