All right, beast. I need your strength.
The dragon shoved power into my muscles. The wind pushed at my back, propelling me toward Ness. The trees parted and I caught sight of her small form. She slowed, her feet threatening to tangle. She wavered, likely exhausted from shifting back-to-back today.
When she dropped to the mossy ground, I stopped and knelt beside her. This time, when I pulled her into my arms, she didn’t fight me. The storm relented, little by little, as I pulled her into my embrace. Unable to hold onto her hound form, Ness shifted back in my arms. She twisted, pressing her face into my shirt.
“It should have been me,” she whispered before sobs took over.
There was no way to ensure that anything happened the way we wanted it to. Ness couldn’t control what Alvin did. She couldn’t stop him from finding new ways to torment her. I was surprised it’d taken him this long to find Ness’s breaking point.
I wondered where he’d gone. Inside the house, it was as if he’d disappeared completely. The witch had a number of spells over that place. He could have used any one of them to slip away unnoticed. If I could pay the witch another visit and offer her more money, then maybe we could have the spells undone. Alvin would be defenseless.
But I didn’t have that kind of money.
No one here could buy the witch’s favor. We had to find ways around the spells.
“Cerri will heal,” I told Ness. “She’s alive, and that’s the most important thing to remember right now. We can take her home where she can whip up a healing potion. She’s going to be fine because you went in there to save her.”
“I need to stop. I can’t do this anymore. I can’t risk the few people who actually care about me. This isn’t how it’s supposed to happen.”
Ness was right, but there wasn’t anything we could do to change that, either. We could only move forward with what we had left. She didn’t want to hear that, though. I kept reassuring her that Cerri would be okay. Her friends were just as strong as her. They wouldn’t break.
“I don’t know how to make this up to her,” Ness said into my shirt.
“You don’t have to make anything up to her. You already did everything you could.”
Ness sniffled. She still had an iron grip on my shirt. I pulled her closer and folded my legs beneath us so I could cradle her in my lap. That way, I could gently rock her back and forth. Here, she was safe. I wouldn’t let anyone hurt her.
I wished I could tell her how I felt, but I was still afraid of my own past. Morgan would catch up to me eventually. He wasn’t going to let anything get in the way of his revenge. If I told Ness how I felt and she returned those feelings, then I would be pulling her into a situation that could be even more dangerous than the one she was already in.
I would not risk getting her hurt.
Go figure, I would fall for this impetuous little hound. She’d tricked me into staying here. I’d gotten caught in the middle of several power struggles because of her. Yet, I wasn’t sure that I wanted it any other way.
My beast loved Lakesedge. The dragon in me had been promised a territory of its own. That territory should have been Thunder Pass, but those days were long gone. At this point, I wasn’t even sure the beast would have wanted Thunder Pass. There was a chance Lakesedge had been waiting for me all along.
Was this what the witch had in mind when she sent me to find Ness? I would never know the future the witch had envisioned. I had the present and nothing more.
“Are you ready to get up?” I asked Ness.
She grumbled and wiped her tears on my shirt. I rolled my eyes but didn’t tell her to stop. There was no point now that she’d cried all over it. I was just glad that she’d finally stopped.
Distantly, I heard something. Branches cracked. Someone whimpered. My head spun, but I couldn’t see past the thick foliage of the woods around us. Though I sniffed the air, the wind didn’t carry any scent to me, not even when I used my arcana to shift the direction of the wind.
Uneasy, I kept my eyes on the woods as Ness pulled away and stood. She swayed on her feet. I leapt up to steady her. The scent of wine and flowers rolled over me before I could reach out to Ness.
I gritted my teeth and bit back a curse. A cry in the woods caught my attention. I recognized the sound of Janessa’s suffering. Though I tried to warn Ness, my voice failed me. Beryl’s arcana filled my mouth with the taste of fruit and wine. It dribbled down the back of my throat and made my head spin.
Leave your puppy behind this time, Beryl whispered in my mind.
I snarled and grasped for Ness. She reached out for me, too, but the veil shoved its way between us before we could grab one another. The red fabric wrapped around me and yanked me away from Ness.
My head swam. My eyes drifted shut as the taste of faery wine rolled across my tongue. It made my stomach clench tight. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d tasted my food. Everything since that day had been ash on my tongue. I craved flavor and the satisfaction that came with it.
But Beryl wasn’t going to win this fight. Flavor meant nothing in the long run. Even if I couldn’t taste anything ever again, I would keep eating human food just to spite the horrid fae queen for trying to manipulate me.
My feet touched the ground and Beryl’s insufferable grin appeared above me.