Page 79 of Darkness and Deceit
“I’m going to protect it,” I correct. “You, if I can. But this—” I gesture toward her, toward the simmer of magic between us, “—this isn’t something they’ll study in a lab. This is something they’ll bury in a tomb.”
She doesn’t flinch.
“I won’t let them,” she says.
And I believe her.
“Then we’re aligned,” I say.
“For now,” she replies. Not a threat. A fact. “You never answered one thing,” she continues. “That thread. The one that pointed to you. If it’s real… what does that mean for you?”
I hesitate—but only for a moment.
“It means the line I was never supposed to cross has already moved beneath my feet.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“No,” I say softly. “It is a warning.”
Her gaze lingers on mine for a long, silent beat.
Then something shifts in the air behind her.
Lilith shivers, and even the Balance itself seems to flinch.
I turn my attention to the forest, eyes narrowing at the trees.
“What is it?” she asks.
I don’t answer right away because I cannot yet name it. But the disturbance in the Balance thrums through me like a warning bell.
“There is something out there,” I murmur. “Something... wrong.”
I am already moving before I realize I have made the choice.
Lilith hesitates for only a breath then falls into step beside me.
Twenty-Five
LILITH
I don’t askwhere we’re going. Mostly because I don’t think Augustus knows either.
He moves like he’s listening to something I can’t hear. Like each step is part of a conversation he’s not letting me in on. But I follow anyway. Because the air shifted back there—twisted in a way that made my skin crawl—and whatever he felt, I felt it too.
The woods are quieter than they should be.
No birds. No wind. No life.
Just the sound of our boots over scorched earth, and the rasp of our breathing.
The trees around us are brittle skeletons, blackened and bowed. The further we walk, the more they seem to lean inward, as if the forest itself is trying to draw us in closer and closer to whatever waits ahead.
My magic buzzes beneath my skin the way it used to when Magnus was near. But this isn’t him.
This is something else.
I glance at Augustus. His light hums around him, soft gold against the smoke-stained gray. He hasn’t looked at me sincewe left the clearing. I think we’re both trying to ignore what the tether scryer revealed. But it lingers all the same.
