Page 12 of Hellfire to Come
It came out of nowhere, sharp enough to steal the air from my lungs. Something reached inside me, clamping down on the place where my instincts lived, bruising it from the inside out. Pressure built behind my ribs, twisting along that invisible cord tethering me to her—the bond I hadn’t asked for, hadn’t wanted at first, but couldn’t live without now.
It was the only thing assuring me my friend was still breathing.
I stared out the window as we drove, trying to focus on the blur of motion, absently listening to Dominic mutter vocal responses to the wolf for our benefit. They communicated on some animalistic level none of us was privy to. Buildings passed. Places I might’ve cared about once. None of it mattered. Noneof it had color. Not while she was still somewhere under the Syndicate’s thumb. Not while she was hurting.
“She’s not okay,” I breathed, more to the glass than the people around me. “Something’s happening to her.”
Dominic’s eyes flicked up in the rearview mirror, meeting mine. He didn’t ask who. Of course, he didn’t. He knew. They all knew.
Echo shifted beside me in the back seat, her boot tapping anxiously against the floorboard. “That means she’s alive,” she said quietly. “You’d know if she wasn’t.” I could see it in her eyes that she spoke from experience, probably when I killed her brother.
I ignored the tightening in my chest.
“That’s not the point.” My voice came out sharper than intended. I forced a breath through clenched teeth. “I can feel her… like she’s wrapped in chains that keep tightening. She’s not screaming for help. I don’t get that feeling. That’s what scares me.”
Dominic’s hands flexed on the steering wheel, the leather creaking beneath his grip.
“She’s gone quiet,” I whispered, rubbing at the center of my chest desperate, to return whatever link had formed between us. “And when Alice goes quiet like that… it means she’s close to the edge.”
Not the kind of edge you fall off. The kind you jump from, full of fire and fury.
The kind of edge you don’t come back from unchanged.
“She will do something dumb, she won’t wait.” My eyes locked on Dominic’s in the rearview mirror. He understood better than anyone how reckless our friend was when she thought she was protecting us. “She’ll get herself killed.”
I’d seen it before. Those moments when the world pushed her too far, when everything cracked and she stopped trustingpeople to save her while the rest of us were in danger. Alice didn’t break like others. She shattered inward, then reformed herself into something harder. Colder. Sharper.
And she never warned you before she exploded in a flurry of random magic.
“She’s waiting for something,” I added, voice low. “Planning.”
“Good,” Echo muttered. “Let her plan. Let her burn them from the inside while we strike them from the outside. I’m sure we are nearly there.”
I didn’t answer. Because I didn’t want that.
I wanted her alive. Whole. Safe. Still Alice.
Not the version of her the Council was no doubt trying to make. Not the ghost they’d hoped to carve out of my best friend. The same ghost they carved out of me for decades.
I leaned back and closed my eyes briefly, trying to reach her again. Not with magic. Not with any power I could name. Just with… us. With the thread we’d tied between each other somewhere between disaster and laughter, blood and kindness.
The bond shimmered faintly, tension rippling through it with every subtle shift.
I didn’t hear her voice. Not exactly. But I felt her: bruised but upright. Hurt, but furious. A wildfire behind cracked glass.
She wasn’t asking for help.
She was waiting.
And that was worse.
“She’s going to do something,” I said aloud, my eyelids snapping open. “Soon.”
“She’s always doing something,” Dominic muttered.
“This time feels different.” My throat ached. The wolf whimpered from between Chester’s knees where he was fidgeting. “This time I think she’s preparing to become something the rest of us won’t recognize in hopes of helping us.”
A heavy silence settled in the car. Even Chester had gone quiet in the front seat, for once not running his mouth. That alone made my skin crawl. He kept digging the nail from his forefinger into the skin of his thumb, his eyes vacantly staring at the window. His profile was carved out of stone.
