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As I get to the next passage, Willow startles in her sleep, moaning. I glance up and she’s still again, so I return to the page of my book.
But then I feel a cool draft whisper by, like a breeze has snuck through the window. I look over my shoulder, but the window is closed. Willow whimpers and gasps, and I snap my gaze on her again, leaning forward with my brows dipped.
She moans again and rustles about, as if fighting something. I close the book and stand, moving closer to the bed. She must be having a nightmare and I figure I should wake her, but as I lift my hand to touch her, something tight wraps around my throat. I stumble backwards as what feels like a pair of hands chokes me, squeezing as tightly as possible. I struggle for breath, mygaze shifting to the bed as Willow makes strangled noises while thrashing and moaning louder.
“Willow!” I choke out. “Willow—wake up…wake…up!” I flop onto my back as the grip grows tighter, suffocating me.
Willow sits upright in the bed, staring at me while holding her throat. Her eyes are nearly bulging out of her head, her lips turning purple, before she finally bursts a gasp and sucks in a large amount of air. After her gasp, the grip around my throat weakens, but I still feel the essence of it lingering.
“What the bloody fuck was that?” I pant, rubbing my throat.
“I—I saw it,” Willow says, breathless.
“Saw what?” I snap, sitting up.
She doesn’t answer. Instead, she climbs out of the bed, and clearly her leg has healed because she rushes to the bathroom without so much as a stumble.
I push to a stand, still rubbing my throat as I follow her. She turns on the lamp built into the bathroom wall and looks at her reflection in the mirror. Tears form at the rims of her brown eyes as she rubs her throat, and as I stand behind her, I see exactly what she sees. Red marks are on her throat, the shape of fingers, as if someone grabbed her tight and refused to let go.
Then I look at my reflection, and there are markings around my throat the shape of fingers too, but they’re not like hers. They’re as black as ink. I glance at hers again, then mine. The fingers are the same size and in the same angle, like the person wrapped their hands around my neck from behind me.
Her eyes flicker up to mine in the mirror, and it only takes one name from her mouth for me to realize just how much danger we’re in.
“Mournwrath.”
Thirty-Seven
WILLOW
“Manx saidsomething to me before I was brought to this room.” I face Caz, and he’s rubbing his throat, trying to get the black marks off, but they’re not going anywhere. It’s sinister, seeing the fingerprints around his neck, but what was even more sinister was seeing Mournwrath in my dreams.
I was in the forest again, but this forest looked different—not like the one I landed in when I first came to this world. This forest had trees as tall as skyscrapers, the branches and pine needles frozen, and despite the wind blowing, the trees didn’t move. It was so quiet I could only hear myself breathing.
I tried finding a way out of the forest, but something came after me, swift and strong. Its fingers wrapped around my neck from behind, and I couldn’t see it at first, not until it lifted me into the sky. I floated there as the grip was released from my throat, but my body turned, spinning in a 180, and there it was. Mournwrath, floating in the air with me, those red crescents boring into my eyes. It started to lower the hood of its black cape, and black talons slipped from beneath it, wrapping around mythroat again. The talons were cold and tight, and for a moment I couldn’t breathe. Then I woke up, and Caz was on the floor, holding his throat.
“What did Manx say?” Caz asks, bringing me back to the present.
“He said to come to him if you develop black veins on your body or something like that.”
Caz frowns a moment, then lifts his arm. He’s wearing a long-sleeved black shirt, so I can’t see any of the skin on his arms. The only thing revealed are his pale hands.
His blue eyes flicker up to mine before he takes a step back and grips the hem of his shirt. Without a word, he pulls the shirt over his head, and I blink rapidly, taking a step back, my eyes growing wider. Black veins run up both his forearms and even the center of his chest, but that’s not what catches my attention most. It’s the scars on his body and old wounds that catch me off guard. Some of them look like bullet wounds, while others like marks from a whip, as if he was beaten repeatedly. A tattoo is on the heart of his chest, the nameAzirain a bold, script-like font. I’m curious who that is.
Beneath the scratches and whip marks, his pecs are lean and smooth like marble, as well as his biceps. His belly has more markings the shape of healed bullet wounds. One is wedged between his ribcage and one of his six abdominal muscles.
Caz steps around me to investigate his reflection. The veins on his arms aren’t extreme, but the ones on the center of his chest are prominent, and they’re spreading outward, as if they’ll eventually leak to the rest of his body.
“What the hell is this?” he rasps.
“I think it’s part of the Tether,” I whisper.
Caz looks through the mirror at me, then he turns and slips back into his shirt. He marches to the bedroom, and I follow him as he picks up his jacket and gloves.
“We need to get Manx.” He slides his fingers into the leather gloves. Once his boots are on, he’s heading toward the door.
I slip into the white shoes Alexi brought up for me with the change of clothes and follow Caz out the door.
Thirty-Eight
