Page 33 of Hellfire to Come
And then she looked away.
We were all carrying things we hadn’t named yet. Burdens without language.
The trees began to thin. I recognized the ridge that crested before our hidden road. The safe house was close, another hour, maybe less. I should have felt relief. But all I felt was the weight of what came next.
Getting them safe wasn’t enough.
Alice needed more than safety. She needed purging, cleansing, healing from magic none of us fully understood.
And Rowan… gods, I didn’t know if he’d ever come back.
And then there was Brooklyn. My mate. My fire-forged soul.
She looked so calm. So fierce.
And yet I could feel the tremble in her spirit. The way she wanted to scream and couldn’t. The way her rage was already planning ten different ways to destroy the man who’d hurt her family.
And I…
I was haunted by something that felt like me.
We were leaving one battlefield only to enter another. A slower one. A quieter one. But no less deadly.
As the car turned down the concealed path toward the safe house, I leaned back, closing my eyes for just a breath.
I did not sleep.
I listened to the echo of that familiar darkness still whispering inside me hoping to recognize it.
I waited for it to speak again.
Chapter Thirteen
BROOKLYN
Samir’s house should have felt like sanctuary. A place where we didn’t need to look over our shoulder.
But it didn’t.
After the Council set up the attack not too long ago the place felt foreign. Unwelcoming. The walls were too still. The air too stale. The quiet pressed against my ears like a scream buried just beneath the surface.
Alice lay on the makeshift cot we’d dragged into the center of the common room, her skin too pale against the patchwork of blood-stained blankets reminding me of the similar scenario from a few weeks ago where she was fighting for her life in a similar fashion. I couldn’t take her to her room because panic was clawing at my chest just thinking about everything she went through there. We also opened a circle like before, hoping that would trigger healing in her. So far nothing had changed.
Rowan was across from her on the couch, limbs tangled awkwardly, his chest rising in shallow, erratic gasps as Echo hovered beside him, whispering words beneath her breath that left red sigils dancing just above his clammy skin like fireflies. I wanted to feel bad for thinking he betrayed us but I had other,more powerful emotions trying to destroy me internally without it.
Chester paced near the windows, one hand idly tracing red glowing wards into the glass over and over as if that will protect us if the Syndicate decides to attack again. The sparks at his fingertips had long since gone out but he didn’t stop, didn’t so much as blink. Sheen glistened on his upper lip and droplets of sweat dribbled down his neck, but he didn’t notice any of it. A silent, steady presence making sure we were ready if anything came our way.
Being down at the cages in that mansion unnerved all of them as I feared it would. They were very twitchy, almost paranoid now but I couldn’t do anything to help them with that. I still fought my own nightmares from my time there.
Dominic crouched beside me, his fingers tangled in his hair as he watched Alice’s face, for the thousandth time, for any type of sign. The wolf was here too, muzzle pushed close to Alice’s arm, ears pinned to the back of his head, eyes as big as saucers, staring at her unblinking. There was no change. No twitch of her lips. No spark behind her eyelids. She was burning from the inside out with Frederic’s poison, but none of us could name it, much less undo it.
And Samir…
After blanching when he saw us walking in with Alice draped over my arms and Rowan over Dominic’s shoulder, he turned his back and disappeared without a word. A feeling I didn’t dare name lodged itself in my chest at that. Now, he still hadn’t come out of his room hours later.
“Samir,” I called out softly, my voice thin from where I sat curled beside Alice’s cot, knees drawn to my chest, forehead resting against the edge of the mattress. I knew he could hear me. “We need you. Alice needs you.”
Silence.
