What Lies Beyond the Veil (Of Flesh & Bone, #1)(26)

But the pain never came.

I opened my eyes to watch as Loris tried to pull his sword free from the ball of swirling light held between my hands. Tendrils of it climbed up over the hilt, twining around his wrist and up his arm while I watched on like a spectator. The icy fury in my hands was so cold it burned as a flame spread through my chest and the white fingers of light seared through Loris’s leathers to get to his skin beneath.

His eyes widened in a moment of shock, and then his mouth dropped open in a silent scream. “Estrella,” he gasped, and I released a loud sob as Brann took a step toward me.

“Don’t,” I warned him. There was no controlling the power that came from within me, nothing to stop the instinctive protection that acted without my permission. “Stop,” I begged the magic, whimpering as those vines of white crept up over Loris’s neck and touched his face. His brown eyes filled with white, the skin on his face cracking, and he seemed to age before my eyes. And all I could do was watch in shock as I drained every hint of life from his body.

As the thing that had claimed my body used me as a weapon.

My old friend’s head twisted to the side suddenly, the snap of his neck echoing through the silent woods, and his body crumpled to the forest floor. By the time he touched the brittle leaves of autumn, he was nothing but a pile of snow on the ground.

The older guard stared down in surprise at what had been one of his men, his brow furrowing as his mind tried to make sense of what he’d seen. Of what I’d done, that even I couldn’t understand.

“I don’t want to hurt you,” I said, shaking my head from side to side. The magic in me didn’t care about what I wanted, only about keeping me alive, and preserving my safety until the male who commanded it could find me.

When the guard struck, I threw my weight back to the forest floor to try to spare his life, but the vines of white took what they wanted anyway, wrapping around his throat and squeezing. He dropped his sword to clutch at them, desperate with the need to breathe past the suffocating embrace of the magic. He soon joined the pile of snow by my feet as I let out a strangled sob. The single remaining Mist Guard retreated, hurrying back to Mistfell and safety from the power taking control of me.

It had all happened so quickly. They were there one moment, ready to kill me to save me from what would come, and then they were just...gone.

“We have to move,” Brann said, but he kept his distance and didn’t take my hand.

“I-I—” I tried to find words to communicate the emptiness that filled my chest. What I’d done could never be forgiven.

“Move!” he ordered, the sharp sound of his voice through the woods snapping me out of my moment.

Others would follow when they realized Loris and the other guard hadn’t returned.

I didn’t want to kill them, too.





8





Everything ached. My body throbbed with each and every step that took us farther from the village that had been our entire world. Leaving my mother behind without anyone to care for her wasn’t something that I understood how to accept, looking at Brann where he walked by my side.

He belonged with her. I was supposed to be dead anyway.

As the hours passed, wandering through the night that had come in the middle of the day, I grew more and more resolved to make Brann return home. There would be no one to protect our mother when the Fae crossed the mist and came to Nothrek once again. No one to stop them from cutting her down along with the rest of Mistfell in their hunt for the Fae Marked.

I’d need to do whatever it took to send him back to take care of her while I continued forward on my own, running until there was nowhere left to go.

“You have to go back,” I gasped. My lungs burned with the cold, heaving with exertion as we ran through the woods. Brann raced at my side, his longer legs keeping pace easier than mine, and I had to put everything I had into the deadly sprint to keep up with him. Pain tore through my side, the muscles cramping as everything inside me seized.

I hadn’t had a moment to rest or recover from the magic that had changed me as the Veil fell, not in the hours since we’d started running. There wasn’t time for such luxuries when my life was on the line.

Branches tore at my face when the path faded into nothing but the haunting shadows of darkness, and I couldn’t tell if the rustling leaves were the ones beneath my feet or if something else was in the woods with us.

All manner of animals lived in them, from the rabbits that had no doubt made a dash for their warrens, to the rock trolls that lurked in the caves during the day. Their heavy footfalls that shook the ground would have felt different from a rustle, but the arachne and snakes could have kept pace alongside us in the dark without ever being seen.

“I can’t,” Brann said, and even though I couldn’t see him, I could swear I felt him shake his head in denial. “Listen to me, Estrella. No matter what happens, you cannot let the Fae catch you. Do you understand?”

“I know that,” I wheezed, panting through the effort to keep up with him. How he wasn’t even the slightest bit winded, I would never understand. Brann had always been the fastest boy in our village. One of the strongest fighters, even though he had no interest in joining the Mist Guard.

Pain exploded across my forehead suddenly as something struck me, a flare of white spreading across my vision. I stumbled to the side and raised my arm to touch the thick branch that had knocked my head back. Falling to my knees, I touched the bleeding wound at my hairline and wiped the moisture on the cloak I couldn’t even see in the pitch black.