by Chloe Jacobs
The good thing about the bridge was that Isaac would have to take her on before he could reach anyone else. She spared a quick glance back and made sure that Wyatt wasn’t going to be stubborn and try to stay with her. But of course, that’s exactly what he was doing.
“Wyatt, go with the others,” she warned.
“Someone’s got to protect your back.” He turned until they were shoulder to shoulder. Dryden and Siona managed to push everyone through the throng of harpies blocking their way, but the creatures went back to dive-bombing their prey from above.
Greta braced herself and ducked as Isaac lunged for her. The magick was there. She assumed Siona was still holding it back, but it whispered in her ear like a lover, tempting her with power beyond imagining. It was seductive and practically irresistible now, and the only thing that stopped her from ordering Siona to release it to her was Isaac. He was the one who would suffer. Thankfully, her need for it was still not as strong as her desire to keep him safe, but she worried there’d come a time when that wouldn’t be the case anymore.
“Grab on!” she called out, wrapping her arm around the rope railing as it wobbled. Wyatt grunted as the whole bridge teetered. His feet slipped and he scrambled for purchase, but he held on.
“Everyone is safe,” Siona called. “Hurry!”
The harpies converged on Isaac. They echoed his growls of fury, and he stopped to swat at them. It would keep him distracted for a moment, hopefully long enough to get off the bridge. She scrambled to formulate a plan for holding him back once they were on solid ground again.
“When I step off this thing, everyone has to be ready to hold back the goblin king,” she said without looking back. “If we all surround him, we should be able to immobilize—”
“Already ahead of you,” Wyatt replied. “Just be careful.”
Finally, she put her foot down on the edge of the last board. Wyatt was there on one side and Siona on the other.
As the whoosh of steel whistled past her ears, the harpies started screeching.
She realized they were echoing her screams.
“No! Wait!” She grabbed Siona’s arm, tugging her back before her sword could cut the rope, but she wasn’t able to stop both of them. Like a slow-motion movie, Wyatt’s blade sliced through the old, already frayed strands like they weren’t even there—first the rope railing and then the ropes holding the planks in place—and the bridge immediately collapsed on that side.
She couldn’t look away from the bridge, and let out a relieved breath when she saw Isaac’s hulking form clawing for purchase on the splintered planks. He was okay.
She whispered his name.
Dryden stepped in front of her and, without any hesitation at all, cut right through one of the two remaining ropes.
“No! You’re going to kill him!” She screamed and lunged, but he shrugged her off. Before she could reach him again, he’d already cut the last rope and the bridge was sliding away from the edge.
Greta stupidly tried to go after it, but Wyatt pulled her back, both arms around her waist. “What are you doing?” he yelled in her ear, holding her against him. “Are you crazy?”
Sobs ripped through her as she watched the bridge swinging away across the chasm. It was too dark and the clouds had drifted back over the moons, making it impossible to see—
She yelled at Dryden, “You didn’t have to do that!”
“I could not allow him to make it off that bridge.”
“We could have contained him,” she insisted, clenching her fists.
“Why would I risk it, when the alternative was more effective and safer for everyone?”
Siona touched her shoulder. Her eyes were full of sorrow and pity. “If he’d managed to get across, he would have slaughtered—”
“You don’t know that,” Greta snapped. He’d specifically followed them. Beneath all the rage, there must have been a reason for that. There must have.
Her emotions swirled like a raging tornado, pulling at her insides until she wanted to curl up on the ground.
“He was already Lost to us,” Siona said gently. “Is it not better that you remember him as he had been?”
“No, it was better when I could remember him as being alive.” She tore free and reached down deep, not waiting for the magick to rise up but searching for it. It answered quickly and eagerly, and she latched on desperately, but there was resistance when she went to use it.
“Siona, let go,” she demanded with a glare.
The goblin hunter hesitated and Greta reacted instantly, instinctively ripping the mental shackle away like a bandage just as a thick, muscled arm reached up over the cliff’s edge.
After that, everything was a blur of heat and darkness…until there was nothing at all.
Chapter Fourteen
She threw fire from her fingertips as effortlessly as breathing. It made her feel good…no, amazing. Every surge gave her strength and power. The living darkness inside her opened a great red eye, lit with sparks and electricity, making her more powerful, and it encouraged her to keep feeding it so that together, they would become invincible.
Sight and sound were flat, but she didn’t care. None of her senses mattered.
Not until a wild shout split through the smoke and fog, becoming a howl that shook her to the core and brought her to her senses. There was an innocence and beauty in all that savagery and rage, enough to snag her attention and make her want to follow it.
So she did.
The goblin king. He bled from a dozen wounds, and his fur was charred in places. He’d been wounded so badly he crashed unsteadily through the dense forest. The part of her that was only Greta called after him, as if she could still somehow reach the boy behind the beast, but he never hesitated, never flinched, never showed for a moment that he was moved by anything, or cared about anything.
She kept pace as he ran and finally realized they were dreaming.
When he collapsed in the mud from exhaustion, her tears came. She reached out to touch his arm. She forgot about the magick, because her heart was being ripped to shreds.
