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Ezra realizes his mistake the instant the words leave his mouth.
Her face drains of whatever warmth has been there. “What the fuck does that mean?”
No one answers.
“Ezra.”
“Sage.”
“No.” She backs away from us. “What the fuck does that mean?”
The Earth answers for him. A pulse rolls under our feet, followed quickly by another, then a third.
The string lights flicker overhead. Once. Twice. Then every bulb around the field goes out submerging us into darkness.
Screams tear through the crowd before dissolving almost immediately into laughter. They think it’s part of the show.
Of course they fucking do.
The bonfires still burn, throwing restless orange light across hundreds of faces as Sage stands in front of me, her bare shoulder glowing against the darkness and that red ribbon stark around her wrist.
Her eyes are wide now. Her breathing isn’t steady anymore but the music never stops. It slows.
The electronic bass sinks into something deeper, and beneath it comes a sound I haven’t heard in more than two centuries.
Drums.
One. Two. Three.
Silence.
One. Two. Three.
Silence.
Sage must hear them too because her eyes find mine. “What is that?”
I don’t answer because something else has already begun.
Around us, the crowd starts to move differently.
The dancing slows until hundreds of bodies seem to fall into the same rhythm, swaying beneath the firelight without realizing they’re doing it. People drift closer together, laughter rising as hands find waists and mouths meet beneath the glow of the bonfires.
Sage turns, taking it all in. “What the fuck?”
The Revel begins.
I feel the old hunger slip into the modern world as easily as smoke, winding through music and alcohol and bodies already eager to lose themselves for the night.
They think they’re letting loose. They have no idea they’re feeding it.
Sage watches the crowd until a sharp breath catches in her throat.
I know exactly what she feels because I can feel it moving through the field too. Heat gathering beneath the skin. Every nerve sharpening. Every touch becoming harder to ignore as the Revel draws whatever is already there closer to the surface.
And when Sage finally looks back at me, I know exactly what it found in her.
Her hand closes around my wrist.
