Chapter 138 Forty three
“Ryder, look at me,” Sienna said, grabbing his face with both hands the instant the crack streaked across the sky like a wound. Her voice trembled, but her grip didn’t. “Stay with me. Do you hear me? Stay.”
“I’m trying,” he rasped, but the curse reacted faster than his voice. It hit him with a force that bent his spine, dragged a guttural sound from his chest, and made the veins along his neck pulse silver beneath his skin. He shut his eyes tight, teeth gritted, shoulders shaking from the effort not to collapse.
Sienna slid closer, water dripping from her hair, her breath coming fast. “Ryder, breathe. Breathe with me.”
He tried, but the pain carved through him again, sharper this time, as if the crack in the moon had opened something inside him as well.
“It’s inside my bones,” he whispered. “It’s… pulling. Sienna, it’s pulling something out of me.”
“Fight it.”
He forced his eyes open. They flickered between his normal amber and a cold, metallic silver as if someone else was looking out from behind them.
“I don’t know if I can.”
“You’ve survived worse.”
“Not like this.” He gripped the grass beside him, fingers tearing through the wet soil as his muscles seized. “This is the goddess. She’s not hiding anymore. She’s reaching for me.”
Sienna looked up once more at the sky and almost regretted it. The moon, normally a steady, patient watcher, shook as if something massive inside it was trying to push free. The crack widened. A bright line of light leaked out, pulsing like a heartbeat. It made the river tremble. Made the air vibrate. Made the world feel too small to contain whatever was happening above.
“We have to move,” she said abruptly. “The riverbank is exposed. If Zane’s scouts are anywhere near, ”
A howl cut her off.
Not a wolf’s howl.
Not a human’s.
Something in between.
Something ancient.
Ryder jerked, his head snapping toward the sound. His breathing hitched. His eyes went fully silver for a heartbeat.
“No,” Sienna said, pulling his face back toward hers. “Ignore it. Look at me.”
“I can’t,” he whispered. “It’s calling me.”
“Then I’ll be louder.”
Her forehead pressed against his. Her voice softened, but the words throbbed with a strength she didn’t know she had left. “Come back to me, Ryder. Do you hear me?”
His hands, strong even in weakness, closed around her wrists. “I’m trying.”
Another howl broke through the trees. Then another. Then a third.
Sienna froze. These weren’t wolves. Not Zane’s army. Not Renna’s assassins.
“They’re not alive,” Ryder breathed, voice shaking with something more than pain. “Those howls… they’re from the cursed ridge.”
Sienna stiffened. “No one has gone near that ridge in decades.”
“They haven’t,” he said. “But something else has.”
She didn’t have time to ask what. The trees across the river shuddered. Leaves shook loose. Branches snapped. And then,
Figures emerged.
Dark.
Too tall.
Bent in unnatural angles as if they had been reconstructed from bones that didn’t belong to any creature that walked the realm. Their eyes glowed a faint, hollow silver, the same color storming beneath Ryder’s skin.
Sienna’s nails dug gently into his jaw. “Ryder. Look away.”
“I can’t,” he whispered. “They’re coming for me.”
“No,” she said firmly. “They’re coming for us. And we’re leaving.”
She stood, pulling him up with her. He stumbled, but she looped his arm around her shoulders and steadied him. He leaned into her, breath ragged, curse writhing under his skin like something alive.
“Sienna,” he murmured, “I don’t think I can run.”
“Then lean on me.” Her voice hardened. “You’ve carried me through worse. Now it’s my turn.”
He almost laughed at that, broken, disbelieving, grateful. But the sound cut off when the air shifted again.
The creatures crossed the river without disturbing the water. Their feet, or whatever they had instead, hovered just above the surface. They didn’t run. They didn’t hurry. They simply glided, as though drawn by a tether neither of them could see.
“Sienna,” Ryder whispered, “we need to go. Now.”
She took one step back.
Then another.
But Ryder faltered again, dropping to one knee as the curse surged violently up his spine. He gasped, one hand clutching the earth, the other clutching her cloak.
“Don’t leave me,” he whispered, voice cracking with more fear than he had ever shown in battle.
Sienna knelt immediately, cupping his face again. “I’m not leaving you.”
“You should.”
“I won’t.”
“You have to run.”
“I run with you. Not from you.”
He shook his head weakly. “If these things touch me, if the curse fully opens, Sienna, I don’t know what I’ll become.”
“Then you’ll become it next to me.”
He looked at her with a kind of desperation that tore her apart. “Why would you stay?”
Her breath trembled. “Because I love you, Ryder. And I am done pretending I don’t.”
He shut his eyes.
Not in defeat.
In surrender.
He leaned his forehead against her chest for a breath, one broken moment of peace, and then he forced himself upright again.
“We’re moving,” he said, voice raw but determined. “If they want me, they’re going to have to chase us.”
She almost smiled. “Good. Let them try.”
They began to move again, half-running, half-stumbling along the riverbank. The cursed creatures glided faster. Sienna pulled Ryder through the tall grass, following the narrow trail that led toward the abandoned orchard. The air grew colder with every step. The moonlight dimmed further, the crack widening ominously.
“Ryder,” she said softly, “tell me how much strength you have left.”
“Enough.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“Enough to keep you alive,” he said. “That’s all that matters.”
“No,” she corrected. “Enough to keep us alive.”
He didn’t argue this time. He tightened his grip on her.
But the creatures were faster.
They closed the distance by half.
One of them let out a sound that scraped the air like metal dragged across stone.
Sienna flinched. “Ryder, ”
“I know.”
He grabbed her and pulled her sharply to the left. She followed his lead without question. They ran behind the fallen ruins of an old bridge where shadows pooled thick and the sound of the river swallowed their footsteps.
The creatures paused.
They sniffed the air, if sniffing was even the right word. Their heads twisted at unnatural angles, as if following whispers that Sienna couldn’t hear but Ryder could feel.
One of them stepped forward, its long limb brushing the grass.
Ryder stiffened, pain ripping through him again so violently he nearly collapsed.
“Don’t you dare,” Sienna whispered fiercely, pulling him behind the collapsed stones. “Not now. Not when I just got you back.”
He bit down on a sound he didn’t want her to hear.
Sienna pressed her forehead to his. “Ryder, listen to me. Whatever they want, they will not take you.”
“They’re not here for you,” he whispered. “You don’t know what they are.”
“Then tell me.”
He hesitated.
She held his face firmly. “Ryder. Tell me.”
“They’re fragments,” he said finally. “Pieces of Lunaris’s first curse. They were never meant to walk the realm again. They only rise when the moon breaks.”
Sienna felt ice crawl up her spine. “Why now?”
“Because the curse isn’t just tied to me anymore,” he whispered. “It’s tied to us.”
She didn’t have time to answer.
The moon cracked again, with a sound like a scream ripping across the entire sky.
A beam of light shot down, striking the ground between the creatures and the riverbank. The creatures recoiled, shrieking in a sound that felt like broken glass against skin.
Ryder clutched his head. “Too bright… too loud… Sienna, I, ”
“Ryder,” she said, voice shaking, “look at me.”
He did.
Barely.
His eyes flickered violently, silver, amber, silver again.
Then the light pulsed a second time.
The creatures vanished.
Not fled.
Not destroyed.
Simply blinked out of existence as though pulled back into the crack itself.
Sienna and Ryder stood trembling in the fading glow, breaths uneven, hearts racing.
“Sienna,” Ryder whispered, “something is happening to the curse.”
She reached for his face, hands shaking. “What is it doing?”
He met her gaze.
And his answer wasn’t pain.
And it wasn’t fear.
It was something far worse.
“It’s waking.”