“Wait,” I call after the dragon lady, as I push myself up, but the ground tilts beneath me. “Please. What does that mean? What’s happening?”
She keeps walking away.
Or at least tries to.
Her body melts with the movement, stretching too tall, then too thin, her back hunching, shoulders splitting, something dark and wet blooming from her spine.
“No, please stop, please.”I squeeze my eyes shut, but the darkness doesn’t save me.
The shapes follow me in.
Claws. Teeth. Fire. Mum’s door. Ezzy’s scream. Talen’s hands. The blade.
But I already did this. I already saw the past, the future. It should be over.
Then a voice slips through the chaos, one I haven’t heard since the Citadel, but one I know all the same.
“Oh, my little Threadweaver,” Serrane murmurs through the visions. “It has only just begun.”
Cold bleedsthrough my trousers as I sit up, bile rising with the movement and a wave of nausea rolls over me. Coughing against it, I rub my eyes.
God, what time is it?
Around me, the clearing is dark, lit only by a soft red glow. The fire in the middle of the circle is long gone, reduced to a few embers crackling quietly in the silence, as if even they’re barely holding on.
Blowing into my hands for warmth, I glance down and realise I’m wearing my sweater and Talen’s jacket, and my brows pull together. I don’t even remember putting them on.
Then my pulse skips a beat as I notice my watch and the time.
Nine hours have passed. Nine hours and I don’t remember anything.
Like waking from a nightmare, for a few seconds, some of the memories are there, close enough to catch, but the harder I reach for them the faster they slip away, thinning like smoke until all that’s left is a lingering sense of dread.
But then I look up and at least remember why I’m here.
The moon has risen high in the sky and is stained a deep blood red.
The ceremony.
Dragons.
Blood Moon.
Shit.
My whole body groans in protest beneath me, but I force myself up.
Fuck, I feel empty, like my magic, has been unravelled and then stitched back together. Badly.
Brushing dirt from my clothes, I scan around the clearing. No singing. No sign of Magda or the Shaman.
Neeve, Lee and his friend are all still here, eyes closed, trapped in whatever nightmares the Vega fruit has dragged them into, but the skin along my arms prickles, every hair lifting, as I realise Ezzy isn’t.
Pivoting on my heels, I search the darkness beyond the stone circle.
“Ezzy?” I cry out. “Ezzy!?”
Nothing answers. Only the distant roar of the waterfalls and a hard rush of wind tearing through the clearing.
