Page 81 of Tethered In Blood

Another whisper of laughter that was a layer of rusted metal dragging over stone. It tilted its head again, as though amused.“I know what you are,”it rasped.“More than you do.”

A chill slithered along my spine, and my instincts tightened their grip on me. My fingers itched to reach for steel.

The creature shifted through.The space between us bent, folding around something unseen and older than the thing standing before me.

“She calls your name in the dark.”

My pulse spiked.

“She dreams of you.”

I clenched my teeth.Ignore it.

“She fears for you.”

“And?”

It leaned forward with a grin in its voice.

“She will bleed for you, Fae.”

For me?

My grip tightened, and my nails bit into my gloves hard enough to draw blood. There was a slow creep of feeling beyond rage, beyond control. An older, deeper, and darker burning pulsed in my veins. It was a warning, a threat. The creature’s form trembled as it felt it, as if it recognized what stirred beneath my skin, and it hesitated.

Quinn’s voice tore through the night with raw urgency in the stillness. “Sinclaire!” Her voice slammed through me.

Quinn. Real. Desperate. Alive.

My body wrenched away from the creature in a single breath. The wheat blurred past in streaks of gold and black, brittle stalks snapping under my boots. The mansion appeared in the distance, too far, too damned far.

Faster.

Behind me, the air bent. The creature was shifting again. It slipped between spaces and pulled the world apart at its seams. I felt it press against my back and heard the whisper just out of sight. A low, grating sound enveloped my skull.“You will fail.”I pushed myself to move faster.

“You cannot fight what you do not understand.”The voice slithered beneath my skin, needling into the cracks, but I shoved it away. Quinn’s voice continued to ring in my ears. And that was the only thing that mattered. I pushed until my lungs burned and my legs ached. The mansion came into sharper focus. Light glowed in the upper windows of Quinn’s room. I needed to reach her. To get there now.

A shape flickered ahead, just beyond the fields, between me and the mansion. It wasn’t the thing from the field. No. It was a tall and staggering shadow.

It ripped toward me in a blur of jagged motion, faster than a beast that size had a right to be. A force of shattered stone and sheer malice slammed into my chest, knocking the air from my lungs. I hit the ground with a bone-rattling impact; the dirt beneath me was still warm, as if it remembered the thing that had risen from it. Its form was solid and shifting, brittle bones held together by the absence of light. The smell of decay curled around me, clawing at my senses as it leaned in close. The shriek of scraping metal twisted through my skull.

I snarled against the pressure, gritting my teeth as I urged my mind to focus.

Through the haze, Quinn burst through the mansion doors, her wild strands of hair sticking to her sweat-slicked face. In one hand, she clutched a bundle of herbs; in the other, she held a torch.

My stomach dropped.

Saints, no.

The words ripped from my throat.

“Cin crazui adaneth!”

You crazy woman!

She didn’t stop or falter. Her gaze locked onto mine, blazing with determination and fierce recklessness as she stormed forward, firelight dancing across her face. I snarled, shoving against the creature’s crushing weight.

“I told you to stay put!”

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