Page 88 of Curse of Thorns
Then, I can feel him. A hand presses to my stomach, warm at first—then hot. Searing pain explodes over my body.
Rev
Istand there, slack-jawed as two wraiths fight like a damn hurricane over Caelynn.
What. The. Hell.
I clamber over to Caelynn’s side, and my stomach sinks as I look into her unfocused eyes. She doesn’t even see him. Her gaze is pinned to the two wraiths. One claiming to be her friend. One claiming to be my brother.
The shadows cast over her face makes her look like a wraith too, the haunted distant expression. Hopelessness. Fear. Pain.
Black blood bubbles from the wound in her side, caking into the dirt beneath her. It’s all over her hands and even on her face. Shit, whatever is happening with her body, it’s not good. And that’s beside the wraiths battling over her life just feet away. Or the wall of wraiths less than a mile off, now stirring from their quiet slumber.
If I don’t do something, Caelynn will die. Here. In minutes.
My stomach twists.
I don’t know what to feel about her or the wraith’s clashing just feet away. If that being really is my brother, maybe he deserves his vengeance. But...it’s Caelynn. And bad or not—she’s mine.
So, I allow instinct to take over. Even if it’s only the magic pushing me, even if what I feel for her isn’t real, I won’t let this be how it ends.
I thrust my magic deep into her body, caressing every ounce of her essence. I close my eyes at how good it feels, the light that pulls at me, that fills my soul, sating the hunger deep within. The aching, the longing I’ve been ignoring since the day she walked into the Flicker Court before the trials. Since she walked into my life.
I throw my head back with the pleasure and warmth that fills me at this intimacy.
A familiar voice—even after all this time—breaks me from my ecstasy with a scream. “I will kill you.”
The darker wraith leaps at me, his stinging power knocks me away from Caelynn.
I brace my short fall with my elbows, and I look up to see skeleton birds circling below the dark brown clouds swirling over us. And not far off, that wall of wafting wraiths is watching eagerly, drawing closer inch by inch.
“Reahgan,” I say sharply. I can’t wrap my mind around anything at the moment.
Could my brother possibly be a wraith? Only evil souls become wraiths in death, and my brother was not—
I shake my head, so confused, but I don’t have time to think it through. I have to make a decision now. “Reahgan,” I say again. “We have to go.” I point to the army of shifting wraiths pressing toward us, picking up speed.
