Page 65

Twice more the tree tried to throw me. Once I slid down, claws gouging useless grooves that sealed behind me. I crawled back up, clinging like a leech, dragging myself branch by branch. The Bastion’s strength pulsed with energy, a live wire under exhaustion, but it was enough. It had to be.

The branches grew closer together. The scent of Jude and Ivan grew stronger with every pull. Finally, I hauled myself over the last ledge and landed on a platform of woven wood and root, claws scraping against the grain.

A cottage sat before me with a slanted roof. Warm light spilled from the windows.

I crossed the platform in a low crouch, ears flat, muscles coiled. The door was cracked open, voices trickling from inside.

One familiar.

Jude.

I pushed through the gap.

Inside, Ivan’s eyes were wide with worry. Zhenjun loomed over Jude, hand outstretched and crackling with magic. Jude curled in on himself, hands pressed to his chest, face contorted, a half-muffled scream escaping his lips as dark blotches of shadows crawled across his pale complexion.

I launched through the doorway, crossed the room in one massive bound, and hit Zhenjun like a freight train. My claws dug into his chest as I ripped him away from my mate.

27

JUDE

As the Arbiter of the weave, it meant I could force the motes to reknit themselves, simply let them find their place, or snuff them out completely. But coaxing them to choose hurt. One moment I was drowning in pain, trying to parse what Zhenjun had said about redistributing threads—about the snipped strands of energy cast off from souls like loose threads from a torn tapestry.

The next, something blasted him away.

A shadow of fury and chaos. A mass of claws and teeth and pure, undiluted rage.

Angel.

Fuck.

I tried to launch myself to my feet, to interfere with the snarl of claws and shadows, but my body refused to cooperate. I was sluggish, weighed down by a magnetic wash of motes, all of them seeking their second of recognition, all of them rewarding me with a thousand pinpricks of pain. Like tiny needles, each one a reminder of someone else’s final moment, or cast-off emotions.

“Angel!” The name tore out of me, raw and desperate. I reached for him, but my arm barely moved. I was pinned by the weight of a hundred forgotten soul fragments, desperate to return to some part of existence within the Veil, even if that meant clinging to a fading ghost like me.

Zhenjun didn’t attack. Which was, honestly, the only thing keeping this from becoming a massacre. He pulled a giant curved sword out of nowhere, because apparently he had one of those, and wasn’t that a fun surprise, and moved around the shadow beast of my mate with the grace of someone who’d done this a thousand times. Careful, but threatening. The Marshal parried. Kept Angel’s claws from his throat. But he didn’t slice him in two.

Thank the universe for that.

I watched, heart pounding, trying to push through the haze of pain. Angel was a blur of shadow and fury, his eyes wild, his teeth bared. He wasn’t thinking. He was reacting. Protecting. The Bastion had taken over, and the Bastion didn’t care about explanations.

“Angel!” I tried again, forcing my voice to cut through the chaos. “He wasn’t hurting me! He was teaching me! Stop!”

The shadow beast paused. Just for a second.

Then the vines exploded out of the floor.

A thick wash of green stalks snaked around Angel, wrapping through his middle, coiling around each limb like chains designed to hold back a god. They held him, rooting him to the spot as his claws raked uselessly against the air.

Vines wrapped around Zhenjun’s sword arm, his legs, his chest, pinning him mid-swing. The Marshal cursed in a language I wasn’t familiar with, but Beau stood in the center of the chaos, hands raised, eyes glowing with a soft green light.

Ivan stood behind him, eyes wide. “I’m definitely learning that.”

“Enough,” Beau said. “This is my home, not a mosh pit.”

Angel snarled, thrashing against the vines. They held.

Zhenjun went still, his expression unreadable.