Page 45 of Wrath of the Fae

‘This proves nothing.’

‘What happened?’ Reid asks. ‘Where did you go?’

‘I think they’re fixing the portals,’ I manage as my vision blurs. ‘I felt it. It wants me back. It almost had me! I saw them.’

‘Who? What did you see?’ he asks, brushing my hair from my face.

‘I saw Ivan. He’s a monster.’

Darker. It’s getting darker.

‘They’re fixing the portal, Reid. It’s pulling me back. Ivan is pulling me… he’s…’

‘Where? Where are the portals?’

I can’t manage my words. It’s taking all I have not to empty the limited contents of my stomach all over him.

‘Where?!’ he demands.

I grab him, suddenly filled with a huge pressure. I fear my head will explode. His eyes widen as he watches me.

‘What’s wrong?’

‘I… I don’t know. It’s like… Something is hooked into me-’

I get struck by the same bright light that shot up the spire atop Ivan’s arch. It hits my chest in a straight beam from the sky.

I fall. Reid holds me as I convulse in his arms as a smooth trail of gold slowly seeps from my body and travels along the light and back into the sky.

‘What the fuck is happening to her, Lucca?!’ Reid demands, filled with utter fear as he clings to me. ‘What have you done?’

‘I haven’t done anything, you prick!’ Lucca shouts back, trying to keep me from hurting myself.

I jolt and twist so violently that I feel a rib break.

‘Shit,’ Reid hisses when he hears the snap. ‘I can’t lose her again. I fucking can’t. Stay with me, Raven. I’m fucking begging you! I never gave up on you. Not for a second. I need you to know that. I’ve been waiting for you to come back. That’s why I wasn’t surprised. That’s why I couldn’t stop smiling. Because I knew you were still there. I’d been dreaming of you, my love. Cyrus and I both. Every night for two years. We’ve been dreaming of you.’

I grab his arm as my back arches, the pain at its peak.

There’s a ferocious roar from the sky, and everything shakes. The stream. The cliffs. The trees. We struggle to stand as we’re thrown about like an earthquake is tearing the land below us apart.

Then the sky illuminates in a blinding flash. The air fills with electricity, making my skin hum, and the taste of batteries fills my mouth.

And it stops. Just like that, the eternal night returns. No more golden shimmer leaves me, and I remain whole.

Utterly broken and spent, but whole.

Reid searches my face in desperation, pleading with me to say something.

I have no strength to speak. All I can do is look up to where a streak of pure white cuts across the sky above us.

There’s a crack in the sky.

‘What the fuck is that?’ Lucca murmurs, staring upwards.

My eyes close, and everything goes black.

eight

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