Chapter Thirteen WITCHING MOON

Chapter Thirteen

WITCHING MOON

Week Two, Day Three

Year 3000

Ash knew the moment Sachi vanished.

He was awake before his arm, which had been draped over her, hit the mattress. The depression beside him in the pillow still smelled like Witchwood roses. He could still feel the warmth of her last breath, exhaled against his shoulder. Sleep made him groggy as he groped at the blankets and flung them away, his mind scrambling for meaning in the space between his body and Zanya's.

"Sachi?" Zanya rolled to her knees, sliding one hand through the emptiness, as if she couldn't believe Sachi wasn't in it. "Where—?"

Realization hit her at the same time full wakefulness did.

"Zanya, wait !" Ash flung out a hand, but it was too late. Shadows gathered around her in a violent storm, tearing through reality with the force of Zanya's panic. His hand swung through air, but a heartbeat later Zanya exploded from the shadows, swaying on her knees, her eyes nothing but blackness as she curled her hands into fists.

"I can feel her," she snarled, and the shadows contracted again. Pressure built like the warning before a violent storm, and the shadows ejected Zanya with so much force she flew off the bed.

"Zanya, you can't—"

She was already scrambling to her feet. Shadows stabbed through the room like daggers, weaving around her. "She's right there . I can feel her, but something is blocking me."

She tried again, and again—like a disoriented bird battering itself against a glass window. Ash kicked free of the blankets and lunged for her, but only succeeded in stumbling through the empty space left behind before the shadows spat her out again. He grabbed at her shoulders. "Zanya, stop !"

Tears streaked her cheeks. "She's scared! I can feel it! Wherever she is, she's terrified ! I just need—"

She collapsed into shadows again. But this time, she exploded back out of them as if thrown by a giant hand. Livid marks crisscrossed her arms and her face, glittering with painful menace.

"You're hurting yourself," he growled.

She shook her head. "I don't care."

He lunged again, but she had already slipped into the writhing shadows. A scream rose from within their depths. Zanya's scream, echoing down an endless tunnel. It raked claws of despair down his spine as it grew louder.

That was a scream of frustration. Of rage and denial. Of agony .

The shadows exploded into mist. Zanya hit the floor, her body limp. Ash dove for her and turned her over, feeling frantically for her pulse. Her heart was beating too fast for her rasping breaths, and those glowing lines looked like scars, only they bled freely as he swept her up into his arms and bolted for the door to the bridge.

"Inga!"

The stairs would take too long. Wings of fire sprouted before he hit the center of the consort's bridge. Zanya's body melted through his shimmering arms only to be caught with painstaking gentleness in his massive claws. She'd never looked as fragile as she did now, small and bloody and painfully still , the only movement her long black hair trailing down as he launched himself into the sky with a commanding roar that rattled the entire castle.

One powerful sweep of his wings brought him to the Godwalk. Inga was already in front of her tower, a robe half-tied around her body and her own dark hair flying wildly in the wind from his wings. There was no room for his dragon form in the space between buildings, so he transformed in another gout of fire, clutching Zanya protectively to his chest as they plummeted to the cobblestone walkway.

Stone shattered under his feet as he landed. He ignored it and spun to Inga. Shock held her immobile for a terrifying moment, then she shook her head and finished tying her robe. "Take her inside, at once. To my workroom."

Ash barely saw the brightly colored garden that formed Inga's courtyard. Ethereal butterflies fluttered out of his way as he raced through it and into the main castle. Where the Huntress had set up her war room in the matching tower, the Witch had built some fantastical combination of a greenhouse, a still room, an experimental laboratory, and a sickroom.

"Here."

Inga unfurled a clean white sheet over a waist-high wooden table. Ash set Zanya down as gently as he could, smoothing her hair back from her bloodied cheeks. Inga's voice was soft behind him as she spoke to the servant who'd trailed them inside.

"Fetch Aleksi. Hurry."

"Elevia and Ulric, too," Ash rasped.

The metallic scent of Zanya's blood made his own boil. He'd been so focused on her panic that there had been no room for his own. But it raged beneath the fragile shell of calm he'd constructed, a maelstrom so vast it could swallow this whole castle and return these mountains to dust.

