“I’m leaving,” August replied. He didn’t even recognize the sound of his own voice.
Quinn furrowed her brows. “Leaving? You can’tleave. What about Wren?”
“That person in there”—August pointed toward the encampment, head shaking—“thatthing…it isn’t Wren.”
“So that’s it, then?” Quinn’s accusation was a sharp slap across August’s face. “You’re just going to leave? You’re just going to give up on her?” Shame twisted inside August. He averted his gaze, drawing his eyes back toward the forest.
“I’ve done enough.”
Quinn stepped closer. “She needs you, August.”
“I know.” God, of course he knew. But what would his presence change? What could he offer Wren other than more damage? “I know she fucking needs me. And I tried. I tried to fix it. But all of this—all of it—it’s my fault.”
A tense beat of silence swept over them. Quinn glanced over her shoulder, searching to see if anybody was approaching. When she turned back to look at him, she lowered her voice.
“Where are you going to go?”
“There’s a Resistance…in the outskirts.” August’s eyes drifted to the edge of the forest. “Maybe they can help. Maybe they know how to snap Wren out of it before she destroys Blackwood.” He turned back to face Quinn. “You could come with me.”
But Quinn’s response was instant. “I can’t.”
August wanted to protest. To find a way to convince Quinn to leave the encampment. She wasn’t safe here. Her heart would be her downfall. But he knew it was for that very reason that she’d never leave Wren behind, despite what Wren had become.
“Take care of yourself.”
Quinn smiled, but it was hollow. “I’ll try.”
August turned away from Quinn and stepped toward the forest. He closed his eyes, looking inward. He hadn’t used his spacial magic since leaving Blackwood, wasn’t even certain it would work. But he had to try.
He scoured his internal map. Searching. Pushing through the dark, ebbing nothingness stretching out before him. And then—deeper and farther than he would have hoped—something familiar lingered. A soul. Multiple souls. He recognized them. August knew, with unwavering clarity—It’s them.
He’d have to use more shadow magic than he wanted to in order to relocate across such a distance, but it didn’t matter. As he called upon his shadows, summoning the relocation spell, he couldn’t help but think back on the words that were burned into his memory, etched into his soul. The one thing he had vowed to hold on to until the very end.
Find me. Wherever you are, wherever we end up, don’t stop looking for me.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered.
And then Augustine Hughes summoned the relocation spell and tore his promise to shreds.
39
WREN?
Wren Loughty no longer knew where the shadows ended and her soul began. She searched for remorse. For remnants of the girl she had once been. But it came up empty. There was nothing left.
Nothing.
So when she banished August and watched him stride out of the tent, leaving her behind, the only thing she felt surging in her heart was fury. The white-hot embers of rage. The desire to rip apart the seams of the afterlife and torch what remained.
It is better this way.The Soulless One’s voice leaked into her mind, drifting through her, though this time, it was different. She no longer just heard him—a distant voice lingering in the recess of her mind—butfelthim, as if he were a part of her, his soul threaded through hers.He will never understand.
Wren stared at her reflection in the mirror. Her eyes were vacant. Her soul hungry.
“I don’t want to speak of him.”
Very well.
Wren looked into her eyes and it felt as though she were staringthroughherself, into her soul, straight into the Soulless One.
