Page 37 of Court of Bone and Amethyst

My knees buckle as both her words and the icy wind hit me. I sink down in the snow next to her, but she rises over me, her wings blocking out any bit of light filtering in through the blizzard. “I am better off without you. None of this would have happened if not for you.”

And she walks away, leaving me in the blizzard alone.

I lie there for an indeterminable amount of time, until I hear someone calling my name. I climb to my feet and follow the sound through the forest. The snow gradually falls lighter, and the darkness lifts to a deep gray, and then a pale pewter. When I finally stumble out of the trees into the open plains and the bright sun, reality hits me, my head clearing as if someone had lifted a curtain.

Sarielle is standing next to Owyn and Merla and two of the horses. As soon as I see her face, a hundred images spin through my head. I’d seen her, dead or dying, dozens upon dozens of different ways. Clearly, I’d been entranced by whatever lives in that forest. I’d been in a loop of torment for…

“How long have I been in the forest?” I ask, my tongue and lips feeling numb from the cold.

“A few hours, maybe,” Owyn says.

“Were you all waiting for me this whole time? Were you not also trapped inside?”

“No,” Merla says quietly. “We were all inside. We all… saw things.” She shudders, and I don’t ask what she saw. If it was anything as torturous as what I saw, I don’t want to make her relive it.

“How did you escape?” I ask. “Surely, the thing inside didn’t just let us go.”

“Let’s discuss that later,” Owyn says. “We need to see if we can find our other two horses and get as far away from this place as possible.”

Owyn and Merla climb up onto one of the horses, and I stride over to Sarielle, who is standing beside her gray gelding. “I’m so glad you’re okay,” I say. I help her into the saddle and then swing up behind her.

“Me, too,” she says. She doesn’t make eye contact, and her voice trembles just the slightest bit.

I turn the horse away from the forest, scanning the horizon. “I think I see the horses over there.” I point to two small dots in the distance, heading north.

Pulling up next to me, Owyn nods. “Let’s go. Merla can use her magic to help catch them.”

We urge the horses into a gallop away from the forest of horrors. I relish the feel of Sarielle’s body within my arms, alive and well. But in my mind, all I can see is her corpse, over and over again. And the words that ring through my head.I am better off without you.

We may have escaped the forest and whatever evil lives there, but it isn’t because of anything I did. I was completely under the magical thrall of that place, completely unable to help myself or anyone else. Sarielle may still be alive, but I had failed yet again.

When we finally catch up to the horses and I climb back onto my own, I look over at Sarielle. She has the same haunted look in her eyes I know I must have. The same look is mirrored in Owyn and Merla, too.

“I don’t understand,” I say to her, looking back over my shoulder at the distant forest. “No one has ever made it out of that place. Why us? Why just let us go?”

Sarielle doesn’t answer for a long moment. “Let’s just put it behind us,” she finally says, and she kicks her horse forward before I can respond.

I stare after her, feeling the churn of unease in my stomach, and then I follow.

Chapter Twenty

Sarielle

We stop thatnight in another fishing encampment by a huge lake. There is no magic practice this night, and very little talk as we eat our meager dinner of bread and cheese. After we take care of the horses, I climb beneath the furs in our hut. Zyren stretches out next to me, but there is no warmth in his embrace.

I fall asleep almost instantly.

At first, my dreams are filled with glowing lights and a face that is half beautiful beyond measure, and half ghastly and terrifying. I hear her voice in my head, her voice of sharp blades and despair. And I hear my own voice, making a dark, terrible promise. A promise wrought of desperation, a bargain for my life and the life of those I care for. A cost I am sure I cannot pay.

Then, the face in my dreams shifts. A woman with golden hair instead of ebony, brown eyes instead of blue. I see Lilette in the cathedral antechamber again and again, performing her monthly ritual with the priest. It seems an eternity I am stuck in that loop, feeling her pain and sorrow, and my own shame. I left her all alone…

The dream shifts again. I’m still with Lilette, but we’re in a different room. A bedroom. She is alone in the bed, the first hint of steel-gray dawn lightening the sky through the curtains. I hear the calling of birds outside the window. The clarity of the dream is different, too, no hazy edges, no sense of watching from afar. I see clearly through my own eyes, as if I’m not dreaming at all, but actually in the room with her.

She stirs in her sleep and sits up abruptly, turning. Her gaze lands directly on me.

“Sarielle?” Her voice is an incredulous whisper, her eyes widening.

My heart explodes in my chest. “Lilette—you can see me?”

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