AllFreeNovel
Share Us
There was nothing. Not even the branches shook or a wind blustered.
“Stop!” Jude’s order seemed to echo as it made its way to my ears. The sound was distorted, broken up into multiple pieces.
Starlight whinnied in alarm as I yanked on the reins, her long legs trotting wildly in place. She was restless standing still, agitated. Not that she wasn’talwaysagitated with me, but this was different. Like she was trying to warn me of some threat I couldn’t see.
“Be on your guard!” Jude boomed, his voice still coming at me in waves of varying tenors. “Isiah, take up the rear!”
Isiah whirled past me as he raced to the back of the line, his form flickering like a candle in the wind. Like he wasn’t solid at all. I swore he shone a brilliant silver.
I blinked, squeezing my eyes tightly shut. Maybe there was dust or dirt stuck in them and my eyesight was being affected? I rubbed at them until black spots prickled my vision.
Another loud cry split the air, the vibrations tingling my goose-pimpled flesh.
Whateverthat thing was, it was huge. Andloud.
The cold metal of my hilt bit into my hand, adrenaline searing my insides as I prepared for the unknown. A part of me pulsated with a sick, perverse excitement, wondering what foreign creature would emerge from the viscous haze.
“Ki,” Patrick hissed between his teeth. A peculiar look sharpened his eyes, ones that were no longer soft and serene. They’d taken on a feral edge. “I think I see it.” He raised a lone finger to the trees.
My breath caught as I followed where he indicated, landing on a mass of vibrant cobalt shrubbery below a silver-flecked white tree. It was an exact copy of the trees that encircled it, nothing out of the ordinary given our location.
I was scrutinizing each branch and crinkled leaf—trying desperately to understand what he’d motioned to—when a coppery taste landed on the tip of my tongue like a fallen snowflake. Licking my lips only made the jarring tang of metal intensify. It reminded me of blood.
“D-do you taste that?” I asked Patrick, my voice quivering. “Metal.”
I called out his name once more, but Patrick didn’t answer. He was too consumed by whatever it was I couldn’t see in the trees.
“Patrick?” I tried again, blinking rapidly as I saw double of my friend. The two Patricks swayed back and forth before meeting in the middle, one never quite rejoining the other. Panic simmered in my blood, turning my skin ice cold.
“Patrick!”
Nothing. He didn’t seem to hear me at all.
He was made of stone and unmoved by my pleas. Leaning back in my saddle, I aimed my attention at Jake and Nic, who were utterly mesmerized by whatever Patrick claimed to have seen. They were staring at that same damned tree, the one that matched all the others.
What the living hells is going on?
“Jake! Nic!” I waved my hands back and forth, desperately seeking their attention. Any trace of calm left me, and my limbs tingled.
Doing my best to ignore how my gloved hands itched, how the hair on the back of my neck rose in alarm, I nudged Starlight over to a frozen Alec, whose face was just as lifeless as the others.
What were they seeing that I wasn’t? There was nothing there. Definitely not a beast substantial enough to have made those chilling screeches.
Everyone had lost their grip on reality.
I kept urging Starlight forward until I was beside Jude, whose head was lowered toward his lap, rasps of unsettled breaths racking his chest. The whites of his knuckles shone in the eerie glow of the moon, his fingers wrapped securely around the reins.
Blue-black hair hung limply before his closed eyes, his neck bent sharply as his breathing accelerated. I could practically taste the fear he exhaled with every shuddering breath, his weakening control over himself as he clenched his jaw, hints of red flushing his cheeks.
“Jude,” I whispered, the commander’s form doubling as my compromised vision distorted him further. “What’s happening?” I was being affected too, just not as badly as the others from the looks of it.
“Jude!” This time I didn’t bother to whisper, giant wolves and monsters be damned.
Still, he did not open his eyes and seek me, although his lips quivered as he silently murmured beneath his breath. Was that a prayer? Or a curse?
Inching Starlight closer, I made a bold grab for his hand, wrapping my gloved one around his. “Jude, look at me,” I begged, my voice taking on a note of desperation. I couldn’t do this alone.
Jude’s throat worked hard as he swallowed, his hand twitching where mine rested. “Please open your eyes. Everyone is f-frozen. Looking at some tree.” Peering over my shoulder, I found them all in the exact position I’d left them in, though this time, the tree in question appeared tinged in a deep cobalt blue, tiny black veins running the length of its coarse wood.
