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I tucked the map back into my bag as, one by one, the others started across the natural bridge, until only Dex and I remained on this side.
“After you,” Dex said.
I regarded him. As our de facto leader, it made sense he would think it necessary that he bring up the rear. “You don’t always have to watch out for us, friend.”
He chuckled, simply twitching his chin toward the bridge again.
I started across. The moss on the dead tree trunk was slippery, but the bark around it was rough enough to provide my boots purchase. Every few feet, there were intermittent scrapes through the rot that appeared remarkably fresh. Some wild creature had likely run across this bridge not long ago.
The air began to tingle.
I stopped in the middle of the natural bridge, my eyes darting around. I made no sudden moves, keenly aware I was entirely too far from either end with only my balance to keep me from tipping over into the abyss. But a swift glance downward revealed no sign of the Voidborn. Likewise, nothing up ahead had changed.
“Byron?” Dex called from behind me. “Everything okay?”
It took me a moment to nod. “Yes.”
I hoped.
Cautiously, I started forward again.
The sensation intensified. I gasped sharply, a chill sweeping across me like a thousand bites of icy water swelling up and then rushing past like a river.
Frozen on the bridge, I didn’t dare move, every magical sense I possessed suddenly on alert. What was this? This power, this intensity. It?—
Gwyneira.
“What?” Dex demanded.
I hadn’t realized I spoke my thought aloud, but I couldn’t muster a breath to explain. The energy surging past me was too overwhelming.
And I recognized it. When I cast the spell to protect her against the sun, it wasn’t only her body I’d touched with my power. It was her magic too. And that force had been… incredible. Matched to my own magic in a way I couldn’t begin to explain, as if we were meant for one another down to a level I could scarcely imagine. She was the cold light of the stars and the fire in them too. Everything in me had resonated with that energy.
Now I could feel her again.
But something had changed.
The Nine…
A whisper drifted past me, fading in and out like a ghost on the breeze. The words felt like something I should recognize. Like the memory of a dream I didn’t recall having, so familiar and yet alien, and if I only focused?—
Hands caught me, snapping me back to reality. I realized with a lurch of my stomach that I’d started to lose my balance on the tree bridge.
Dex gripped my arms, shock on his face. “What’s wrong?”
How could he not have felt that?
“Fuck, guys,” Clay cried from the other side of the ravine. “Get off the damn bridge before you start chit-chatting!”
Dex cast him a tight look, but he nudged me to start walking.
My legs shook while I crossed the remainder of the tree trunk.
“Is Gwyneira all right?” Casimir asked the moment I stepped onto solid ground.
Clay threw him an alarmed look. “Wait, what?”
I glanced at the vampire in alarm before I realized he probably could hear better than the others around me, and thus he would know I blurted out her name on the bridge.
