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Ambrose Dullahan stepped forward, seemingly unconcerned by the blaze that surrounded us. I glared at him through tear-streaked eyes. “What have you done?”
He shrugged nonchalantly. “It was inevitable this would happen one way or another.”
What was inevitable. The deaths? The destruction? Did that mean he got to decide when, like he seemed to have done with Rosey?
My breath caught in my throat. I forgot to care what might happen if I gave in to the constant gnawing at the back of my mind and felt my hands tremble, cold fire licking down my arms.
I quaked, pent-up power and rage melding into one, surging until it physically hurt to hold it in. Until I could not keep it inside for fear I might combust.
This time, when I opened my mouth, it was a roar that left me. A lion’s roar, a roar like fire, like pain.
As I stood frozen, the ground beneath my feet began to rumble and shake violently. The trees swayed wildly, their roots ripped from the earth.
A low rumble shook the ground, followed by a loud crack. The dark chasm that appeared seemed to reach down into eternity, and flames lashed out from it, illuminating the night sky with an orange glow. Thick smoke rolled out, blanketing the area in darkness.
The familiar acrid scent of sulfur reached me, but this time, I welcomed it. Called for it.
The fog became smoke, became twisted ropes of shadow, then took shape into the riders. The afflicted. Into every twisted, ugly, pain-filled face I’d ever made or could possibly imagine.
I screamed and screamed, expecting the afflicted to be called to swallow me, but instead, only more seemed to steam from within the earth.
Gentle hands clamped around mine, and I yelped, trying to jerk away.
Through streaming eyes, I saw Bael’s wickedly sharp features illuminated by the flickering flames. He reached out toward me again with both hands. “Stop that, little monster. Come back to me.”
I let out a choked sob and glanced around. Behind him, Scion and, strangely, Ambrose Dullahan had made a wide circle of magic, pushing the afflicted back from the rest of the family in the center. Scion’s gaze met mine for a moment across the lawn, and I was caught in the intensity of it.
Distantly, I knew that this was what my mother had been afraid of. This was what the serpent had been talking about. This was how the sky turned black. And this must have been how Aisling felt. She didn’t ask the gods to open the Source to curse the king. No, she turned the sky black herself, screaming her pain and inflicting it on the world.
I looked back up at Bael, my body now trembling with exhaustion. “I don’t know how to stop.”
Now that whatever this was had been unleashed, it was too much, too overwhelming, and I couldn’t fit it back inside my body.
Horribly, shamefully, I wanted it to.
51
LONNIE
SOMEWHERE NEAR THE COAST
We shadow walked to one town, then another and another. By the fourth or fifth jump, I lost track of where we’d landed, my head lolling against Bael’s shoulder.
I was somewhat aware that we were traveling in such an odd, jerking manner because not everyone among us could travel for long distances, and their injuries were only slowing down the process. Iola, Elfwyn, and Thalia—who was more severely hurt than Aine or Gwydion—could not shadow walk at all.
No one said a word to me after what I’d done in the wake of the fire except Bael and Iola. Even Scion seemed distant. Angry, perhaps. Though, if I didn’t know better, I might say he was afraid. Certainly, the others were afraid of me.
I was afraid of me.
* * *
The scent of rotting fish,rain, and moist earth assaulted my senses, filling my nose and driving out anything that might have come before.
We’d landed in yet another swampy fishing village, somewhere along the coast. It was the kind of way-station town that I’d pictured before seeing Cutthroat. Dank, dilapidated, and nearly abandoned. The outskirts of the town were surrounded by a wall, though it hardly mattered as the gates were open, and no guards stood outside.
Any other time, I likely would’ve found the odor offensive, but now, when where we’d been was so, so much worse, I would gladly plunge my head into a barrel full of rotting fish. I’d smell this for the rest of my life if it meant never again breathing in the sulfuric smoke of Aftermath.
“May we finally stop?” I asked.
