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EMBER
I looked around me, confused. I stood in the middle of a field, surrounded by forest. Light rested on the field like a glimmering blanket, the yellow weeds swaying in the light breeze.
Why did this look familiar?
Two figures stood in the distance, and I forced my legs to run closer to them, though my movement was in slow motion. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t pick up my pace.
Eventually, I reached the figures. They were familiar but unrecognizable. Their faces and the upper parts of their bodies were shadowed.
I think they were my parents, but I couldn’t tell with the shadows. My mind was tugging me toward the idea they were my real parents, whatever that meant. But it kept popping into my head. Real parents.
The field was the same as Emily’s drawing of her dream.
Only… different.
Like this one, Emily’s field was filled with a glowing light. Only, my field held a darkness behind the light, as if the darkness were waiting in the woods. As if it could change in a split second.
“Who are you?” I asked.
Despite the shadow, I could see a smile, but nothing more. Everything from the nose up was shrouded in shadows.
The woman opened her mouth to speak, but a voice that wasn’t female shouted, “Wake up!”
My eyes flung open as my body bolted upright in bed. I glanced over to Emily, who had returned earlier that day and was now fast asleep. Honestly, I’m surprised she’s not sleeping with her spell book. She was carrying it around with her everywhere earlier.
Unable to fall back asleep, I got up and walked down the hall. Something wasn’t sitting right with me. I’m not sure what, but an uneasiness fell in the pit of my stomach and made me want to vomit.
I headed to the kitchen for a glass of water, downing it in one gulp. A gnawing urge insisted I check on Morgan. I had a bad feeling about her. The air was thick as I stepped outside, the night darker than it should have been. Being the only one awake, as all the wolves had changed into their feral form, no one guarded the doors to the caged room.
I stepped inside, dozens—no, hundreds—of eyes glowing in the darkness, watching me as I passed them. Morgan deserved the punishment, for sure, but even I admit that being the only human caged among many wolves was terrifying.
When I reached her cage, I saw a shadow surrounding her body. The same shadow that hovered above me when I slept in Griffin’s bed that night at the apartment.
The shadow morphed into a humanoid figure. The body was white—whiter than clouds—tall and lanky. There was no aura surrounding this being, which usually meant they were dead. However, that was not the case, as this figure clearly moved around like a living being. I’d never seen such a thing and had no idea what this thing was.
The man, if that’s what he was, opened the cage for Morgan, releasing her from her prison.
Morgan ran toward the exit, pausing for a moment. “Balt?” she asked, cocking her head to the side.
I froze in place. That couldn’t be Balt—could it? The same Balt that had entered my mind. The same Balt working for Samara, despite his detest for her? It made sense. I knew Balt wasn’t an ordinary being. But what the hell was he?
Morgan caught a glimpse of me and took off running. I tried to stop her, but Balt grabbed onto me, his touch both freezing and burning against my arms. The wolves around us growled and shrieked, howling and barking at the strange being. Everything in that moment was pure chaos between the sound and the escaped convict.
I looked up at Balt, unable to grasp what was happening. He wasn’t gripping me hard enough to hurt me, only enough to hold me in place. His eyes were human, and they were… sad. Filled with remorse.
“Balt? Why are you doing this?”
He didn’t answer. Instead, he stared, his eyes piercing through me.
“Balt! I thought you were on my side?” I asked, pleading for an answer.
“I’m on my own side and no one else’s,” he snapped, his tone harsher than I’d ever heard. “You’d do good to remember that.”
Several minutes after Morgan was out of sight, he finally let me go and stood in front of me. Neither of us spoke or moved. It was like we were frozen in time, with more questions hanging in the air than ever before.
I’m sorry, Ember,he said after a moment, speaking to me through my mind. I had no choice.
Before I could even react, he transformed into a black fog and disappeared.
I ran outside, looking for Morgan, but found nothing. And I sure as hell wasn’t about to start looking through those woods that I was both unfamiliar with and terrified of at night.
When I came up empty, I rushed back to our room, to Emily still soundly sleeping in bed. Grabbing my pillow, I whacked it against her and shouted, “Get up, Em!”
She came to, totally oblivious to what had happened. How the hell had she slept through the wolves going apeshit in the cage room?
I filled her in on what happened, and we looked for Morgan together but found her nowhere. She was gone.
Gone.
