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“Don’t move,” she said, though she wasn’t sure why.
Julen gave a short, disbelieving breath. “That’s your plan?”
“It hasn’t decided yet.”
Maia’s mind flashed back to the glass reaper’s ticking in the dark, the way it had tracked her by the noises she made rather than her position. To the Hollow Wraith, whose claws had found Julen exactly when he’d panicked and moved. Every Fracture-thing they’d survived so far had wanted stillness from them, one way or another, as the price for being overlooked. She had to believe this was the same kind of mercy, cruel and indifferent as it was.
“Stillness,” she said. “It wants stillness. Or it doesn’t care about us at all until we give it a reason to.”
“That’s not comforting, Maia.”
“Do you have something else then, Julen?”
The creature tilted, its form angled toward them, as if focusing. The pressure spiked.
Julen staggered, catching himself as the ground dipped beneath him.
“Maia!”
The glass gave way beneath his foot. His leg dropped through to the knee, swallowed into the shifting surface. He swore, trying to pull free, but the more he moved, the more the glass seemed to grip him.
“Julen— don’t. Don’t. Move.”
He froze. The creature then stepped forward. The motion was wrong; it didn’t cross the distance, it rearranged it. One moment it stood ahead of them, the next it was closer, without anything in between. The pull intensified. Maia’s ears rang; sound warped, stretching in all directions.
Julen’s hand shot out, grabbing her arm. “It’s pulling me in!”
“I know. I’m trying, Julen, I’m—”
She forced herself to breathe through it. Think. This thing wasn’t like the others: the hounds, the wraith, the reaper. It wasn’t hunting. It wasn’t even focused on them, not really. Her gaze dropped to the ground beneath Julen’s trapped leg.
The glass wasn’t gripping him, it was moving around him. Subtly, but constantly. Like slow water pulling inward toward something she couldn’t see.
Julen dragged in a breath. “It’s pulling me! Maia, I can feel it—”
“Stop moving, Julen—”
“That’s not helping, Maia.”
“It is. Just… wait.”
She crouched, ignoring the way the pressure in her skull sharpened as she lowered herself closer to the surface. Up close, she could see it more clearly now. The glass wasn’t solid. Fine lines ran through it, shifting; faint currents threading toward the creature. Everything was being drawn in the same direction, in some sort of pattern.
Her pulse jumped.
“Julen,” she said, quieter now. “When I say it, pull back, okay? Not before. Not after. Exactly when I say, do you understand?”
“What?”
“Just trust me.”
“That’s—this is a very bad time for trust.”
“Julen, please.”
He stopped. The creature shifted again - closer now, though it hadn’t moved. The air bent harder around it, dragging at her clothes and pulling at her, too, her breath, the edges of everything.
Maia leaned further forward, bracing one hand carefully against a section of glass that wasn’t moving as fast.
