Page 92 of Fated In Forever
I couldn’t make sense of this dread.
Then, staring across the raging river, I swore I saw her.
Only for a second, little more than a shimmering form on the opposite shore, Evangeline stared at me, her blue eyes bright as stars. Fear turned my blood to ice, my bones to stone, but when I blinked, she was gone.
I blew out an unsteady breath and told myself I was seeing things.
Then pulled the boat up on the shore, waited for the souls to flow onboard, like a flood of pure light, running my fingers over the familiar runes, hoping they might calm me. Despite the glow, the souls gave off no heat, and in the starkness of this place, their warm auras should have soothed me.
But today, they didn’t.
I never spoke, the souls never made a sound, but the chains groaned when I picked them up, hauled the heavy links out of the churning current and heaved, the hull scraping along the rocks before gliding silently into the water.
I was halfway across when something hit me.
A ripple in the dark.
Not from the souls or the shadows or the river.
The disturbance came from deep inside me, and where that constant ache was a reminder I’d once been loved, a knife stabbed deep.
Pain.
Like a blade slipped beneath my ribs. Sudden. Deep. I stopped cold, my hand frozen on the chain, the boat rocking, mid-stream, waves lapping greedily as we rocked back and forth. The glowing souls dimmed, the current turned rougher as the boat spun, caught by the current.
My mouth had gone dry.
Because Iknewthat feeling. I’d felt Vicious’ pain before, but this?—
This was different.
This wasn’t pain from battle. Or magic. Or fury.
This was the pain of something unraveling.
Somethingending.
I staggered forward, one hand braced on the prow, forced myself to breathe. But the cold feeling didn’t pass, the pain didn’t fade, the feeling only grew deeper, until my insides were icing over. This wasn’t the Underworld’s chill. This was the kind of cold that came when you lost something you couldn’t live without.
“No,” I whispered, my voice rasping in the mist.
She couldn’t be sensing me—I’d protected her, before sending her back. Unless…
Even though I’d sworn to never touch our bond again, I reached for the golden chains between us that had long gone quiet. A thread I’d cut, hoping to keep her safe. I opened up my end and shuddered.
Fear pulsed.
A heartbeat. Faint. Erratic. Weak.
I dropped the chain to the deck with a deep, metallic clank that may have cracked the keel in two. But I didn’t care.
She’s dying.
My hands clenched into fists. The stillness I had cultivated, the peace I had embraced—cracked. Shattered, even if the hull hadn’t.
I turned the boat around.
Souls or no souls. Schedule or no schedule.
