Page 90 of Broken Shadows

I rub my sternum hard enough to bruise.

I.

Can’t.

Fucking.

Breathe.

Evie?

My witch laughs, her head thrown back as Rosa and a man stand with their backs to me, arms draped around each other with obvious familiarity, shoulders shaking with mirth.

I take in their location, twisting my neck to see around the edge of the frame.

I focus on Evie’s face. Her lips move, but I can’t make out the words.

Fuck. I need to know what she’s saying.

I close my shaking hands tighter around the mirror, struggling to keep on my feet. My eyes close as I will the portal to life and step through into the Human Realm.

My feet drag with every step toward Evie. It’s as if every drop of strength in my body disintegrated at once. I reach for her, but my opaque hand drops through her shoulder.

Why can’t I touch her?

My lips tremble, and I inhale sharply through my nose.

“Evie!”

My witch continues chatting animatedly with Rosa and the unknown man, but I only have eyes for her.

Words crack from my throat as I try again and again to touch Evie, to get her tofeel me. “Baby Girl, please…” A single tear spills over my lashes. “Can you hear me?”

Evie jumps off her stool, fixes her apron, then walksthroughme. My breathing gutters to shallow pants.

It’s as if she’s forgotten my very existence,

I blink and slap a palm against a glass surface.

No.

How am I back here?

I slam the side of my fist against the mirror, whipping my head around frantically, vague, low saturated surroundings blur around me.

The Shadow Realm? But she freed me?

Air rushes into my lungs as I gasp, slithering bodies crawling over me, but nothing’s changed.

Forgotten… once more. Pressure builds on my chest, a heavy weight spreading across all my extremities, and my pulse weakens. But just as I allow my eyelids to drop, I see a pair of familiar eyes framed by dark lashes in my mind—Evie. She could be facing the same thing I am.

I suck in a breath and roll onto my side, dislodging several sets of fangs from my flesh. My body aches as I move, the overwhelming quantity of injuries throbbing in tandem, then burst from the pile of wriggling bodies.

I turn on my heel and pump my legs as fast as they will go down the sloped hill, trees passing by in a blur.

Sweat runs down my back as I peek over my shoulder, but no snakes followed. Thank fuck.

“Lorcan!”

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