I fall to the ground. Hard. When I look up at the night sky, the moon is gone, replaced by the white face of the Winter wolf. The wolf howls, deep and mournful, but his maw is filled with blood. Has he just hunted or … The wolf coughs. Blood sputters across his jaw. It’s his blood, his blood…
The wolf in the sky gags again, and the blood pours out, enough to make the waterfall run red. There are figures standing on the wet rocks beneath the tumbling water. I know them. Help. Help. I want to cry the words out loud but there are spiderwebs over my mouth. Help. Help.
The figures turn around, and Dayton and Farron stare at me with empty eye sockets. They wave at me, slowly and in unison.
Then I’m tumbling, and I can’t remember where I was before, but it wasn’t here because here is Orca Cove, and this place feels familiar and unfamiliar all at once.
A rainy street. Pieces of broken wood and a destroyed book. A pickup truck with headlights like an evil face. A man touching me with greedy fingers.
Somehow, my mind forms a coherent thought: this isn’t a hallucination. This is a memory.
And that is so much worse.
The image shifts. My bedroom. Blood on a knife, on the ground. Tears and screaming and my own skin torn away from me.
No … No more. I don’t want these memories.
Then a strangled cry, one I wished I’d never have to hear again as my mate cradles his mother’s body. And they’re frozen, one by one, and there’s nothing I can do.
Stop! Stop!
This isn’t happening. I need to find Ezryn. The ground shifts again, and I’m back in the grove except the trees are closed in all around me and mud keeps swallowing my feet.
But I need to get to Ezryn.
“I didn’t, I didn’t, I didn’t.”
His voice. Each step fills my body with nausea, but I forge ahead.
“I’m coming for you,” I think I say. I hope I say.
He’s back under the willow tree. But the problem is it’s so covered with spiderwebs, and I don’t want to touch it.
Tears roll down my cheeks. When they fall to the ground, they’re like acid, creating craters in the earth. I’m scared to know what they’re doing to my face.
“I didn’t!” Ezryn cries out, a mournful howl. “I didn’t mean to.”
I suck in a breath and throw myself through the spiderweb. Icky fingers cling to my hair and skin. But he’s there, leaning against the trunk, hands digging at his helm.
“Ezryn, I’m here,” I say, placing my palms over his.
My heart feels like it’s imploding in on itself, a black hole bending all gravity. The rest of the world lurches away.
The grove again. Daytime. It looks different: more flowers, brighter. Ezryn’s here, still right in front of me.
“No, no, no,” he mumbles. “Get out. Get out!”
But it’s too late. I can feel it now—my consciousness has been left behind, and I’m here with him.
In his nightmare.
Or rather, I realize as I stumble out from beneath the cover of the willow tree, his memory.
There’s another Ezryn in pure white armor. I know it’s him, because though I can’t see his face, I can feel it, the way one feels the sun on their skin or the breeze through their hair.
There’s a woman: tall and broad of shoulder and hip. A long jade skirt pleats out from under an armored breastplate. And she wears the most stunning helmet I’ve ever seen: starlight silver with a narrowed visor angled like cat eyes.
She’s trying to grab his shoulders, but he’s staggering away from her. “You must control it, son!”
This Ezryn ripples, flashes of magic sparking off his fingers like fireworks. “I-I can’t!”
He pushes Princess Isidora, and my Ezryn does the same to me. The words are a haunting echo from them both: “Get out of here!”
But I can’t move. I can only watch in horror.
This nightmare was once real. I feel it in the threads binding me to Ezryn in this moment. I feel it pulsing through the air: the Blessing of Spring passed from mother to son.
A Blessing too powerful for the son to control.
“I can’t!” the past Ezryn cries and then he doubles over.
And erupts.
A guttural roar, a shockwave of power, and a pain in my heart so pure I fall to my knees. The grass in the grove shrivels, the trees wither, the leaves turn to ash in the breeze, and fish float to the surface of the pond.
And Princess Isidora cries out once, holding her throat, as she falls before Ezryn’s feet.
“No,” I whisper, my voice lost to the cry of the young fae man before me, clutching feverishly at the mother he killed.
And my Ezryn sinks to his knees beside me, silent.
“Murderer!” A new voice, a new figure among the dead trees. Kairyn. He turns and runs away.
Then more voices join the fray, coming from all around us: “Murderer! Murderer! Murderer!”
Some of them I recognize: Kairyn’s, Eldy’s, Kel’s.
My own.
The world is shifting again, the voices turning to cackles, the trees growing eyes. The lake is now a bubbling pool of lava. No, no, we can’t keep doing this. We have to get out. It needs to stop.
I need to stop it.
I struggle to my feet and look around, trying to see past what’s real and what’s not. The flowers … They got their pollen on us. I need to get it off.
Lava boils and pops. I told Ezryn he could trust me. I need to trust me.
I sprint straight into the fire.
51
Rosalina
Cold water rushes over me as I collapse into the lake. I plunge my head under again and again, scrubbing at my eyes, and gulping down the water to clear my throat.
With a gasp, I surge upward and look around. My brain is foggy, but my vision is clear. That fucking flower…
A growl rips from me as I stare at the purple flowers under the willow tree. Shooting my wrist out, thorns erupt, crashing under the roots of the plants, then smothering them. I won’t chance getting blasted with that pollen again.
An anguished cry sounds, and I spot Ezryn pacing in circles, clawing at his breastplate. “It was an accident! An accident!”
I need to get him in the water and get that pollen out of his face.
Heaving my soaking dress up into my arms, I sprint over to him. “Ez, listen to me. It’s Rosie. Come on, I’ll help you.” I touch his arm.
He staggers away. “Get away from me! I can’t control it!”
“You’re not hurting me,” I say calmly. “I’m not in danger. See? I’m okay. Come with me.”
“Stop, Kai, stop, I’m sorry, I’m sorry…” He slams a hand against his helm. “Get out of my fucking head!”
Shit, I didn’t want to do it this way, but I might have to. I twitch my wrists, feeling for the briars at my command. “Ez, forgive me for this—”
The tearing of earth sounds, and I jump. At the edge of the willow tree, my thorns shoot up, growing and writhing. Someone is using them.
My chest heaves, and a strange smile appears on my face.
Caspian.
I should feel afraid, but instead I’m relieved. He’ll help me save Ezryn. I know he will.
The briars fall away to reveal a figure.
Not Caspian.
A masked woman. Someone I’ve seen only once before in the Below.
The Nightingale.
52
Rosalina