I skittered back from the tree in horror, my heart vaulting into my throat—
A rustle cut through the stillness.
Dense air slammed inward, like the world had sucked in a breath and forgotten how to let it go. Pressure clamped around me, humming through every nerve. My ears buzzed. The hairs on my arms lifted.
Vines slithered over dirt and stone, tendrils that whispered across the ground.
Not rushing.
Hunting.
“Helena …”
My name stretched across the wind, pulled apart by too many voices trying to wear the same mouth.
Shoulders clenched tight, I lurched upright, my feet slipping in the dirt as I spun around with wild eyes, searching the shadows.
Was I going to die here? Standing on blood-soaked roots and broken hope, beside a tree that bled for me?
I squeezed my eyes shut, my breath catching, breaking, stuck halfway between a sob and a prayer.
A roar suddenly ripped through the forest.
It thundered through the trees like a fault line splitting open, the ground trembling beneath me. A sound so vast, so furious, it could fell mountains.
A sound that could have brought the gods to their knees.
My eyes snapped open.
Something immense burst from the shadows.
It wasn’t beast … or man. It was some terrible fusion of both.
It unfolded from the darkness in pieces, first a limb, then another, joints bending the wrong way, like it had only recently learned the shape of a body. Its skin was a patchwork of blackened bark and cracked stone, veined with something wet and glistening beneath the surface. Spines jutted from its back in crooked rows, twitching with every breath. Its hands scraped the ground, each tipped in claws that clicked against the earth like impatient drumbeats. Blue, glacial eyes that burned with a cold, endless fire, cut through the dark and found me. They didn’t blink or waver. They just stared, like judgment made flesh.
It charged.
The vines shrieked, their voices fracturing as they dissolved into the trees like mist fleeing the sun. The forest itself recoiled. Roots twisted backward. Branches pulled high, as if trying to escape.
The creature slowed.
Its massive head turned.
And then those burning blue eyes locked on me.
The air vanished from my lungs as it inhaled, shoulders rising as silver-blue flame coiled behind its teeth—
And it smiled.
Chapter7
Ilurched upright, coughing like my lungs had forgotten how to breathe. My hands tore through dead leaves, scraping against the hard, unforgiving earth. Sweat clung to my skin. My chest strained. My heart thrashed like it was trying to escape the cage of my ribs.
Wait …
There was light above me.
It was filtering through the trees, casting long, wavering shadows across the forest floor. Not firelight, but sunlight washing the waking world.
