Page 297 of Cursed Evermore
Everything except Wolfe.
And without him, none of it mattered. Every shield, every ward, every comfort felt hollow without the one person who bound it all together.
Through the bond, he’d told the others what had happened. I filled in the rest.
The guys were out looking for him, hoping he was somewhere in this vast wasteland. Sirril and Arielle remained with me.
Sirril did his best to cheer me up with food I couldn’t bear to eat. Arielle tried to…make me feel better. Less bad. Less guilty.
I’d been sitting on the floor by the window, contemplating. I hadn’t slept since we’d walked into this strange house situated in this netherworld.
Though it was dark outside, the time piece on the wall showed a new day had broken. Four more days until my next reset.
I closed my eyes, and for the millionth time, I blamed myself for how badly I’d messed everything up.
Messed up?
No. Creating a mess was what I did that night when I summoned the army of frogs and turned the furniture into animals.Thatwas a mess.
This situation was nothing like that. The better way to put it was I fucked up.
I’d fucked everything up by exposing myself to the enemy, almost got myself kidnapped, and I’d hurt Wolfe deeply.
If only I had told someone about Zyrra sooner. Gods,if only.
I had so many opportunities to mention her. And the fact that things didn't quite add up should have been a giveaway thatsomething wasn’t right. The biggest of all, though, was that no one talked about her.
I’d been around everyone long enough to have heard something about Zyrra. But there was nothing. Not even a whisper.
She was treated with the same silence reserved for the dead.
Because she was.
Blessed Mother. I still couldn’t believe it.
If only I’d spoken up, someone would have told me the truth.
And things still didn’t add up. Zyrra was a ghost. I’d been speaking to a ghost the whole time, but why did she need the ring?
And what was truly going on?
There were too many moving parts of the situation to keep track.
On the one hand, there was my father, who appeared to be working with the rebels. Then there was Zyrra, who broke into the housewiththe rebels to get me because I could track the ring—though our tracking spell hadn’t worked.
Everyone wanted the ring. Including my father, who had it. Except he had the unfortunate luck of being whisked away with it to only the Gods knew where.
More and more, it looked like Father had been initially working with these people and must have decided he wanted the ring for himself. Now they wanted it back, and I was more tangled in this disaster than I could ever have known.
The door to the bedroom opened. I opened my eyes quickly and sat up. Bastian and Arielle walked in, their faces still somber. Nevertheless, my hopes rose in anticipation that they had some news on Wolfe.
“Did you find him?” I asked.
Bastian walked ahead of Arielle and shook his head. He came over and crouched beside me. Arielle sat on the edge of the bed.
“I’m sorry. We can’t find him anywhere,” Bastian said with a gentle sigh. “He doesn’t seem to be in this… realm, and we can’t feel him through our bond.”
I couldn’t feel him, either. Not through the shackles nor desire.