Somehow, he had to say the words without breaking. "Sachi is gone."

"Gone?"

Ash focused very closely on Zanya's forehead, on coaxing back the lingering, stubborn pieces of hair that stuck to her bloody skin. He must not break. "She vanished from our bed. Zanya tried to follow her, and this was the result. She said that something was blocking her. It looked as if she was slamming into a wall and being thrown back."

Inga set the tip of her fingernail beneath Zanya's breasts and whispered a word. Her gentle magic prickled over Ash's skin as she dragged her nail down, cutting the shirt all the way down to its hem. It fell open, revealing the same pattern of crisscrossing wounds marring Zanya's skin. They still bled sluggishly, the smears of it concealing the actual wounds until an assistant brought a bowl of warm water with a wet cloth. Inga wiped away the blood, leaving oddly raised marks that glittered an iridescent silver.

"Almost like a web." Inga traced one of the scars with her fingertip.

Ash felt his fragile shell cracking. "I don't care what it is," he snarled. Zanya's light-brown skin usually had a healthy, sun-kissed glow, but she was drawn and sallow now. The restless energy that had so plagued her had been replaced by a stillness that stoked panic in his soul. "Just tell me you can fix it."

"I can try," Inga responded, still stroking one of those shimmering scars.

One of Zanya's hands spilled from the table, her fingers clenched as if reaching for Sachi. Ash folded his hand around hers and hissed in shock. "Her skin is cold."

"I know. I think she's fighting the ... infection."

"The infection?"

Inga held out her hand and twisted her wrist. A familiar knife appeared there, dark and as long as Zanya's forearm, with distinctive shimmering waves of midnight in the steel. A remnant of the way it had been forged—and the dark power that had gone into the forging.

Void-steel.

The last time Ash had seen that knife, Zanya had been trying to kill him with it. How it had come into Inga's possession or why she'd kept it was beyond his imagining. But the presence of the only kind of weapon that could easily slay a member of the High Court fractured the brittle shell holding back his panic.

He leapt onto the table, hovering protectively over Zanya and forcing Inga back with a growl. A mistake. Vivid pink flared around her deep-purple eyes, the only warning before her hand shot out with a hiss.

Fingernails as sharp as daggers pressed into his cheeks as Inga gripped his face and stared into his eyes. "Every moment you delay only does her greater harm."

It took too long to make the sounds form words he understood. The shattering had unleashed a roaring in his ears that he couldn't seem to silence.

Sachi was gone.

Zanya was hurt.

Sachi was gone .

Gone, gone, gone.

"Elevia!" Inga's relieved voice broke through the whirlwind, but it swept away whatever she said next. He could barely track what was happening, only that Elevia was suddenly there , the Huntress in all her immortal fury, and the pained sympathy in her eyes didn't stop her from grabbing him by the hair and hauling him away from Zanya.

They landed on the cold tile floor with a force that rattled his bones. He tried to move, but Elevia braced a hand on his chest. "You have to let her work, Ash."

"I just want to be able to see."

Elevia cast an assessing look between the table and Ash. Only then did she climb to her feet, and it was the Huntress who reached down to offer him a hand. "Take a few steps back, then, and give them space."

He didn't waste time on promises he was in no state of mind to keep, but he did accept her outstretched hand. Once on his feet, he could see that Aleksi had joined Inga at the table, disheveled from sleep but attentive as she placed seeds from one of her thousands of vials onto his palm.

Her murmured words reached Ash, their tone intense. "I need sufficient for every wound. Will there be enough?"

Aleksi touched the small, dark seeds. "I will make it work."

"They're old, Aleksi. Almost a thousand years."

"I will make it work," he said again, then closed his fingers over the seeds in his palm.

The Lover used the full scope of his powers so rarely that most people thought the old descriptions of him walking across blasted grounds with flowers growing in his footprints were mere stories. And it was true that Aleksi preferred to let the natural rhythms of nature take their course. But when he wanted, he could stand on barren ground, reach for the tiniest scraps of stubborn life within it, and coax it into vibrant, beautiful being.

