Page 28 of The Girl in the Forest

I wouldn’t value my life over his life, and the anger aroused by his expectation—that I should put my safety above all others—hollowed me out, down to my bones.

I was furious… for him. For us… not that there’d ever been us beyond a bargain… and a moment on the glass deck during the Night of the Beacons, when I’d wished for something more.

The futility in that wish surged through me, white-hot and cresting like a wave intent on destroying everything in its path. As I breathed, the air turned scalding, and I thought I would explode at any moment.

“Noa,” Grayson ordered. “Let go of the wall.”

His tone made my stomach drop. I eyed my hands, still clenched around the top of the wall. The wood smoldered. Curls of gray smoke slithered between my fingers.

“Breathe.” His voice was heavy with an Alpha command. “Flex your hands.”

I could do neither. Heat sizzled painfully. Blue lightning danced down my arms, leapt from the wall to the ground. The closest shrubs exploded.

I whipped my head toward the swirling, crackling flames—so greedy. Leaves burst into bright sparks and then dull ash, whirling upward like birds fleeing a disaster.

The trees were turning into flaming candles in the billowing smoke, glowing red, and I had the vague understanding that I was doing it, burning everything, and I couldn’t stop. Couldn’t pry my fingers from the charring wood.

The pain bent me over. I waited for the scream, rising in my throat.

But Grayson was there, his arms a constriction around me. “Let it out, Noa. Let it go.”

He asked the impossible and it stifled me—the knowledge. The truth of it all.

I’d been standing on the faille precipice since I was sixteen, afraid of the monster that lurked inside me. I’d been afraid to let it see me. Find me. I’d waited, year after year, fearing the moment when the monster rose up and I became what it was… I’d wanted to fall into the dark and keep falling until I disappeared, because at least it would be over and I’d be gone.

But then Grayson held out his hand. Offered hope.

And I’d fallen, anyway.

CHAPTER 8

Noa

“Shit, Gray—she’s burning the forest down!”

Mace’s voice. And if he was right, I was devastation incarnate. Worse than the monster I thought I was.

I shuddered so hard my teeth bit into my tongue. Around me, smoke and ruby flames spun in a pagan dance, leaping high into the blackened pine trees that swayed and moaned. As if trees reacted to pain.

When I inhaled, grittiness made me choke. Heat seared my skin, and all I could see through my slitted eyelids was red.

“She can’t turn it off,” Grayson growled. “She has to blow through it.”

“I warned you not to rush her.” Mace’s tone had gone taut and low. I could imagine the fury creasing his face.

Grayson’s voice. “I’m not fucking coddling her the way you do.”

He was so… cold. Tight. I was ruining everything between them, if they were fighting like this. The fire cracked and whooshed like a living thing. A feral creature, like me, out of control because I could not control what I was.

But then the destruction of a dread lord touched… overwhelmed. This man who had willingly tied himself to me. The one man who could ease my pain. Temper the anger.

He was the chill before the storm. The silent scream with no beginning, no end, only pure, rushing, striking strength. Rising power.

I closed my eyes and still—still I could see it, the beautifully brutal wave of energy as it swept from him and over me. Churning, a perilous eddy that wrapped around and around, draining oxygen from the fire until only smoldering embers floated in the midnight sky.

Grayson’s control was exquisite. Pure, and far beyond mine. He stood at my back with his hands on my wrists, his grip hard, possessive, containing what he owned. While all I had was another wave of heat barreling through me.

My back bowed with the effort to suppress it. My fingers were splayed, the tips curled like talons while Grayson held tight.

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