Page 37 of Darkness and Deceit
I roll my eyes. “High praise from you.”
But underneath the sarcasm, something shifts. We’re not just reacting anymore. We’re planning. Preparing.
Protecting.
We move quickly, melting into the tree line just inside the edge of the ward. There’s a narrow outcrop past the perimeter—a sliver of land cloaked in undergrowth and half-shadow. It’s enough to give us cover, to keep us close if we need to step in if something goes wrong.
We settle into the silence, the kind that feels too still. Too careful.
I glance up once and catch wings slicing the sky.
Bennett’s crow. Watching.
She’s been quiet lately. Distant.
But distance isn’t the same as disinterest.
And the thing about crows?
They don’t circle unless something’s about to die. Or unless they’re waiting to see who does first.
“She’s going to be fine,” I murmur, mostly to myself, trying to shake the feeling in my gut.
Kai doesn’t look at me, but his voice cuts through the quiet like a blade. “She better be.”
Twelve
LILITH
Something’s wrong.
I don’t know how I know it—not exactly—but the feeling’s there, pulsing beneath the surface of my skin. Curling tight in the space behind my ribs. Insistent. Like a warning.
And it’s not the forest or the shadows.
It’sme.
We’ve been walking in silence for minutes, maybe longer. Augustus’ glow lights the path ahead, casting soft gold against the bark and the bones of the woods. But the forest is quiet—too quiet. Like it’s holding its breath for what’s to come.
I try not to panic. Or think about the fact that I’m walking through a cursed forest beside a stranger who glows like a saint and talks like he’s got a dagger for a tongue and no idea how not to use it.
And I definitely try not to think about how this whole thing feels like a test I was never meant to pass.
I walk with my hands fisted in my pockets and pretend not to flinch every time his golden radiance flares out, pressing at the night like it could burn away my own darkness if I got too close.
Augustus is silent ahead of me, but the pulse of his aura grows stronger the deeper we go. He never looks back to check if I’m still following, but he must know. More than once his head tilts just a little, as though he’s hearing something I can’t. He walks like someone born for this. Like every step is measured out against some inner map that guarantees he’ll never fall or falter.
The bastard seems immune to doubt, while every muscle in me wants to bolt for the edge of the woods and pretend like none of this is happening.
Gods, what I wouldn’t give to be back in my bedroom with Nat, painting our nails and gossiping about nothing.
I force myself onward. One step, then another, and then?—
Something shifts.
It’s subtle at first; a change in pressure, like walking into a room where two people have just been screaming at each other and stopped when you entered. The trees grow closer together; their needles hang heavier and darker overhead. The air thickens with the scent of sap and damp decay.
The moment my boot hits the curve of a half-buried root, I feel a pull like something reached through the earth and grabbed me—an invisible undertow.
