“Please—” Adrian coughs.
I narrow my eyes, letting my magic have its way and tighten just atouchmore around his throat. I’m done waiting—done listening to his lies.
“Your. Plan,” I bite out.
His face starts to pale. The Lyles start spewing curses at me as they fight against their restraints.
“Adrian, if you ever want to see Crea again, then you need to be honest,” I snap.
He chokes out something, the binds too tight for him to speak. I loosen them a tad, my gaze burning as I wait for him to respond.
“We were to get you to the border of Zenovia,” Adrian stammers out quickly, his eyes watering. “There’s a gate that somehow transported us from right outside of Runnswick to Penyth’s side of the mountains.”
I blink. The portal in Linnick’s lemon tree was supposed to be the last one.
“You’re lying.” I bare my teeth at him, my shadows moving in from all sides to snake around his wrists and ankles.
“No!” he cries, his face pale and sweaty. “It’s true. I know it sounds insane, but so was you escaping here through a damntree. You don’t have any reason to believe me, I know that. But it’s true.”
Something in his gaze—the pleading or the fear, I’m not sure which—makes me pause. I tug on my Essence, willing it back into its resting place inside of me. Reluctantly, my shadows recede, dissipating from the room.
Adrian takes a deep breath before adding, “I’m the only one who can open it. My uncle charmed it so that it only answered a word spoken in my voice.”
More likeVidarismade that happen.
I shake my head.
“Please, it hurts,” Adrian chokes out against the restraints.
There’s fear in his gaze, genuine and raw terror.
While I feel a smidge of satisfaction at seeing him so afraid of me, my shadows loosen. I keep the Lyle brothers restrained, not trusting them to stay where they are in the slightest. But Adrian? He looks…defeated.
I don’t want to be like Daimon—don’t want to see the same fear in Adrian’s eyes that I likely had in mine not that long ago.
My stomach clenches.
Adrian starts coughing, his hands flying to rub his neck. I turn away, but he calls out to me before I can flee.
“I would’ve done anything for you,” he rasps. “I still would.”
My fingers curl into a fist, and I walk to the center of the room, tugging on the Woodland Essence inside of me until the bark splits into an open door.
The anger in my veins cools at his words. He still believes he was justified in his actions. Adrian never wanted to hurt me; he just isn’t mature enough to realize I am strong enough to be on my own.
“And yet you still betrayed me,” I toss over my shoulder, letting the tree pull closed behind me.
I can hear him and Beryl arguing through the thick bark, their voices muffled and indiscernible as I let my chains of shadows slip away from all of them. My heart races, thunderingagainst my ribs as I leave them behind. We have what we need to get back to Crea, but that isn’t why my pulse is thrumming.
Going to Crea takes me further from Graylen. Every day he stays in the Vale is a day I risk losing him for good. A flurry of emotions rolls through me, leaving me feeling more torn than relieved.
Twenty-One
Ametrine
Voices riseas bickering ensues around me. I pinch the bridge of my nose, wishing foroncethatthings could just be easy.
“Even if the human was telling the truth, that doesn’t solve him gettingback,” Willow muses.
