Chapter 43

Forty-Three

FINN

I gasped for air and jolted awake to find myself in the sanctuary rather than the vision. Spasms racked my body in a thousand excruciating grips as though my muscles were trying to tear themselves apart. My throat closed up, scream garbled, as I gasped for air. I’d never had a seizure before, but that’s what it felt like, only every part of my mind present to experience the nightmare of pain and lack of control.

A small, cool hand ran over my forehead and I wondered if the vision had brought the dark-skinned boy into the sanctuary. When I opened my eyes, gazing with half-blurred vision, it was a teen with white hair leaning over me. He traced his fingers over my throat, careful, but spreading a calming wave of ice over the heat soothing the muscle pain.

A scream ripped from my lips as the lock on my throat released and I sucked in air. The boy flinched but remained close, letting the cooling wave of his touch ease muscle after muscle. The pain seemed to last hours, and I reached for the teen with trembling fingers. He held my hand with his spare one, continuing his calming touch and giving me comfort with soft words I barely understood.

Consciousness came and went a dozen times. When darkness fell, I searched for a tie to Wesley or any sense of my former life before I’d been dragged into the nightmare garden, but found myself back in the sanctuary time and again.

The teen remained, even when the seizures stopped and I lay curled up in a ball sobbing from the echoing ache. All that pain and I’d never changed. I understood why as the wolf arrived, his rage sucking the last dregs of joy out of the area. My heart flipped over in terror that he’d hurt the teen. But I couldn’t move, everything hurt too much and I could barely breathe without feeling like every muscle in my body had torn itself apart, breaking bones and reforming. Was this what it meant to be a werewolf? I expected to open my eyes and find myself the wolf, but was still human.

The wolf snarled at the teen, black ooze dripping over both of us as the young man turned his head away, offering no challenge, but also not backing down.

“Get up,” the wolf uttered.

I stared into the distance, ignoring it, in too much pain to do more than breathe.

“Weak,” the wolf snarled.

“Fuck you!” I screamed at the wolf wishing I had the strength to kick the fucker. My grip on the teen’s hand tightened as I feared he’d either leave or be forced out of the realm by the wolf. He closed his eyes as a drop of the dark ooze touched him. It sizzled, then froze into a chunk of ice and fell away.

A blast of icy air slammed into the wolf, turning the dripping shadows to crystals, a threat to freeze it in place, perhaps? It snarled and vanished, the shift of it leaving the sanctuary creating a pop in the atmosphere that made me nauseous. I gagged and choked, but there was nothing in my stomach to come up.

Snow fell from the sky in giant flakes, drifting down as light as feathers. I breathed deep, rolling onto my back to stare up at the beauty of the light catching the flakes, refracting in colors as they dropped. Each one landing on my skin in a gentle touch of cooling calm. Tears froze on my face and I sucked in air while the chill brought a shiver to my skin.

“Sorry, sorry,” the teen murmured and the snow stopped.

I lay unmoving, the ache radiating soul deep.

A coarse tongue licked the tears from my face, and a big furry body landed on top of me as my shivering got worse. The white leopard that had tried to protect Wesley before bathed my face. Was this the teen? I blinked at him, the sandpaper tongue on my face grounding me as his big furry body eased the chill.

“Did Wesley send you?” I asked.

The cat chuffed and continued to groom my hair. I reached up and ran my fingers through his soft fur, breathing deep as the pain slowly faded. It felt like hours passed, the big cat warming, me petting him to keep myself from falling into the dark oblivion of unconsciousness, and my gaze focused on the distant statue of Wesley, whose eyes were open and gazing my way.

The barrier around his tribute in this garden of nightmares wriggled with an oil-spill array of colorful magic. A dozen paths to other terrors lay in silent brooding, waiting for me to touch them and be dragged into each horror, a gauntlet to be passed.

It’s okay, a soft voice trickled through my mind. A ghost-like energy reminding me of Wesley’s kiss. We barely knew each other, was it too soon to feel like he was the raft in a storm of my chaotic past?

Wesley? I thought, heart pounding as I closed my eyes and prayed to sink into the sensation of him there with me.

It’s okay to rest. Wesley said.

It’s too much. I admitted, overwhelmed by the prospect of facing whatever trauma the wolf thought I needed to become stronger.

Not all bad, Wesley remarked. The boy from the last dream? I know him. He’s a good friend of yours.

What? The dark-skinned boy who could turn to a werewolf was still alive?

Yes.

I let that thought process for a few minutes as my kitty friend nuzzled my ear. The pain vanished, my body feeling overworked, rather than the throbbing wound it had been. Was there more to all this than just pain?

Can you find it? Wesley’s statue closed its eyes, expression turning serene as his presence vanished in my head.

I jolted up, unseating the cat who huffed at me, and shifted into a fluffy white kitten that padded his way over to a plate of macarons. The colorful array sitting on a plate in the middle of the overgrown path made me wonder if it was a way out. I reached for the plate as the kitten gave a pitiful meow.

“Want some?” I offered the cat, surprised when I could not only pick up the plate, but also a cookie. I brought one to my lips, the scent of it fruity. It tasted like a cookie, the melt in your mouth kind that people paid bakeries a lot of money for. “Do I have to eat them all to get out of here?”

I polished them off like the starving man I was, but the garden of memories remained. “Fuck.”

The kitten meowed again.

“I’m the Autumn king, right? Does that mean the Summer king’s magic doesn’t work on me? Double fuck.”