Chapter 195. Crazed
Maisie
The worst that could happen, it turned out, was Kisten doing... nothing.
He didn’t speak. Barely looked at me. His eyes were glassy, unfocused, like he was somewhere else entirely as he moved us across the dance floor mechanically. I danced stiffly in his arms, waiting for the other shoe to drop.
Behind me, I could feel the heat of my mates’ rage like a living thing, pressing against my spine. They were holding back because of the truce. Just barely.
And still, Kisten did nothing.
Until the music began to fade.
He suddenly pulled me in hard, one hand locking around my waist, the other gripping my shoulder. His face had changed. The blankness was gone, replaced by something sharp and panicked.
"Mother is watching," he whispered, voice rough against my ear. His breath was uneven. "Where will you be on Samhain?"
I paused. "Samhain?"
"Halloween," he corrected, slurring the word. His eyes darted over my head, scanning the crowd like he was looking for something. "Two weeks from now. Where will you be?"
I was going to be at Lana’s wedding, but I wasn’t about to tell him that. He looked particularly crazed tonight and my stomach tightened. "Why?"
"I am not allowed to speak—" he choked on the word and his blue eyes shuttering in what looked to be anguish.
Despite how he’d been and what he’d done to me in the past, I asked, "Kisten, are you feeling alright—"
His grip on me turned bruising. "Stay with them that night. All of them. Don’t—" He cut himself off, jaw clenching so hard I heard his teeth grind. "Have the dreams started yet?"
A cold finger dragged down my spine. How could he have known?
Before I could answer, he shook his head like he was trying to clear it. "No matter. Just stay the fuck away from Greymoor that night. And this place. Especially this place."
My brows knotted. "Kisten—"
The music ended.
He released me so fast I nearly stumbled. For one second, his eyes met mine, wide and dazed, before he took off from the hall like a jackrabbit, shoulders tight, steps jerky.
Twice he glanced over his shoulder, but not at me or the confused and murmuring guests, but at something beyond.
I followed his gaze.
Margaret stood at the edge of the hall, watching us. Her mouth was curled with displeasure, and I frowned when I noticed a few of the guards pull away from the walls to go grab him and usher him up a stairwell.
My mates surrounded me in an instant.
"What did he say?"
"Did he hurt you?"
"Are you alright?"
Their voices overlapped, hands checking my arms, my waist, like they expected to find wounds.
I swallowed, still staring at the empty stairwell where Kisten had disappeared.
"It was... nothing," I said quietly, but the words tasted like ash on my tongue.
Either I’d gone insane or Kisten was drunk out of his mind.
Still, for the entire part of the banquet, I heard the warning echoing in my head.
****
I dreamt of the same woman again.
And the rift that yawned open just ahead of her, crackling with unstable light. She clutched the ruby to her chest as she sprinted toward it, the ancient voice in her mind sharp with urgency.
"You must make haste. They must not make it through."
Hundreds of creatures poured across the dead earth behind her, nocking arrows, throwing spears, aiming their dark powers towards her relentlessly. Their faces were gaunt, their gazes desperate and filled with darkness. Evil.
They were trying to stop her from reaching the rift. They were trying to kill her. They were trying to escape through the rift.
Warriors fought around her and for her, blades flashing, bodies falling.
She stumbled once, glancing back at the rock where the six bodies lay. For a second, her steps faltered, like she wanted to turn back. Like she wanted to return there and curl up beside them and die with them.
She might have, if one of the warriors protecting didn’t grab her by her collar and throw her over his shoulder, speeding across the withered earth, the rift crackling before them.
"Do not look back," he growled in that ancient language, voice rough with exhaustion and something close to grief.
"They knew what opening the gates would cost. And they made their choice. You must make sure it wasn’t for nothing. Live. For them. For the child in your belly."
The dream fractured into a different one.
I was surrounded by darkness.
A voice like a hissed viper curled around me and I heard the rattle of chains and the clang of claws against metal.
"You... must make haste." A face appeared in the dark, a face of rot and death and hands with talons wrapped around my neck. "Come... find me, keeper."
****
I awoke with a gasp, a hand to my throat. Cold sweat clung to my skin, sliding down my spine and gathering at the hollow of my collarbone. My heart slammed against my ribs as I blinked into the darkness.
And a startled cry escaped me when I found that I was not in my bed or the bedroom Margaret had assigned to us for the night.
I was standing in the middle of the woods with a torch of flame burning bright in my right hand.
My fingers went numb.
The torch slipped from my grasp and hit the ground with a dull thud, the flames sputtering against the damp earth. My knees buckled. I dropped hard onto my ass, the impact jarring up my spine as I scrambled backward until my back hit a tree.
My breathing turned ragged.
What on earth?
What on earth was happening?
I had gone to bed with my mates, slightly tipsy after the party. I remembered being too tired to take a shower but taking one anyway, because Mercer and Jericho kept scowling at Kisten’s scent on my body.
And I remembered barely being able to keep my eyes open the moment I hit the bed and curled up against Soren, breathing in his sweet scent.
And now I was here.
Alone.
In the middle of fucking nowhere. No. Not nowhere.
I recognized the mountains. I was not too far from the giant cliff that Jericho had been lecturing me about yesterday. My feet were hurting and bleeding. My knees were scraped, like I had fallen, risen and kept walking.
I pressed a shaking hand over my mouth.
How did I get here? And why couldn’t I remember any of it?