Page 124 of The Girl in the Forest

Stood like those queens. Like their daughters, and their daughters’ daughters.

Raged with their rage. Gagged on their tears.

I shattered into a thousand savage pieces.

And the air burned as I broke the sky.

As the reds, oranges, yellows… as the bloody scarlets became a churning turbulence, tumbling with bits of flaming grass and blackened grit. Broken twigs. Autumn leaves still golden in the sunlight.

I breathed in, breathed out. Braced as racing pigs tumbled head over cloven hooves, squealing, fleeing from the torrent that drove them toward the passage. Strange, spindly creatures, hybrid wolves, all of them desperate, stumbling.

Energy cracked, and I watched, unfeeling, as the Sentinel Falls wolves, the Carmag wolves, attacked. Hacked. Ended the living creatures who hadn’t reached the passageway.

The fake Brin still ran. Her dark hair glinted like mine—both of us faille and branded by the silver strands that whipped through the air, caught in the same turbulence as she swung around. Braced herself to fight.

My body throbbed beneath the intensity of uncontrolled power. My heart jolted as if electric sparks coursed through me. Everything fell away and we were that image on a cave wall.

Two women with hands outstretched, standing in a sea of mud and blood and vengeance.

Only we were not that image.

We were opponents, facing each other as slowly, slowly, I drove my enemy from the field. Drove them—Amal’s allies—toward Brin and the passage she guarded.

But she was no Amal. Her name was not Brin.

And I would destroy her.

Hatred drove the steps I took. One after the other. The need for vengeance was a song that I sang. The pressure in my head crushed. Sound hissed and crackled without meaning. My bones were burning on the inside. Muscles charring. Even the air in my lungs scorched.

The last of the creatures raced past Brin and into the dark passage, disappearing—

But not the violence, not the sounds, not the screams—

Not Amal’s scream—

A new vision flashed. Not this field, this battle.

A different battle, on another battlefield, horrifying in its truth. I looked at the buildings I knew in my heart—the café with the red umbrellas. The glass and wood of the archive. The houses beside the lake… those of Leo. Hattie. Oscar.

All of them, bursting into flames.

The meadow, singeing. Grass, blackened and curled.

Bodies. More ash and bones.

A woman, with flawless features, streaming black hair… a silver streak… glinting red in the burning light as she walked through the town…

I lost myself, became incandescent in the white flash of an explosion. Energy flailed from my hands. But what I destroyed was the passageway in front of me, with the creatures racing through and a girl with silver in her hair.

Then I was a rag doll, flying backward as if some greater force had pulled me by a string, tossed me, forgotten, onto the bloody ground.

I stared up at the blue sky.

An autumn sky.

Grayson was there. I couldn’t focus on what he was saying.

“Breathe, Noa! I’m not losing you, not in the mud the way I found you.” Then I heard his mental voice, shaking.

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