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“Easy, boy,” Brigid murmured, clutching tighter to its long, wavy mane, smoothing a hand down its neck.
But the unicorn would not calm. Its ears flattened back and its eyes rolled until Brigid could see the whites of them starkly in the night.
A moment later, before Brigid could take in half a breath, one of the monsters circled its long claws around her waist and yanked her right off the steed.
Brigid didn’t even have a chance to fight. One of the creature’s hairy, iron-hard arms wound around her middle, covering most of her torso, and squeezed all breath and sound out of her.
But instead of tearing her apart like she feared it would, it simply tucked her tightly into its side. Then, it carried her one-armed, her feet clear off the ground it was so tall, a few feet deeper into the forest. Where it was so dark, the trees and bushes receded until Brigid could no longer make them out.
Abruptly, it stopped and huffed a low woof.
Sai, having just dispatched the two other monsters, stiffened alertly and charged toward them, cutting through the shadows like a silvery blade.
As he drew near, he didn’t slow. The monster froze, as if it were surprised by Sai’s advance. Its moment of hesitation cost it its life, as Sai spun and sliced in a half leap from above, cleanly beheading the monster in a downward stroke.
The body took a few more moments to catch up to the head, which dropped to the ground with a heavy thud. The arm of the creature still held tight to Brigid, the legs still standing. Then, it crumpled all at once, taking Brigid down to the ground with it.
She scrambled and heaved, managing to wriggle free of the dead monster’s heavy, constricting arm. When she finally stood upright and pushed her loosened locks out of her face, she turned to Sai with relief.
“Well, that was almost more excitement than I could withstand,” she said, smiling at her hero.
“Let’s get back to the others. I hope…”
But the words died on her lips when she got a good look at Sai.
He was standing eerily still before her. The dirk still dripped blood in one hand, the sword pointing down to the ground in the other.
Her first sign that something was horribly wrong was the fact that she couldn’t see the diamond glitter of his eyes. There were only two black centers in his pale, ashen face.
The second sign was the strange web of black veins that covered his skin wherever it was revealed. All over his face, neck and hands. The color of his hair had darkened from its usual bright white platinum to a dirty gray streaked with black, like soot mixed with ashes.
And her last clue was the gleaming tips of long fangs that protruded between his top and bottom lip.
“Sai?” she whispered, holding his unblinking black stare, physically unable to look away.
“Come,” he commanded in a voice that was two octaves lower than Sai’s smooth baritone.
It was no longer melted dark chocolate sprinkled with sea salt. It was simply dark, deep and bottomless.
Like a menacing, unknowable abyss.
Brigid took half a step back, shaking her head.
She didn’t know what the gesture was aimed at. Her reply to his command, or her response to the vision before her—this Sai who was notherSai.
He extended one hand, palm up, and crooked his fingers, his motions strange and stiff, almost like a puppet with someone else pulling his strings.
“Come. Brigid,” he commanded again, the words pushed out from between his lips as if he fought against saying them.
“No,” she whispered, though she knew he could hear her.
“You come back with me. Sai…come back to me.”
He stared unblinkingly and silently at her for some time, hand still extended. When she thought he wouldn’t speak further, that dark, ominous voice echoed in her mind:
It is time, Titania, to return to where you belong. This is not the real world for you. This is only a dream.
It was Sai speaking to her, and it wasn’t. There was an undertone of something else. That same droning hiss that had rattled around in her mind the moment she came into Scotland had merged with Sai’s voice.