Tiny shoots of green appeared from between his fingers, twining around them as they climbed and grew faster. A vine circled his wrist and climbed his arm, growing thicker as more offshoots flourished. And as those expanded, tiny midnight buds appeared. They dotted every vine, wrapping around his shoulders and sprawling across his chest. He held out his other arm, and the largest vine shot down it, spiraling and spiraling until the largest bud came to rest on his palm.

It opened, dark petals unfurling one by one to reveal something rather like a Witchwood rose, except for the colors that sent a shiver down Ash's spine. Instead of the vivid pinks and purples and teals the Witch favored, these petals had a glossy black sheen with deep blue and purple overtones, so dark they seemed to grab hungrily at any available light, as if to consume it.

Sweat beaded Aleksi's upper lip, the strain of exertion tightening his eyes and the corners of his usually lush mouth.

A familiar growl rattled the room, and Ulric rounded the table, his eyes glowing gold. "Are those what I think they are?"

"Void roses," Inga agreed, not looking at any of them. "And yes, I know that even having the seeds in my possession is a danger. But we're lucky I do."

Void roses did more than make them uncomfortable. Flowers that had been cultivated with power drawn from the Endless Void retained properties that made them outright dangerous to those with a strong connection to the Dream. Concentrated sufficiently, the scent alone could induce a mental fog that bordered on delirium. And the petals themselves ...

Before Void roses had been all but obliterated from the Sheltered Lands, nearly a dozen of the youngest Dreamers had died from poisons distilled from those eerie blooms. If Sachi's family had managed to unearth their existence and provide her with access, she might well have been able to kill Ash on their bonding night with the single kiss they'd shared.

Inga murmured something to one of her assistants, who immediately began to pluck the full blooms from the vines that wound around Aleksi. With that taken care of, she turned back to Zanya and pulled out the knife once again. Then she hesitated, glancing at Ash. "You may not want to watch this. Threads of the Dream itself are trapped beneath her skin. I plan to cut them free."

He shook his head, rejecting the words. Rejecting this reality.

How had he fallen asleep with both of them and woken up in this nightmare? Sachi swept away, possibly into enemy hands, and Zanya sprawled on a table like death, ready to be sliced open.

He stumbled and fell to his knees, his panic and his rage churning so hard that the lamps in the room flared wildly. In the corner, the fire overflowed Inga's little hearth, causing another assistant to leap out of its path with a yelp of terror.

"Ash!"

He slammed his hands down onto the stone, begging for the grounding comfort of the earth. But the world trembled beneath him, as uncertain and anxious as he was. The whole room rattled.

where where where

But he couldn't answer the world. He'd lost their dream. He'd lost the Dream.

"Ulric!"

"I'm looking!"

"In the third drawer!"

Fire spilled over the lanterns like fountains overflowing. The castle shook, and Inga's voice rose shrilly. "Elevia!"

"Got it!"

Elevia was suddenly there , in front of him—blonde hair and golden skin but nothing like Sachi. She wasn't sunshine and smiles, but the implacable truth of the hunt. The truth, whether you wanted it or not.

"She's gone," Ash rasped. The full impact of it, previously blunted by Zanya's peril, slammed into him as he tasted that truth on his tongue. "Sachi's gone . He has her."

"You can't know that," Elevia cautioned.

But he did. He knew it. In the deepest part of him, the part that screamed for him to form wings and launch himself directly at the Empire. He didn't care how vast the lands were, or what awaited. He'd raze the place to dust if they tried to keep her from him.

"Elevia, I can't do this if he's shaking the tower."

Ash had prized his patience and his self-control for thousands of years. He'd sat above the humans, refusing to be drawn into their games, because his power was too much and their lives should be their own. But that control had been unraveling from the moment Sachi entered his life. She had been unraveling it, walking into his bedroom, into his lair , teasing and taunting the Dragon, begging for him to be exactly what he was and no less.

Zanya would expect him to act. Zanya, who'd held the power of a god in her hands for mere weeks and had almost shattered herself trying to go after Sachi. What would she do when she woke and found him still here?

"I have to go," he growled, jerking against Elevia's grip. The Huntress only tightened her hold on him. And then Ulric was there, too, both of them holding him down as he called fire to form wings that would carry him to his ancient enemy and end this once and for all.

"I'm sorry," one of them said. He didn't know which, because something sharp bit at his neck, and ice flooded beneath his skin as the world faded into darkness.