He wouldn’t have betrayed us. He wouldn’t have told the Aetar about Grant, or that I was carrying the child of a Lightbringer.
Doubt began to pick at me, though. Just a little. But a little was a lot.
“What did he see in you?” I muttered at the skull, picking it up and looking into its eyes. “What did he see, for all those months?”
And how could I use this thing to help us now? How could I use it to find the Devourer?
The Devourer.
At the exact moment I thought that name, a shock ran through the skull, straight into my hands. I almost dropped the damn thing, fumbling for it against my chest. Heat flowed from its core, followed by a sheen of light that arced through the crystal in a hot white flash.
My armor reacted as well—rippling like water, clashing against the edges of my skin like it was fighting to cover the rest of my arm and body.
The boys surged. Zee’s face appeared in my arm, crimson eyes open and staring, his claws frozen, stretched over my skin in a grotesque image of battle. I heard a ringing sound, louder and louder, drilling through my ears, straight through to the center of my head.
The skull began to glow. My vision flickered to black. For a moment I was afraid I’d fallen into the void, except that I could still feel the chair beneath me and the breeze in my hair. I touched my eyes, but they were open. I was blind.
Heat flashed over my skin. So much heat, the air burned around me: popped, and crackled like bone. I tried to take a breath, but there was nothing: The air pulled right out of my lungs. In its place, smoke. A bitter cloud that coated the inside of my nostrils and mouth, plugging my throat like a hot fist pushing down my esophagus.
Fire. I was inside a fire.
I grabbed my right hand, desperate for the void—but all I felt was naked human skin. No metal. No armor.
Fear hit, mixed with the drowning poison of dread—so overwhelming I no longer felt the fire burning or the smoke choking me. No pain, just feelings, a toxic crash of emotion that slammed into me, and kept slamming, until I felt burned just from terror and not the fire. I fought for any escape—reached for the bond I shared with my husband—but that was still gone. Reached deeper, for the darkness.
It wasn’t there, either. I couldn’t even feel the boys on my skin. I was totally alone.
Open your eyes, whispered a voice in the fire, but I was so paralyzed and unnerved, I could barely hear it. I didn’t want to open my eyes. I was afraid of the smoke and the sting. I was terrified, caught up in the unspeakable knowledge of dreams—that if I looked, if I looked—something terrible would happen.
Something terrible was already happening. I opened my eyes.
And blacked right the fuck out.
CHAPTER 21
WHEN I woke up, I didn’t know where I was.
It took a moment of staring at the porch rail, the driveway, blue sky—my own propped-up feet—before my life came back to me. Even then, it was slow.
My body felt strange: too big and uncomfortable, like a giant had been stuffed inside my skin, stretching me out as if I were a balloon. My hands were full. When I saw the crystal skull, memories rushed back, so hard and fast I leaned over the arm of the chair and vomited.
Nothing came up, but some Shurik who had been edging closer stopped and inched away.
“Shit,” I muttered, head pounding. I began to close my eyes against the pain but stopped as even more memories flooded through me. Worse memories. Memories that made my throat close and left me choking.
My breath wheezed, barely touching my lungs. I scrabbled at my chest, fingers digging in—but it wasn’t the prospect of a slow, panicked asphyxiation that had me scared—it was one memory I couldn’t shake that made me afraid to close my eyes. Like a kid afraid of the dark: The monsters wouldn’t get me if I could see them coming.
And I’d seen a monster. I remembered that now.
Just for a split second: a terrible, obscene moment that stretched and stretched inside my mind, hanging in time, frozen and awful. An impression, more than anything else. Some . . . massive shape, lost in fire, radiating a feeling of immense, remorseless indifference that made me feel small as shit and just as worthless. It wasn’t the implacability of a storm or earthquake—that, at least, felt natural. This was aberrance: alive and aware. And just one look had fucked me up.
I could breathe again, but my hands shook. All of me, trembling. I resisted the urge to toss the crystal skull over the rail into the grass, and instead I stood, very carefully, and walked back inside the farmhouse. I needed to see my husband. I needed some reminder of what was real. Maybe the monster was just around the corner, but not here—not now.
Nothing much seemed to have changed. The Messenger had left her chair and stood behind Grant’s head, her fingers pressing into his temples. A low hum shivered through the air. I watched them both, still hungry for reassurance, then went to Mary.