Go ahead, August challenged with a quirk of his brow.Fucking try me.
But the guard must have sensed that he was woefully out of hisdepth, as he sidestepped out of August’s way with a petulant roll of his eyes. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you,” he muttered.
August didn’t pay the cautionary remark any mind, pushing past the guard and striding into the tent. But the second he walked inside, he stumbled to a halt. Shock coursed through him when he saw what waited for him.
Wren was standing with her back to him. Silver-encrusted armor adorned her torso, sharpened spaulders placed upon the curves of her shoulders. As August took the first few tentative steps inside, he half expected Wren to face him. He imagined that beautiful smile of hers spreading over her lips. The way she’d run to cross the distance between them and throw herself into his arms.
But she didn’t. She didn’t do any of that.
“Loughty.” August’s voice was barely louder than a whisper, but against the piercing silence, it was a thunderous echo. “Are you…are you hurt?”
Finally, upon hearing his voice, Wren turned.
But the person staring back at him was almost unrecognizable.
Shadows swam beneath her veins. They poured out of her, enveloping her in a cloak of darkness. The whites of her eyes flickered to black every few seconds—one moment there, the next gone. Inky shadows swam up her neck, crawling over her face, a pulsating energy traveling up and down her skin.
This wasn’t Wren. This was something else.
Half shadow. Half human.
“I’m fine.”Wren’s voice felt like rusted nails. Sharp. Lethal.“I’m more than fine.”
August stilled. He flexed his fingers by his sides. “What happened to you?”
Wren took a step forward. As she moved, the shadows moved with her.
“I saw the truth,”she said simply.“The betrayal that ties us all together.”
August shook his head. “I don’t understand.”
“Silas murdered us.”As Wren spoke, the shadows trailing beside her morphed, merging to form the vague silhouette of a man.“He ripped us from our lives. Stripped us of a choice.”
“Loughty.” August approached, his movements careful. He wanted nothing more than to take her in his arms. To hold her. But he couldn’t bring himself to touch her. “I wasn’t killed by Silas. I…I died in a fire.”
Wren cocked her head, smiling.
“Did you?”
August flinched at the mocking lilt in her voice.
“Yes,” he muttered defensively. “My father attacked me. It was an accident. A candle fell, and…” August’s voice trailed off. Something was tugging at his subconscious. A prickle of doubt. The faded seams of a memory lashing across his mind.
“And…what?”Wren echoed. The shadows forming the outline of a man ebbed and flowed, and suddenly August was staring at the silhouette of his father’s office. A perfect re-creation of the night.“What happened next, August?”
“I…tried to get up.” August choked on his own words. He saw himself in the shadows, his body lying on the floor. Something was rising inside him, tearing through the darkness, breaking free after centuries of restraint. A face. A figure. August watched, horrified, as the shadows formed that same silhouette of a man standing at the doorway of his father’s study. The man approached. He placed his hands upon August’s chest and held him in place as the fire roared around them.
The memory of his death came rushing back in.
His head slammed against the floorboards, as though he had been knocked to the floor by an invisible weight.
Wren smiled and the shadows around her purred.
“You remember now, don’t you?”
A strange pressure built behind August’s eyes. A wave of dizziness.
“I don’t…he couldn’t have—” But August saw it then. Clear as day. The figure standing at the doorway. The hands holding him down. Pushing him.This is where your story ends, Silas had whispered into his ear.This is where I set you free.
