AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I’m not thinking anything through. I’m running on my heart and emotions, something I’ve never done before, but now it’s all I can do.
“Lead the way.” The words burn my tongue but come out fiercer than I feel.
“Raven,” Eldon warns, and a part of me wants to pretend like I didn’t hear him, but I feel like that would only give Erikel and Sebastian another form of satisfaction, and I refuse for them to have that as well.
Looking back at him, I see the anger and worry clearly in his eyes. “We knew this was coming,” I murmur, my gut twisting with the truth. So much has happened in such a short time,but there was no avoiding it. My gut twists even harsher with another thought, and a bout of worry stiffens my spine. “Please, don’t worry about me. Find Ari.”
I turn back to Erikel with that, snarling at the smug look on his face as I storm past him and Sebastian with no real clue where I’m going. It’s not far into the tree line, though, where I see a gateway waiting, and I head in that direction.
My racing thoughts seem to keep circling back to one thing with every step I take.
Ari.
If anyone or anything could have potentially stopped Erikel’s attack on the academy last night, it would have been him. Or he may have attempted to, at least. Where was he? That’s not like him at all.
Coming to a stop at the gateway, I glance over my shoulder to check how far back Sebastian and Erikel are. I have a moment, a brief one, to focus elsewhere, and I close my eyes to try and sense the magic within me that connects me to my familiar.
It’s weak, but it’s there. I don’t feel pain, just a slight tingle of rage and irritation, but it’s not strong enough for me to be certain.
The memory of Ari mentioning that one day we would be able to talk into each other’s minds flashes in my head and I wonder if I can project into his from this distance, but a blunt force from my left sends me tumbling forward and through the gateway before I can even think.
My hands and knees are greeted with sand as I land with a grunt on the other side. One day I might actually fucking walk through one of these, but at this point, it doesn’t seem all that likely. Sebastian steps around me and I glare at the back of his head, hoping it might make him combust, but that doesn’t seem to be the case today.
I rise to my feet, brushing off the sand as I look around. We’re at the edge of the huge lake where Fitch had us do the water challenge, but it doesn’t look like it did back then. Not with the row of dead bodies lined up beside each other.
Bile burns the back of my throat, the reality of what I’m here for making itself very clear.
Eight.
Eight students lined up with paling skin, lifeless eyes, and the pall of death clinging to them like a shroud. As much as I don’t want to be Erikel’s slave, none of these students deserved this. Does that make it my responsibility to save them, though? That’s not what I signed up for. I can’t carry the weight of that. I believed we didn’t allow necromancy magic to keep the balance in the realm. That’s what we were always taught. In Shadowmoor, no one would ever dream of harnessing such power. It was spoken of as almost a folklore myth at best. Now, I’m wondering what other facts I’m missing.
Erikel steps around me as the small group of his men move back from their huddle and look from their leader to me. “Bring them back,” he states, waving a hand at the limp students.
“I can’t right all of your wrongs.” My chest aches already, my magic tugging at me to find a way to save them, which instantly has sadness creeping up my spine and through my limbs, consuming me.
I drop to my knees beside the first student on the end, darkness clinging to me as I become nothing more than a vessel for my magic. It’s more than a tingle from my orb this time; it’s consuming.
Shadows flicker across the back of my eyelids as whispers block out any other sound around me. I feel like I can’t breathe as a sense of warmth takes over, just like it did with Burton. My hands blindly land on the first student and my body shakeswith the sudden onslaught of power before I wind up cold and depleted. I sag, hearing the first beat of their heart.
“Another,” Erikel orders, triumph in his voice, and I can’t move or even open my eyes to see. Instead, the sadness intensifies, the darkness sweeping deeper into my mind.
I know the moment another body is thrust in front of me, and my body completes the same little ritual. Breathless. Warm. Icy. Empty.
Again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again.
Breathless.
Warm.
Icy.
Empty.
I can’t speak. I can’t think. All I can do is feel anguish in every muscle, pain in every bone, and desperation in every breath I take.
Until the world shifts to complete darkness. Claiming me for itself.
EIGHT
