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I pull against the ropes until my wrists burn slick, but I hang there, helpless, with the wrong lantern burning blue-white in the dark and the monster wearing Onyx’s almost-shape leaning close enough that its rotten breath touches my face.

I’m going to die here. And there is nothing I can do to stop it.

I lift my chin anyway, because if helplessness is all I have left, I can still make it look him in the eye.

The creature’s claws spread against my stomach. “Now we begin.”

43

Onyx

Wind shifts.

For one impossible moment, Labrador tea rolls over the crossing, rich and sweet. I lift my head too fast, but it’s not Aestrata.

My brother stands across the creek.

He has taken a shape between first body and something worse, taller than me by a hand, leaner, wrong in the proportions as if hunger stretched him where guardianship should have held him steady.

His skull is darker than mine, stained a brown red around the muzzle, antlers jagged and uneven, one tine broken and wet. Fur hangs in clotted ropes from his shoulders. His lantern dangles, cracked from one antler, a sick blue flicker trapped inside glass blackened by old smoke.

Blood covers him.

So much blood.

It dries in lines down his chest, shines fresh across his claws, darkens the fur around his mouth. My mind refuses the meaning for less than a breath, then he tilts his skull.

I rise slowly. Where is he?

My brother’s jaw opens beneath the skull, showing teeth slick with red. Your mate?

All I can smell is blood, false Labrador tea, and the rot of him.

Where is Lucas?

He laughs, and the sound has the old shape of him buried somewhere deep beneath the corruption. He lifts one bloody hand and drags a claw along his muzzle.

Your little ember tasted as delectable as his fear smelled.

There is no thought after that.

I cross the creek in one leap, and we collide with enough force to shatter the bank behind him. My antlers slam into his, black bone against stained jagged bone, and the crack rings through the ridge. He laughs into my face as my claws tear into his side. He rakes his own claws across my shoulder, deep enough to open me, but pain cannot reach me where I have gone.

I drive him backward through alder and fern, snapping saplings under our weight. He twists with Varkhyn quickness, all wrong angles and hunger, and slams his skull into mine hard enough that sparks burst across my sight.

Too slow, he hisses. Always patient. Always waiting.

I hook one antler beneath his and wrench. Bone grinds. He shrieks, delighted more than hurt, and drives a knee into my ribs. We roll down the slope, tearing mud loose, claws carving furrows in earth. A rock catches my back.

He lands above me and snaps for my throat, but I shove my forearm between his jaws, feel teeth sink through fur and flesh, then curl my claws into his neck and rip.

He springs off me laughing, blood steaming in the cold air.

He cried, my brother says, circling. Your little human. So brave at first. Then so quiet.

I rise, breath dragging through my teeth.

Poor thing. He thought you left him again.