Page 43 of Queen of the Wicked
By nightfall, I am too exhausted to keep walking. I collapse beneath the bent arm of an old oak, curling into the folds of my cloak. The forest breathes around me, restless but indifferent, as though testing whether I belong here or not.
Sleep drags me under, cruel and quick.
In my dreams, Rowan laughs, the sound rich and dangerous, his wings glinting with iridescent light. Kaius looks at me with those impossible crimson eyes, steady and eternal, as though nothing could break him.
I reach for them both.
But when my fingers graze theirs, they crumble into ash.
I wake choking on a sob, the taste of smoke in my throat. My hands claw at the earth beneath me, pulling up handfuls of wet leaves until my nails split.
“I can’t do this,” I whisper again, hoarse.
The days begin to blur together.
I walk. I stumble. I curse the sky and the roots that trip me. I drink from demons I have no name for, their blood bitter and sickly. My body grows thinner and weaker, but the magic inside me swells, pressing harder, hungrier, until every step feels like a negotiation for mercy with the evil beneath my ribs.
Sometimes, I hear voices in the wind. Kaius calling my name, Rowan laughing, Saddiq’s steady warning. Each time, I whip my head around, heart hammering, only to find the forest empty.
Loneliness gnaws sharper than hunger.
I start speaking aloud just to keep the silence from consuming me. I tell my boys how much I miss them. I confess secrets of my human life I never got to share. I sing them songs I learned in the desert.
The trees absorb it all, and I never get an answer back.
But the Well hears me, too.
Its growl grows clearer, coaxing:Stop fighting. Stop grieving. You will never be alone if you surrender.
Sometimes, in the heavy hours just before dawn, I almost listen.
It happens on the seventh night.
The air grows thick, clinging to my skin as though I’ve stepped into a river of shadow. The trees crowd closer, their branches curling inward like hands desperate to cage me.
I stop walking. My heart hammers.
Because I hear something.
Not the Well’s whisper this time, butreal. A crunch of leaves, a shift of weight on the forest floor. Someone—something—moving through the trees.
I conjure a dagger in my hands, my body coiling tight with the kind of terror that leaves no room for thought.
“Show yourself,” I snarl, though my voice shakes.
The sound comes again, closer now, too deliberate to be an animal. I lift my hand, summoning what little control I have over the storm in my veins. Dark light sears against my skin, ready to spill outward.
And then—
My bondburns. It burns like it’s been lit on fire.
It flares to life across my forearm, sudden and searing, like molten iron pressed to skin long gone numb. I gasp, nearly dropping the dagger. The pain is sharp, but beneath it pulses something else.
Recognition. Familiarity.Relief.
A tether snapping tight after too long stretched thin.
The line bursts into a shade of precious gold. My knees buckle. My lungs seize. I clutch the line with my free hand as if I can hold onto it, as if gripping it will keep it from slipping away again.
