Chapter 29

Twenty-Nine

WESLEY

F inn stared at me, head tilted, expression troubled. “How? Is that a fae thing?”

“As much as I’d like to say I know everything about the fae, they are as different as humans. Crazy powerful, and often sociopaths, but varied and secretive bastards.”

“Well…” He trailed off at a loss for what to say. He picked up his discarded sweatpants, but they were beyond dirty. “I guess one positive from all of this is I seem to be able to eat the food here?”

“Not dying of starvation is good,” I agreed. “We should find some water.” I peered out over the wild overgrowth of the forest around the statues and didn’t see any pools of water, though the drizzle of rain continued, light and refreshing. I held my hand out to let the rain drip. “Maybe we can find a way to collect the rain?”

“Sure,” Finn said. He reached for a big leaf growing from the swell of Sebastian’s statue. But he miscalculated and stumbled, planting his palm against the tree to stabilize himself. His gasp was the first indication of something gone wrong.

As Finn's palm connected with the rough bark, a jolt of magic writhed in a visual surged through him. I watched his eyes turn white which meant he was having a vision of some kind. Had this realm somehow taken the ability from me and given it to Finn?

“Fucking chaotic shit realm,” I cursed as I grabbed Finn around the waist intending to rip him away from the tree, but the vision wrapped around me, too. Dragging me into a memory that began as a swirling mist dissolved, and I found myself standing in a forest, the air thick with the scent of pine and earth. The trickle of running water, and birds singing, filled the area with a peaceful ambiance.

In the distance, a child darted through the brush. The child was small, with a face framed by red hair and dark, fearful eyes. As I watched, the boy shifted seamlessly into a fox, his fur a blaze of blood red against the green growth. Sebastian.

A growl rumbled through the forest, low and menacing. My heart flipped over in fear as a massive black wolf, its fur dark and glistening with shards of ice, raced to follow the fox. The wolf lunged, jaws snapping as if to devour the baby fox whole, but another wolf leapt into the fray, and collided with the shadow wolf. A shockwave of magic rippled through the forest, the ground shaking beneath their struggle. The new wolf took a tearing bite to its side, and a wide gash down its flank, distracting the dark beast from the fox.

The second wolf howled in pain. The tiny fox cowered in a bush, frozen in fear, yipping with terror. The second wolf, smaller and lighter in color, fought hard, bleeding and snarling, taking the brunt of the attack even if it meant its death.

The shadow wolf snapped at him, its eyes glowing with a malevolent light, dripping ice. I recognized the curse of Winter. The dark wolf was turning into a monster of the Wild Hunt, its hunger for magic would supersede all reason until any mortal presence it had died and left only the shell to become a puppet of death and destruction.

But the lighter wolf fought relentlessly with a ferocity that I could only describe as insane. The dark wolf tore into the lighter wolf’s shoulder, ripping a gash of spraying blood, hitting something vital. The lighter one yelped and writhed, a signal of death throes more than the will to fight, but ice slid from the dark wolf to the other, coating the wound in a crystalizing film.

Fuck! Winter’s curse spread to the second wolf, and I knew instantly what I was seeing. The vision of Sebastian’s youth, when the Volkov had fought his son to keep Felix from killing Sebastian and devouring his magic.

I reacted without thinking, leaping as if I had physical form to break them apart. I hooked my arms around the lighter wolf and yanked, mind screaming No! as if that would stop the blight from spreading.

The vision shattered like glass the ripple of it cutting into my sensitive mind as the forest with the fight vanished and returned me to the chaos of the Autumn realm. A headache pulsed behind my eyes as I gasped for air, arms around Finn, who stared back with a haunted expression.

“What the hell just happened?” I demanded; my heart pounding as if I’d run a marathon.

Finn blinked, disoriented and panting. He reached up to touch his shoulder, gazing at it as though he expected to find an open wound spurting blood and ice, but it was untouched. “I saw a child change into a fox. He was running from a dark wolf.” His gaze met mine in horror. “Did I have another one of those visions of yours?”

“Not mine,” I said. “The vision started before I touched you.”

Finn shook his head as if he could shake off the lingering fear. “I... I fought the wolf. As a wolf.” He held out his hands, staring at them as though he could see the blood. “Are all your visions like that? Real?”

“Never,” I said. “I’m never one of the participants in a vision, only an observer.” I had never been able to touch any of them before, and yet my arms around the Volkov had turned into arms around Finn. “You were the Volkov.”

“Who?”

“The Autumn king.”

“Me?” His gaze rested on Sebastian’s tree. “You said this one is the Summer king. Did I save him? As a child? Is that a memory from another life or something?”

“Sebastian is only a few years older than you.”

“But he’s the Summer king?”

“Newly anointed,” I said releasing Finn and taking a step back. I glared at the dark blotch that reappeared on his back. “I don’t suggest touching anymore of the statues.”

“The cold spot is back,” Finn said grimly.

“Yes.” My gaze found one particular statue in the distance which I knew would be disaster to touch. Felix’s nightmarish face nearly hidden in the overgrowth of wildflowers seeking their last gasp of warmth and rain.

Finn stared at Sebastian’s tree, the drops of rain growing in size as they sluiced down his bare shoulders. “I really am tied to the Autumn king somehow?” He turned to meet my gaze; eyes wide. Finn looked really young in that moment and I didn’t want to be the one to put more fear in his eyes by telling him what I suspected.

Torn , the shadow wolf had said. The human had been torn from the wolf. By memories or fate, I wasn’t certain it mattered.

“Wesley?”

“Don’t touch the trees,” I said. How long would it take for all the memories to reawaken who he was? Tales of the Volkov’s monster spread across the world, to the fae and beyond, leaving every supernatural being quaking with fear for centuries. The stories faded to a lull two decades ago, vanishing as the king of werewolves hid himself away in a compound raising a peculiar kitsune child.

Would the man Finn was, be lost beneath the weight of his past? I decided that we needed to get out of this creepy little garden.

“What aren’t you telling me?” Finn asked.

“We should go,” I said as the rain intensified, sky opening and dumping water on us as if a floodgate opened overhead. His lips moved, but the downpour made it impossible to hear him even though he was less than a step away. I reached for him, a distant rumble, a low, thunderous growl that seemed to rise from the depths of the ground itself.

The noise grew louder and more intense. A roar punctuated the deep, resonant boom of water slamming into solid surfaces. A wall of water slammed into the distant statues, swallowing them whole, splashing around them in a wave like an unleashed ocean. I gasped in horror, grabbed Finn’s arm to drag him to run, but the water crashed into us with no other warning.