His head tilted as if he were thinking how to react to her touch. His breathing hitched and his muscles bunched. He snarled and snapped, and she jerked back, afraid. Siona had been right. It would have been better to remember him the way he’d been. Seeing him like this was breaking her in a way that even watching him go Lost hadn’t done. Her sobs increased.
She didn’t want to see anymore and thankfully felt herself drawing away.
Isaac, please. Please be real. Please be alive. As if from above, she looked down on him now as the lure of consciousness tugged at her.
Please come back.
He jumped to his feet and spun around with a mad snarl. What was he looking for? Was it possible that he could…did he maybe sense that she was there?
His eyes widened, red and wild. His teeth gleamed in the moonlight. He dug his claws, already caked in dirt and blood, into the ground and howled.
There was no beauty in it this time, only rage.
…
Greta awakened with a start, jerking to a sitting position against yet another tree trunk.
She groaned with pain. Her head felt like hot spikes had been slipped through her eyes into her brain. Her muscles ached as if she’d been running for days, and her side sent constant shooting pain up and down the rest of her. She was a mess. A mess that only ever got messier.
A dream. But not like the kind she usually shared with Isaac. Those had always been initiated by him and controlled by him, with a carefully constructed atmosphere for them to interact in.
This had been like a walk through the fun house at the county fair, warped and unreal, more disturbing than fun.
Still just a dream. You have to stop thinking about him. She choked on a sob.
“Are you okay?”
“Wyatt?” Heart still pounding, she cleared her throat and turned toward the direction of his voice. It was still too dark to see clearly, but
she finally noticed a Wyatt-sized shadow sitting against another tree not far away. “Are you watching me while I sleep?” She gave him a shaky laugh as she realized she didn’t remember getting to that spot, or going to sleep.
“It wasn’t sleep.” His voice was sharp.
“What do you mean?” She squinted to see his face.
“We finally knocked you out.” He leaned forward. There was a deep red stripe down the side of his face, and his jacket had been scorched black across the front.
She gasped. “Great Mother, what happened to you?” she asked, already feeling the answer in the sizzle of her fingertips and dreading it.
He held her gaze. “You had a bit of a meltdown.”
“What did I do?” She closed her eyes. “Never mind, I think I have a pretty good idea. Did I hurt anyone…else?”
He paused.
Oh, God. “Wyatt, did I hurt anyone?”
Her heart pounded as she tried to remember. The first part was easy. Isaac coming after them. Big, mean, Lost Isaac. The bridge coming down. Him going over with it.
Gone.
The rest was hazy. Blood. Fire. Blood. Fire.
Wait, she remembered Isaac after the bridge went down. He’d somehow made it…hadn’t he?
Not just a dream.
“You didn’t kill anyone, so that’s something.” Wyatt sounded beat. He bent his knees to his chest and wrapped his arms around them.
“Is Siona…did she…?”
He nodded. “She’s the one who finally put the lid back on your trick.”
“What time is it?”
“Still the middle of the night. You’ve only been out for an hour or so,” he answered, shifting closer. “The others have found shelter not far from here.”
She ducked her head and took deep breaths, rubbing her hands over her face as if she could scrub the magick off, the dreams off, the guilt and the pain off.
“So why aren’t you with them? What are you doing here?” she asked, tugging on the sleeves of her jacket to avoid looking directly at him. She didn’t want him to see how rattled she still was.
“Is it so hard to believe that I’m here to look out for you?” he said. She didn’t miss the implication that he was talking about more than just this spot in the forest at this exact time.
“After what I just did? You should have strung me up. I’m surprised the faeries didn’t insist on it.”
He glanced over his shoulder before leaning closer. “I don’t think what happened was your fault.”
“It would be easy to push all the blame on the demon trapped in a limbo dimension right now, but I can’t do that. This is on me. Until I can get this magick out of me, I have to accept the consequences of it.”
“That’s not what I meant.” He lowered his voice. “When you lost control on the edge of that cliff, it was like that was exactly what the faeries had been waiting for. If there’d been popcorn, they would have grabbed a bowl and pulled up a chair.”
She shook her head. “That’s not possible. Siona has always reined me in when things got out of hand.”
He frowned. “I don’t know what her deal was. Maybe she couldn’t, or wouldn’t, but either way, it wasn’t until you turned your fury on the faeries that any of them, including Siona, made any move to put a stop to the craziness.”
“No, you’re wrong. I remember Siona holding me back, but the darkness was overwhelming, maybe too much for the both of us.” Not only the darkness, but her desire for more of it. As much as could fill her up. Even now, she felt twitchy and needy. She didn’t know what scared her more—the idea of wanting that power, or knowing that when it finally took the last drop of her humanity, no one would be able to stop her from setting the world ablaze.
“It’s getting stronger, Wyatt.”
“I know.” He sighed in resignation.
She may not have killed anyone tonight, but… “How bad?”
“Your Lost boyfriend was hurt pretty bad…and Siona is still unconscious.”
“Shit, really?” She got to her feet and winced at the painful pull in her side.
Wyatt leaped up and blocked the way. “The others are watching over her, and you need more rest.”
