Page 72 of Bound By Roses

Shrouded in mist on a mist-less night, soundlessly walking on air, its phantom feet only just not touching the ground.

I don’t dare move. I don’t even breathe. It must know I’m here because it’s my mother’s form it wears.

“Quinn?” her voice calls to me, almost exactly as I remember it. I hate how much I love that sound. I would give almostanything to hear her voice again for real, and I have to constantly remind myself that this isn’t real. That this isn’t her.

The sound of a twig snapping behind me catches both of our attentions. The wraith whips around and darts towards me, only missing me by a few feet. Its form changes as it hunts its new prey, melding from mother to man.

And not just any man.

Jade.

A wave of panic crashes into me as I reach for the bond again. Who else would see Jade as he once was? No red veins of fire coursing through cracked skin, no look of loathing etched onto his face. If Abby came looking for me… If the wraiths are after her…

But she’s still asleep. The peacefulness that radiates down the bond is the same as it always is, as she rests blissfully unaware of everything I’m all too aware of. If it’s not her in the forest, then who?

I drift toward the sound—and the wraith—because I suddenly need to know. I haven’t heard a sound since that snap, which either means the wraith found its prey or the sound was intentional. My money is on the latter. Someone knows I’m here, and they drew the wraith away.

I should turn and run. I know I should, but I can’t.

My body stills the moment I spot the wraith again, but my attention is focused on the rift that appears only a few feet in front of it. I watch as it stares into the veil, seeing something I can’t. It screams again, the mask of Jade it wears vanishing and being replaced by its true self. This creature is mist and shadow given form. Its face a dark hole with an even darker mouth just waiting to destroy and devour.

And then it’s gone. The wraith disappears—into the rift. I thought that wasn’t supposed to be possible. The knowledge Rhett and Jade had of the wraiths was passed down from stories,but sometimes stories get it wrong. Even the name veil wraith implies they might just be from the veil itself. So why wouldn’t they be able to cross between worlds?

Another twig snaps behind me and I whip around to find Jade standing there, in his hands, two halves of a broken stick. “You shouldn’t be out here,” he says.

If I weren’t too afraid to shift, I would so I could ask him why he’s here. Abby said the dragons agreed to patrol the skies, but I didn’t think that included Jade. The old Jade probably would have, albeit begrudgingly. But this Jade? This Chosen by Inferna, full of anger and no memories? I’m surprised he didn’t just give away my position and watch the wraith devour me.

Jade points to the left. “The beach is that way.”

I can’t tell him, but I already knew that. The pull to return to Abby is strong, and the peacefulness that fills her sleep is wavering. She’s realizing I’m gone, or perhaps feeling my fear. She’ll wake soon, and I need to be there before she does.

But there’s another pull that’s nearly as strong.

I slink towards the rift, ready to turn and run at the first sign of danger. Jade follows behind me, but I don’t pay him any mind. There’s something familiar about this place, and I need to know if I’m right.

“No wonder your time is running out,” Jade mutters. “You go towards the thing you’re supposed to run from.”

I don’t even reach the rift before I know I’m right. The clearing is filled with ash roses. The same that grow in Rosewood. The very same that grew when Abby and I found this clearing together. When something led her here.

There’s no sign of Evan in the rift this time, nor even the wraith that had taken both my mother’s and Jade’s form. I turn my head to him to see that he’s staring at me intently. Almost expectantly.

Could he know what the Spider told me? That the only way to escape my fate is to take a life by pushing them inside the veil?

Jade doesn’t seem afraid. His body is tense, but not in a way that tells me he’d put up a fight. Fuck, he might even let me push him in there and for the life of me, I can’t understand why.

I step away from the rift and Jade lets out a huff that could either be relief or disappointment. My mind is too jumbled from lack of sleep and things I don’t understand. Why did the rift spawn here? Why were Abby and I both led to this place? And what do the roses have to do with it?

I crouch down and pick one, holding it carefully in my jaws. Jade rolls his eyes when I turn to him. “If you want to thank me, there are better ways than flowers.”

There’s a sadness in those red-rimmed green eyes of his that tells me that he might have actually been hoping I would push him. And not for my benefit—for his. We’re both looking to escape something and even though this would be the easiest way for us both to get what we want, I can’t bring myself to do it. I don’t know if he came here because he wanted to protect me, of if he came here hoping I would end his suffering.

I’ll take a life if I have to, but it’s not going to be his. No matter how much he wants it to be.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

ABBY

Isit up straight, a panicked flutter to my heart that I somehow know isn’t coming from me. The spot in the sand where Quinn should be sleeping is empty, and the beach has grown cold without him nestled beside me. ‘Quinn?!’I call to him through the bond.

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