Page 88 of Skalterra By Nightmare
“It’s a trick.”
“I don’t want you to suffer.”
I laughed at the trees, but the sound was humorless and scared. My heart thundered, and I couldn’t breathe deep enough.
I was in danger.
No, no I wasn’t. Not immediately. And even if there was something hiding in the shadows to hurt me, I had three lives left in Skalterra.
But I hadn’t died in the forest behind that mountain cabin, either, and I still couldn’t shake that night.
“Breathe, Wren.” Ciarán’s voice turned uncharacteristically gentle. “You’re okay. Keep moving.”
I struggled through another patch of bushes, and thorns pulled at my arms. Droplets of blood formed on my skin, then turned to ash that clung to my arm hairs.
“I don’t need help,” I lied.
“I know you don’t. You’ve faced worse than anything in this forest.”
Worse like him. He’d already killed me once.
“Why are you being so nice?”
“Because you’re useful. Now breathe,” he said again. I forced air into my lungs to take several deep breaths. “That’s right. Just like that. I don’t like feeling your panic any more than you do.”
“Then leave.”
“If I stop talking, you’ll be alone in the dark. Do you really want that?”
“Yes.” Except that wasn’t true. He was infuriating and unwelcome, and if Galahad somehow figured out he was in my mind, I was dead. But I did not want to be alone. I wanted even less for Ciarán to know that. “Get out.”
“Very well. See you in Tulyr, Blue.”
I paused with a hand braced against a tree, waiting and listening.
“Ciarán?” I hissed into the shadows. The coyote yipped again, and it sounded like it was laughing at me.
The dark pressed in, and I screwed my eyes shut and sank to the dirt, unable to bring myself to keep walking, even if it meant helping Fana.
I curled up beneath a tree and waited for Galahad to release me.
The hours passed dark and slow, but when the first hint of daylight dusted the edges of the canopy overhead and the birds started to sing, Skalterra dissolved around me, and the forest ebbed away.
It was the most comfortable position I’d woken up in all week, with a soft pillow under my head and blankets pulled up to my chest. I was sure that Gams had to have called an ambulance, and I had to be in a hospital bed. However, the smell of the quilt that weighed me down was too familiar, and someone nearby was purring.
“Jonquil?” I mumbled. She was curled in the crook of my neck. “Are you trying to smother me?”
I sat up, taking stock of my bedroom. I was on top of my bed sheets, but under the quilt from Gams’s couch. A glass of water sat on my bedside table, and my stomach churned at the sight of the note that lay next to it.
“I told Jonquil to keep the nightmares away, but here’s some water just in case. -L”
My cheeks burned with embarrassment at the thought of Liam having to carry me to bed a second time, but at least I was safe. I was out of the woods. I wasn’t in a stairwell or a hospital bed.
But my mind wasn’t my own anymore, and now my consciousness belonged to more than just Galahad.
“Ciarán?” I whispered at my room, wondering if the Grimguard could hear me.
However, the only sound to reply in my head was the buzzing of my own thoughts. If Ciarán could hear me from across the Rift, he wasn’t about to let me know.