She crossed her arms. “Are you afraid I’ll go off the deep end again and hurt someone even worse?”
He stepped closer and slipped his hands up her arms to her shoulders. “Does it look like I’m afraid of you?”
She melted at the warm surety of his touch. “Maybe you’re just a little slow on the uptake,” she murmured.
“Petty insults? You must be feeling really crappy.”
“I’m sorry,” she whispered suddenly, looking into his face.
He tipped his head with a quirky grin. “Not for calling me slow, I assume?”
“For leaving you alone after the eclipse.” His skin was dry, his hands callused, but she didn’t pull away immediately. Instead, for the first time since seeing him again, she let herself remember everything. His smile and his laugh. How those young boys had hung the moons on him, and the way he’d completely accepted her into the group, trusting her with all their lives. “For disappointing you.”
“You didn’t disappoint me.”
“What a liar you are.” She shook her head. “But I’m not going to argue with you right now.”
“First time for everything,” he teased. Then his smile faded and he pushed aside a lock of hair from her forehead. She bit her lip but didn’t move. “If I’d gone back and gotten the boys and waited for you, would you have really stayed away? Would you have really remained here for him and let us go alone?”
“I didn’t decide to stay just for him.” She took a deep breath. “But yes. Yes, I would have stayed.”
“But now that he’s gone, you can’t still believe there’s a place for you here?”
“I don’t know what to think right now. It’s been a pretty long day.” She refused to get talked into more promises. “All I know is that I can’t trust myself anywhere when I’m like this.”
And she still couldn’t bring herself to believe that Isaac was really gone. He’d survived Solem’s Bridge, and he might have survived her explosive attack. Was he out there somewhere licking his wounds? Maybe…asleep? Could the bond they’d shared before he went Lost still be connecting them?
Did it matter?
Just because he’s alive doesn’t make him Isaac. He hadn’t shown any signs of the boy she’d fallen in love with. Am I supposed to be bound to a rabid monster? She shivered.
“Are you okay?”
She focused on Wyatt, who was here in front of her now. Wyatt, who was whole and sane and cared about her. “Yeah, I’m fine. I should go check on Siona.” She took a step around him, but pain shot up her side all the way to her chest like it was splitting her open. She stumbled.
He put his arm around her. She gasped and jerked back, and he looked down at his hand. It was covered with blood.
“Jesus, you’re bleeding.” He was right. Her wound definitely should have started to heal by now, but she could feel the wet stickiness of it coating her skin like paint. “Is that still from the fight with the gnomes?”
She forced a shrug, even though she’d broken out in a cold sweat. “I must have torn it open again during the fight with the harpies,” she said. You can’t tear it open when it never closed to begin with.
Concern creased his forehead. “Sit down and let me rebandage it.”
“I don’t think—”
“Come on, Greta. Are you really that stubborn?”
She sighed. “All right.”
He helped her back to the ground and pulled the supplies Dryden had given them from his pocket. By the time she leaned back against the tree, she was gritting her teeth and taking deep breaths.
Slowly, he stripped off her coat. Gently, he lifted her shirt. She couldn’t even tell whether the air was chilled or not, because she was so hot. Fever? Or was it the magick building up inside her like a pressure cooker with the lid scre
wed on tight? If she didn’t release the heat, would it burn her right up? And if she did release it, would the whole world burn instead?
“Why didn’t you say something about this sooner? You’re an idiot, you know that?” Wyatt’s voice sounded hoarse and gruff, but his hands gently cleaned the blood from her ribs before wrapping a fresh bandage around her torso.
“Thanks,” she said, covering his hand with hers when he was done. “Thanks for being here. Thanks for caring.”
He swore and pulled his hands away, roughly wiping her blood off with the edge of his shirt. “Damn it, of course I care. I wish to hell I didn’t right about now, but I can’t seem to turn it off. I can’t seem to walk away.”
“Maybe you should.” Her throat was thick with tears.
“Maybe,” he admitted. “But it isn’t going to happen. We’re in this together until the end.”
“The end might be too late for you to get out alive. I don’t want you to be hurt because of me. You have to get the boys back, take them out of here.”
He cupped her chin. Their gazes locked. He seemed to search her face for…something. “Don’t worry,” he said, caressing her cheek with the pad of his thumb. “I’m not leaving anyone behind.”
Her heart pounding hard, she tore her gaze away and drew back. She pushed herself to her feet and brushed off her legs and butt. “It’s getting late. We should probably get back to the group.”
He sighed and got up with her. Greta held her breath and cocked her head to listen to the sounds of the forest. Wyatt looked at her with a raised brow, but he didn’t speak, noticing the tension that had stiffened her limbs right away.
Finally, she put her hands on her hips. “What are you doing skulking around in the shadows, Siona?”
The female goblin stepped into the gently moonlit path. “I wasn’t skulking. You are simply not the only one who happened to need some time alone.”
Greta stepped closer but held back from touching, afraid of herself. “Are you okay? Did I hurt you? I didn’t mean to…”
“I’m fine. I was overcome, but next time I’ll be better prepared for how powerful you’ve become.”