I stuff the thing in my bag. “Never better,” I lie, closing the book and placing it atop the talon so I can pretend it doesn’t exist. “I just want to make sure this special gift is nice and safe in my bag.”
“Treasure ...”
Looking up, I paint my face with a grin. The big, dazzling sort that usually gets him right in the gills. “I’m fine. Really. And thank you. It’s such a thoughtful offering.”
He frowns. “You’re lying. I can feel a rise in your core temperature. You don’t have to accept the gift if you don’t li—”
I grab his face, pull him close, and plant a kiss on his wet, salty cheek, making his eyes glaze the way they do when I’m offering him an apple or something coveted. “I love your gift, Kai. I really do. Now, tell me the tale of when you got a fishing hook caught in your ear again?”
A slow, watery smile lights up his face. “You like that one, don’t you?”
“I really do. And you tell it so well.”
I manage to make it to the end of the story, back to the castle, and through a side door that spits me out by a bed of ivy before I vomit. When Baze finds me knotted on the ground with bile strung from my lips and asks if it’s the withdrawals, another lie slips off my tongue.
Truth is, withdrawals havenothingon the extra weight tucked in my knapsack. A weapon that may or may not carry the weight of many lives taken. Slain.Destroyed.
The weight of families torn to bits and feasted upon, scattered across the soil.
And now it’s mine ...
I’m trapped.
Flames spit and shadows churn, moving in wild jerks that cleave the air with ease.
Striking. Slashing.
I cover my ears with clawed hands, my body a ball of bunched muscle and protruding tendons threatening to snap.
Will I unravel, then? Will my skin split as my body ceases to hold together?
Will everything spill?
A cold seed is pitted inside me, turning my organs solid. My heart is heavier, weighted by the sludge of a pulse I resent. What happens when it can no longer push blood through my veins? Will a strike land? Will the beasts chew on me, just like they chewed onthem?
Death is gripping my insides with hands so cold they burn, but there’s a comfort in it. A safety that feels eternal.
Don’t let me go.
The scene shifts, the ground falls away, and I’m perched on the edge of a chasm, looking into a well of darkness that echoes with muted screams, making me want to crack open and weep.
Something grabs me, jerking back and forth, threatening to toss me over—
Jolting awake, I stare into brown, overburdened eyes while warm hands cradle my face, adding fuel to the roaring well of flame inside my chest.
Baze pets me with smoothing strokes that fail to tamp the pressure filling my skull. The scream pouring from my throat rips with the force of a withdrawing blade—sharp like the talon stuffed in the back of my drawer of jars.
Rhordyn’s presence crams the space full, pushing all the air from the room and leaving nothing for my lungs to grab.
Nothing for them toshove.
I gasp, wrestling for shards of breath ...
“Leave, Baze.” Rhordyn’s thundering voice battles my unbridled pulse, every beat a bolt of wood shot at my bulging brain.
Deadly.
Destructive.
