Page 134 of The Nightmare Bride
Olivian found my gaze and held it. So many things simmered in his eyes—terror, fury, agonized helplessness—and I tried to communicate my intent with a look. To assure him I’d give my life for Amryssa’s. Maybe I was successful, because he gave me a bare nod.
“Please, Harlowe.” His plea was soft. Gentle, even.
“I’ll save her,” I said.
Kai made for the door. I hesitated, then bade Olivian and Merron goodbye. I tried not to make it sound like the permanent kind, even though it was.
Merron looked stricken, but I stepped into the angry night and shut the doors.
Out in the drive, clouds piled above the trees, staining the sky purple. Kai scanned the swamp. “Which way?”
I flung out a finger. “There.” In the far distance, below the storm’s epicenter, the overgrown oak swayed in the wind.
My skin tightened. I’d try my best not to fall apart out there, but I couldn’t be sure I’d succeed. “Whatever happens”—I caught at Ky’s wrist—“just...know that I love you, all right?”
He froze, his eyes wide, his nostrils flared.
Despite everything, I grinned. At long last, I’d gotten the upper hand, if only for one brief and shining moment.
“Don’t give me that look,” I said. “You knew.”
He recovered swiftly, his mouth curving. “Of course Iknew. I just didn’t think you’d ever say it. And I love you, too. Every ferocious, stubborn inch of you. Which you also knew.”
I bundled the words up tight, tucking them against my heart, the most priceless treasures in my possession.
Seven hells, it was going to kill me to leave a world in which he could have been mine. Literally kill me.
But I had to. For Amryssa.
I held out my hand, and Kai caught my fingers in his. I savored the feel. “Come on. Let's go thwart a hero. And a goddess.”
His nod was swift, full of intent. “Let’s.”
We ran.
The cypresses and tupelos thrashed, their glow taking on a frenzied quality. The nightmare’s light illuminated Kai’s face in one moment, then abandoned him to shadow the next.
I pushed my body to its limit. I dodged branches and dashed through puddles, my lungs snatching at the same wind I was displacing. The only thing that felt solid was Kai’s hand. Everything else wavered, as if the veil draped over reality might rupture at any moment.
The forest was familiar, but not. It was the same swamp I’d grown up in, but changed by the rot, and I seemed to be barreling toward both my future and my past, toward some catastrophic epicenter where the two intersected.
The storm boomed overhead. My steps faltered, then recovered. I was yesterday’s Harlowe—the orphan, unwanted—but also today’s—a wife, and beloved. And despairing. And desperate, desperate, desperate.
Curtains of moss whipped past. Glowing mud splattered my skirts. Insects chattered in the underbrush, the sound invading my skull in a way that told me they weren’t actually there. Neither were the things rising from the dark. They belonged to Zephyrine, to a mother’s loss given hellish life.
Ahead, a deer stumbled from the underbrush, a misshapen creature with backward-jointed legs and too many teeth to count. Its head was upside-down.
Not real. I squeezed my eyes shut and angled a shoulder into it without slowing. The thing burst into purple mist as I passed through.
Around me, the nightmare screamed.You are nothing. Worthless.
No,I told it.I matter.
Its garbled voice faded. Moments later, Kai and I reached a clearing. In the middle, a majestic oak rose toward the raging sky, haloed by a moat of firm ground.
The holy tree.
But not just that. Something was here—something vast and dimensionless that threw my bodily functions into turmoil and made my teeth buzz in their sockets.
