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And seeking the Nine.
Find them… capture them… watch reality burn…
I shook my head, flinching back from the whisper that carried through my mind. That hiss-click voice was familiar. I didn’t want to hear it again.
Alaric was dead, after all.
But regardless of the so-called “Nine” and whether they even existed, the Voidborn had found my stepdaughter in a city south of here. There’d been a battle. Lovely fire and death that filled these creatures with glee. But then a monster of a different kind had appeared, stopping the Voidborn on the verge of victory.
And oh, how they raged at that, but they weren’t deterred. The dragon was no longer ours, yes, and the Voidborn inside it had been forced to flee. But it’d found another host to occupy before the sun could burn it away.
My smile grew when I realized which one it’d claimed. That was perfect.
“My queen?” Harran begged.
I looked back down at the pathetic little man. “Summon my Huntsmen. I have a new mission for them.”
30
GWYNEIRA
Turning to shadow and smoke had never made me feel as vulnerable as it did now. Wrapped around Roan, I raced over grasslands and forests, rivers and creeks, while the bright sun bore down on me like it would burn me up at any moment. Even with my protection against it, the light still hurt like hell in this form.
But that pain was nothing compared to this growing sense of terror I couldn’t explain.
Something was wrong. So wrong. Something was coming or had come, except I couldn’t see it anywhere. Meanwhile, Roan didn’t seem to feel it, but he also hadn’t said a word since we left the tower, and for that I was grateful.
I was prey out in the open beneath the blazing sun. A rabbit with no choice but to run, because from this predator, there was nowhere on earth I could hide.
And the predator was coming closer…
Closer…
No matter how fast I flew, it didn’t matter, because something was rushing toward me and I couldn’t?—
A stabbing sensation shot through me, cold and hard and dark as a moonless night without a single star. I crashed down into a forest clearing, narrowly missing sharp tree branches and barely able to shield Roan from the fall. As I tumbled to the earth, my body shifted back to solid form as if on some instinct that maybe this would alleviate the pain.
It didn’t.
My vision blurred, warped by agony. I grasped my middle, my body curling up on itself as if to hide. I swore I was bleeding out, even if I couldn’t feel a wound.
Cold death clutched at me. Wrapped its hands around my throat, choking out any chance of breathing air. My heart stuttered and faltered while the darkness grinned and prepared to sink its fangs into me once and for all.
A roar shattered my consciousness, fracturing the darkness like it was a breaking mirror. Some shards remained dark. Others showed the world as it’d been moments ago—blue sky, wintry forest, dried grass. Everything was a kaleidoscope of fragmented reality.
Arms scooped me up from the grass. A broad chest pressed to my cheek.
Fierce love and rage poured through my connection to Ozias, hitting the fragments of the broken world like a raging river and washing them all away.
Leaving only him.
“Gwyneira.” His voice was a growl, and he held me so close, it felt like the end of the universe itself wouldn’t take me from his arms.
I blinked, looking around wide-eyed. We were in the clearing where I’d crash-landed. The forest close by, and the sky was blue and bright above me, not a cloud to be seen. The dread that had been building in me felt like a wave that had crested, pulling me under only for Ozias’s love to yank me back up and stop me from drowning.
But the feeling wasn’t gone. No, I’d found a safe harbor in Ozias’s arms and our connection stabilized me like a rocky island in the sea. But without that, there would be nothing to stop me from getting dragged back beneath the invisible ocean of this ever-present horror.
“Is she okay?” Lars called from somewhere behind Ozias.
