Page 46 of Bound By Fury

When the water’s surface settles, I catch sight of my own reflection this time, and I let loose a bloodcurdling scream.

Towering above me is a figure. Long skirts that brush the forest floor, threadbare and blemished with holes and something dark like dirt. Or blood. Singed at the edges.

Where her fingers should be are bones interlocked at her waist.

Her face is so familiar. Something about the shape of it, maybe. But where there should be chestnut skin is the stringy gray of the dead. Melted sinew and unraveled tendons like tattered cloth.

Jumping to my feet, my chest heaves violently as I spin, looking for the woman from the reflection.

There are no thoughts in my mind beyond escape. Beyond survival. Whoever, or whatever she was is gone, though I can hear her, I think. Faintly.

“Three gone by, four are foretold, the Cardinals are coming, and they will not be controlled…”

I turn the words over in my head, but they’re nonsense. Her voice is no sweet melody, no comfort. It is grating. It burrows under my skin and makes a home in the darkest parts of me.

I run. Faster and faster, branches stinging my arms, one catching me right under my left eye. The trees shift underneath the lunar glow, bark mutating into grotesque faces watching as I flee. My quads burn with effort. My palms scrape against thorned vines and strings of sticky spiderwebs catch in my hair and my eyelashes, nausea thick in my throat at the thought. The dread in my chest tells me that if I stop, something much worse than the apparition might be ready to drag me into the depths of whatever hell it crawled out of.

Too close to the break in the woods, but not close enough, I slip on something slick and wet and fall, my hands sinking into its sticky, slimy depths, and I gag at the feel of it. Looking down, I find the culprit. Bloodroot blooming at the trunk of a large oak has rotted, the crimson sap pooling at the base. Is this what Gigi was talking about in her letter?

This and the stench permeating the air around the school?

I wipe my palms against the tree it’s infecting and stand, hurrying out of the forest and through an opening farther southeast on campus. I don’t slow, my momentum carrying me up the hill and past the chapel, doors wide open like a freshly dug grave. I’m halfway through the quad when I almost lose my balance on the sharp turn toward the path leading to my dorm.

The rhythmic thump of feet against brick, and the shushing of fabric.

I skid to a halt, my chest burning as I peer into the distance.

Night has dulled their color, but what I’m seeing is undeniable. Robes with peaked hoods in lines of three. Glowing lanterns casting gilded plumes of light. A discordant humming against the now preternaturally quiet wood.

I turn on my heel, flying down the path toward the shuttered iron gates of the school.

The dream—it was definitely real then, and the men from it have found me.

Suddenly someone grabs my arm and yanks me to a screeching halt. I open my mouth to scream when a hand, large and warm, smacks over my lips with a firm grip.

“Shhh!” The voice is cutting, and their touch burns like the deepest ache.

I push against my attacker, but instead of creating the distance I intend, I’m pulled in, my back coming flush with something solid as another hand snakes around my middle and holds me in place.

I’m too late, they’ve found me, they’ve found me.

Their chest heaves against my shoulder blades.

Thunderstorms and star anise.

“Let go of me!” I try to yell, but I’m muffled by the hand against my mouth.

“Stop squirming around, Harp! It’s just me!”

You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.

I bite down until I taste blood.

SEVENTEEN

“AH! DAMN IT!” HE GROWLS, flinging his hand from my face. Still, his touch leaves me gasping for breath, overwhelmed by a puzzling sensation. Like ice through my veins.

I whirl to meet cold, green eyes.