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His face was stricken as his eyes rolled into his head, spinning faster, clearly searching for something just out of reach. “We’ll continue this later,” he said too fast. “I must go.”
“What happened?” I asked, even as he faded around the edges.
“Lonnie needs help.”
How the fuck did he know? For once, he hadn’t been watching her. Not for the last five minutes, at least. Anyway, she should be fine. I’d made it absolutely fucking clear she was ours. “Who the fuck would attack her?”
“It doesn’t matter. I need to go,” he said sharply.
I was shocked to realize my own heart had sped up, something akin to anger, anxiety, moving too close to the surface. “Bael! We’re not done. This is important.”
“I think she’s my mate,” he said, his voice trailing off as he disappeared into shadow. “So nothing else could be more important than keeping her safe.”
I stared, dumbstruck, for so long that by the time I found the words to reply, Bael was long gone. Probably deep in the forest of Inbetwixt by now, with no way to hear the string of confused, hateful words I wanted to spew at him.
I should’ve been surprised, but I wasn’t. Perhaps I’d known…suspected. Perhaps it was simply that nothing had gone right as of late, and why should this be different? If I was honest with myself, a large part of me found this confirmation gratifying—if only because it explained so much. By the Source, he’d fed her his fucking blood to heal her. I should’ve known.
The worst part about this revelation was that it changed nothing.
The Everlast family always rejected our true mates—we couldn’t risk a moment of true happiness destroying the entire family, but we didn’t just let them go…we were far too selfish for that. They died by our own hand, or we kept them close, married into the family through siblings or cousins.
I ran a hand through my hair, the full picture becoming clear. Finally,finally,the prophecies made sense.
Lonnie Skyeborne might be my cousin’s mate, but her life was mine. Either I would kill her or marry her to keep her close.
And either way, I was already certain she’d find a way to ruin me too.
Fuck, if I didn’t hate her for it.
LONNIE
THE DEPLETED QUARRY, INBETWIXT, PRESENT
Adeafening roar rumbled through the forest, shaking the trees and striking fear into my heart. The sound wrapped around me like grabbing claws, filling me with a primal urge to retreat or curl into a ball on the ground.“You’re food,”it seemed to say.“Run or be eaten alive.”
I straightened my shoulders, my feet remaining rooted to the spot as a piercing scream followed the roar, like my own fear had found a voice in someone else half a mile away.
An odd sort of relief filled me. As fucked-up as it was to consider, I was almost grateful for that scream. Now, that monster would hopefully be satisfied, and whoever filled its belly was one less enemy to worry about.
One less person between me and victory.
When I was a child, I believed there was nothing more important in life than winning.
When I was a child, I was a fool.
The most important thing in life is not winning; it’s surviving. The best feeling in the world is taking a breath when you didn’t think you would get another, and there are no rules in matters of life and death. Ironically, my early love of winning prepared me well for surviving now, as the only way to survive in the court of Elsewhere is towin.
It was the second event of the Wilde Hunts, and I stood alone in the dark forest of Inbetwixt. The quarry was depleted of obsidian long ago and had not been mined in over one hundred years, leaving a huge crater in the earth that, over time, filled with rainwater to form a seemingly bottomless lake. The surrounding area, once barren and rocky, was now dense with new foliage. Young trees and brush obscured the old paths to the worksites, and leftover tools lay scattered and rusted on the ground.
I squeezed my hand tight around the dagger clutched in my fist, my knuckles turning white, and raised my lantern in the other hand. An overgrown path snaked its way up the slope of the man-made mountain ahead of me, nearly invisible under fallen leaves and dislodged stones.
Shifting my lantern to the opposite hand, I hauled myself up and over a rounded boulder, ignoring the blisters on my palms. The ground sloped down sharply on my left side and slunk back up on my right. I picked my way forward toward what I hoped was the top of the quarry.
As I walked, the soft echo of a raven’s cry drew my ear from the surrounding silence. I’d hiked for so long alone that any single noise rose the hair on the back of my neck, and the rustling of the wind always sounded like footsteps.
My feet slipped, and I stumbled again and again on loose pebbles, but finally, the ground seemed to even off. The trees thinned, and my lantern shone on the sudden drop at the edge of the quarry, reflecting off the glassy surface of the water below, and dizziness overwhelmed me at the mere sight of it.
“I’m not sure if I should be pleased or horrified,” I muttered to myself.
