Page 123 of The Girl in the Forest

Looking around, all I saw were bodies. All I heard were screams. Amal’s creatures. Her hateful army, following a vengeful path. Brin, Amal’s stealthy faille, shooting sparks in the straw. Pretending to be so gods-damned weak.

“You’re working with her?” My voice emptied of all emotion. I left nothing that would give me away. “Are you like her?”

Already a hybrid?

“Not yet.”

Then, “Are you even Brin?”

“That girl died a few hours after the suckers took her.”

I shuddered.

“Amal has allies,” the fake Brin said. “Vampires who support her return. They heard how your ash friend was asking around.”

The ground seemed to heave.

“She sent me. Everything was planned to get to you. In that dungeon?” She laughed, her mouth twitching upward. “You were so amusing, telling me how to move rock chips. Did you even realize I was pulling down that force field you were building so diligently? But it was enough for you to need me. Trust me. Gods, you were more ridiculous than that banshee girl.”

Levi’s blood coated my hands, warmly sticky, because I still knelt beside him. My hands gripped his as he gripped the base of the spear, the gaping, spurting wound. Laura wasn’t there to stem the blood flow, and I didn’t know how to help him.

Only one healer could help Levi. But with Brin’s force field surrounding us, he couldn’t hear me.

I slid deep in my mind, into the dark faille space, below the icy sea. Deeper still, sinking until I found it, the thread of energy that tugged in my chest. I held on to the shimmer of light, sent the thoughts pulsing through while the fake Brin continued to brag.

“For a moment, I was afraid Barend would win and you’d take his offer,” she said. “That’s why I pulled the bolt from my hand. I was going to use it on you.”

Grayson’s answering tug sent warmth along our mate bond. The dark wave of his power. The power swelled from a caress into a storm, and I knew the moment when he—and all the Sentinel Falls wolves—changed directions to surge toward us.

“She will always find you,” the fake Brin said. “Destroy those you love while you watch.”

I forced myself upright.

Stood while Levi growled.

Brin turned her head. The tide of men grew closer, their angry shouts cleaving the air.

The energy she threw from her fingers wavered; we all felt it sputtering out before she turned to run toward the open passage.

Amal’s passage.

And chaos exploded from my fingertips. A frenzy of heat that roiled across the ground.

The current of energy flowing from me, from my hands, birthed a friction of its own, glowing ribbons that danced in streams of yellow, orange, red.

Burn it down, Noa.

Burn it for Julien.

For Levi

For Fallon.

A sob blocked my throat. Traces of ash had somehow coated my palms and I couldn’t wipe them away because of who it was… but then, the ash swirled and melded with the streams of wrathful heat. Ash to fire to ash again.

And maybe burning was what I was here to do. Maybe this was the vengeance I was meant to reap, what the kings of old had asked of the queens.

I syphoned.

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