“He killed me.”
Yes.
“He killed mysister.”
Yes.There was a slight pause, and then the Soulless One’s voice rose again, this time with a trembling ire that matched the wrath Wren felt scorching inside her.Your sister was never meant to die on this road. She was meant to live a long, happy life. I saw her fate. What was written upon the stars. Maeve Loughty was going to have a family. She was going to travel to the places she’d always dreamed of going. She was going to die an old woman, blissfully asleep in her bed. But Silas took it all away from her. He took it all away from her so that he could haveyou.
No. No. NO.
Wren screamed and the sound tore the world in half. The image of Silas vanished, ripped apart as if he were nothing but particles of ash. Wren could no longer make sense of her surroundings. It was all just pain and agony and unrelenting torture. The fire was overwhelming now, scorching through her limbs, igniting her insides. She clawed at her chest, unsure what she was even searching for.
“Make it stop!” Wren bellowed. “Just make it stop!”
I know what you’re feeling, Wren.
“No…you…you don’t…”
We can fix it. We can stop him. No more suffering. No more innocent lives taken too soon.
“I…I can’t…”
Just give in, Wren.
“Please.”
JUST. GIVE. IN.
Everything seemed to still. The anger. The rage. The heartache. The memories. It was as though Wren had been suspendedagainst the darkness, a weightless vessel, unburdened by the torment of her past.
Somebody was calling to her. Calling out her name.
Wren. Please, darling. Come back to me.
But the voice was distant, barely audible. It flitted in and out of Wren’s consciousness, until it became a meaningless sound that simply drifted into the darkness. A procession of faces flashed in Wren’s mind. The ones she’d known in life and in death. Her family. Her friends. The ones that fell somewhere in between. She tried to hold on to them, to find a tangible sense of hope threaded through the images, but her fingers always came up empty. Either way, she couldn’t stop the faces once they began.
They flickered in and out like a film reel. One moment there, the next gone.
Wren pressed her hand against her chest. She shut her eyes.
She hoped.
Shehoped.
And then…nothing. Only a never-ending darkness.
A burning fury.
Ultimately, it was her sister’s smiling face that Wren saw when she ripped her humanity out and welcomed the Soulless One in.
35
AUGUST
There had been no time to stop it. No time to properly react. One second Wren had been lying on the floor, convulsing, eyes rolling back into her head, and the next, August had been thrown back by an earth-shattering force, crashing down upon the ground a few yards from where he had been standing. Around him, chaos ensued. Voices rose and screams echoed throughout the cavern. An opaque smoke clouded the air, thick enough that August could barely make out his own hands hovering in front of him. He staggered to his feet, searching for Wren, but everything was obscured by the impenetrable cloud of smoke that seemingly filled every inch of the cave.
But it didn’t last long.
As quickly as the smoke came, it dissipated. Inch by inch, it parted, drifting up toward the rocky ceiling of the cave. The cacophony settled as the air cleared. August could see the others now—the crowd surrounding him, their faces contorted in confusion. Edith stood only a few feet away, coughing as the last of the smoke vanished.
