I don’t dare blow out the other torches as I go, knowing that if I do, I won’t be putting any space between myself and whatever it is that’s hunting me.
Let them burn out. Let them become nothing but charcoal nubs unable to illuminate my loss. A sheath of black to forever keep this graveyard safe—a nicety I wish Rhordyn had given me.
Committed to his lies rather than this painful in-between.
I stumble into the comforting light of the common hallway and slam the door shut, scurrying backward in a burst of frightened energy. My back collides with stone and I drop to the ground, drop the torch, legs trapped against my chest to quell the rising tremors paying tribute to the frantic beat of my heart.
Eventually those torches will blow out, and then this place will no longer belong to me ...
Perhaps that thought should lighten my shoulders.
It doesn’t.
The crisp air hits my lungs, feeding me the sweet smell of impending rain. Not the sort that lashes the seas, but the sort that wets the earth for days and always leaves me feeling empty.
Approaching my Safety Line, I find a comfortable position beneath a large tree, its leafy branches heavy with nuts. The ancient trunk offers me something to lean against while I pluck through fallen acorns, waiting for Shay to get brave enough to detach from that lump of shadow hanging off a large, mossy boulder.
Sometimes he needs a little coaxing, especially at this time of day.
But I’m patient, filling the waiting moments by shucking helmets off acorns, peeling back their hard, outer shell until all I’m left with is the creamy center. Ground down, it’s one of the thirty-four ingredients required to make Exothryl, but it’s also the base for my homemade glue.
A perfect guise.
I have a small pile by the time Shay starts to advance, like a sooty leaf flicking about on the handsy wind. He’s tense today, not himself—jerking from one slice of shadow to the next.
The hairs on the back of my neck stand on end.
The forest is dead quiet. Even the birds seem to have lost their desire to sing ... a soundless void only severed by my uneven breaths.
Something’s not right.
Shay dashes into the same pool of shade I’m sitting in, and my heart forgets how to beat as he hovers, watching me, head tilted to the side.
His essence seems toprobe.
It’s nothing forceful—just a cold pulse of incorporeal fingers pressing against my cheeks.
“Shay? ... Are you okay?”
The way his essence is uniting with my skin, it’s so ...personal. Like he’s checking me over in a manner his hands could never achieve without draining all the fluids my body needs to function.
That touch veers from my cheeks, trails across my left shoulder, down my arm. My lungs fill with stone as my gaze traces the specter of his touch until it lands around my wrist; around the cupla partially visible beneath the cuff of my shirt.
He makes a soft clicking sound that stiffens my spine before the sensation whips back, and I watch the tendrils of his form flit about—a hypnotic dance that looks anything but peaceful.
He knows I’m leaving him.
The realization is a boot to the chest.
I roll onto my knees and inch closer. “Shay—”
The shadows cloaking his face recede, revealing the starched face of his inner self—those small, beady eyes like tacks.
I pause.
Their regardpokes at me. Scrapes at me.Digsat me.
His milky lips peel back, exposing his maw. Again, that clicking sound spikes out of him, assaulting me in little airy bursts that chip at my bones.
