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I woke gasping,my hands batting the air, legskicking.
“Get up,Sugarplum.”
Startled, I flipped open my eyes and stared at Leven’s face. Dread wrinkled the bridge of his nose, yet my head fogged, and I couldn’t formulate a plan. I glanced around the empty hallway. Portraits had fallen off the walls, some cracked, others lying face down. The chandelier swung wildly. Yet the bucket of salt water lay intact on the chair, untouched. Had it been thespell?
A growing pressure to run and never stop until I reached home filled me. The house was quiet, and heaviness hung in theair.
“Where’s everyone? Is Talin okay?” A boulder might as well have been sitting on mychest.
Leven took my hand and yanked me upright in a flash. “We need togo.”
“Wait, what’s going on?” At my feet I found the mirror, smashed. Yep, the spell had ended, but what had itunleashed?
A roar erupted from somewhere deeper in the house. I shuddered and flinched as I turned around. “Talin’sturned?”
Leven snatched my elbow and dragged me upstairs. “Talin transformed first. Then Ash, and just recently, Raze.” His accusing voicehurt.
“I didn’t curse them.” I pulled free and we both stood inches apart halfway up the steps. “Tell me what’s going on! Are you going to changetoo?”
“I don’t know. But they’re hunting me. And now that you’re awake, you’ll be on their radartoo.”
I couldn’t swallow, and fear clung to my ribs. “We’re being hunted?” Coldness sunk through me. Yet Leven hauled me up the stairs by an arm. I stumbled after him, trying to make sense of what had happened. The spell had backfired, and instead of reverting to the creator of the curse, it had attacked us. Almost as if whoever had placed it had laid a trap for anyone tampering with thehex.
It hadn’t even crossed my mind. My stomach ached. How could I not have suspected a trap? Had I just made the nightmare worse? We were being attacked by the otherbrothers?
To lay such a complicated curse meant a sacrifice had been made. Why would Rek stoop to murder? And where had he found a deathwitch?
“Hurry up,” Levenwhispered.
Another roar rattled through the house from somewheredownstairs.
“Where are we going?” I rushed up more stairs, realizing quickly I’d been here before. Talin’s cage was uphere.
Once inside the room, Leven opened the door to the prison cell. “Get inside, and I’ll lock you in.” He shoved me into thecage.
“Wait! What about you?” The world tilted beneath me as everything happened too fast. I had too manyquestions.
Leven growled and slapped the cage shut behind me. He tossed a set of keys to the ground near my feet. I whirled around, dread constricting mylungs.
He’d fallen to all fours, his body stretching. I cried out, not forming any words, just releasing the desperate fear collecting in mychest.
“Leven?”
Fur spurted down his legs. He belched a screech, painful and earsplitting. It killed me to watch him suffer, to listen to his yowls of pain. I shuddered and hugged myself. His transformation was nothing like the fluid change I’d seen with Raze. This was rough, painful, anddisfiguring.
Tears blurred my vision as my heart trembled. No dignity, just fear etched on his warped face as hescreamed.
I grabbed the keys and recoiled, my back hitting the cage wall, and my heart pounded in my chest as a half-bear, half-man raised on two feet, turning toward me with a twistedmouth.
His legs might be furry, but his bare chest was wide, brown hair growing before my eyes, and yet only his arms and eyes remained thesame.
Death gleamed in his gaze as he prowled closer. Behind him, three more predators exploded into the room, tearing down the door in theprocess.
I gasped and recoiled, my hands pressed to mystomach.
Four beasts glared my way, all half-transformed and snarling. They leaped onto the cage, and the terror caught in my lungs streamed out. I screamed as they shook the prison. Clawed hands stretched inside for me from three sides, and Leven was on top.Snarling.
I curled in on myself in the middle against the back where the cell met the wall. Out of reach, but for howlong?
