Chapter 56

Fifty-Six

WESLEY

I felt Finn’s soul splinter and realized that was the moment Finn, as I knew him, had been created. Darkness flooded the area with a dense layer of suffocating fog, and the Hunt attacked, leaping at Finn.

The bubble of protection around the tree shattered, as if the tearing of his soul released the last of his strength to protect the memories.

“No!” I screamed, finally free, I raced to Finn’s side, but even I couldn’t face the Hunt alone. The first icy beast tore into Finn’s leg, dragging him backward, as he gasped but remained otherwise motionless. Broken, I realized, the heartbreak destroying his will to live. But he was mine, and nothing had ever been mine before. I wasn’t ready to let him go yet.

I could count on one hand the times in my life I’d released my hold on the dark side of my Stag, a berserkers rage. “Get to the next statue, Finn!” I yelled.

The next was Sebastian’s, which I realized hadn’t been the Winter’s curse as I thought, but the breaking of whatever spell Cassa had used to bind Felix’s dark side. “You can do this. Honey, please, you have to.” This quest through his past trauma was his and his alone. The choice his, to reunite the three pieces of his soul, or destroy himself in the process. I prayed he could do it, even if my heart ached at the thought of his agony.

I shifted to my Stag, and it towered over the Hunt, deadly horns at the ready. Blood filled my mouth, foam dripped pink as I leapt into their number spearing the first on my rack, the pain and blood adding to my rage. The monsters’ focus swung my way, all snarling as the ice tried to grab hold of my feet.

Finn crawled toward the next statue, little more than a blob of dark ooze, bleeding, covered in ice crystals and emanating physical and emotional pain. He’d already suffered a hundred lifetimes of trauma.

I love you, Finn, I thought, hoping he’d hear. I believe in you. I set free the last grip on my blood curse. All witchborn had them, even if they presented in different ways. Mine turned to a raging monster nearly as large as the forest itself, antlers dripping blood and poison, as I speared the Hunt and they dug claws and teeth into my hide, finding it tough, but not impossible to tear.

I charged the Hunt, my antlers slashing through their bodies, sending shards of ice and blood spraying. One beast would crumble and another three would take its place. How were so many of these monsters left? Hadn’t Spring taken them all? Or had the Winter witch been stealing more wolves?

The Hunt circled, unable to get past my antlers as Finn crept away. Their chilling howls vibrating through the forest, and ice slinking through the sanctuary, freezing everything it touched, solid. My hooves ached, the cold burning as it slid up my limbs. But I wouldn't stop.

Finn was mine.

The agonizingly slow crawl towards Sebastian's statue left a trail of blood behind Finn. The ice followed, using his fading energy to break through the glowing light of Summer’s statue. The protective aura of Sebastian’s control popped, sending magic in a rush that threatened to flatten me to the ground, but shoved the wolves back a few feet. The Hunt rushed me, one slipping beneath my hooves to attack Finn now that he had no barrier of protection. The beast tore into his thigh, dragging him backward as if to prevent him from reaching the next memory.

Finn howled in pain, too weak to fight back, and I snarled, sweeping my antlers in a huge arc to spear as many of the beasts that I could. I kicked another three, hitting them with my hooves, hard enough to cave skulls. But these beasts were long dead and kept coming.

Fuck.

Two more tore into my side, digging claws and teeth until they drew blood. I bucked, trying to throw them off, but they clung like the bloodsucking ticks they were.

Finn trembled, scrabbling for purchase to stop the beast from pulling him away. “Wesley,” he whispered, his resolve hanging by a thread. But I fought at least three dozen wolves and was losing terribly.

Another wolf lunged at my flank, teeth bared and ice shards crackling as it moved. I twisted, driving an antler through its chest. It howled, but refused to die, its blood showering down over me in a frozen rain of blinding red. A beast snapped at my legs, claws raking deep gouges into my hide. Relentless fury drowned out the pain as I thrashed and fought, my vision completely red and focused on nothing but a need for blood and their death.

I bled. Finn bled. I could smell it pouring from him.

The shadow wolf burst from the gloominess, a ghostly reflection of Finn himself, its spectral form gleaming with an eerie light, dripping darkness and flashing from wolf to dragon and back, as though it couldn’t control the transition.

The wolf launched itself into the fight, jaws snapping, tearing into the Hunt with a savagery matching Finn’s nightmare beast more than any wolf. It shared a soul with the monster for a long time, understood its fury. I echoed that rage on any beast that dove for Finn.