Chapter 266
My pace slowed.
I was close.
The grove opened ahead of me, circular and impossibly quiet. The round was covered in dead moss. Stones lined the perimeter, carved with symbols so ancient they seemed to hum.
And in the center, she stood.
The dark priestess.
Tall. Shrouded in a veil of black. Skin like moonlight on bone. Eyes like ink spilled
on water.
“Cassandra of the Stolen Glory,” she said.
Her voice was soft, but it echoed like thunder through the
grove.
Shame crawled up my throat like a vine.
She knew.
Of course she did.
“Why are you here?” the priestess asked. “The last time you came, it was with a man who asked too much. The Blightwood dees not take kindly to greed. Or foolishness.”
My heart pounded.
“What did Logan ask for?” I asked, before I could stop myself.
The priestess tilted her head. “Something he had no right to claim.
I shivered.
“I–I need help,” I said.
“So many do.”
“My life has been destroyed. All because of one w
The priestess raised an eyebrow. “You have come to
I hesitated.
me to kill her?”
Thought of Elena’s face. The way she smiled at Derek. The way she spoke with confidence now, remembered now, lived fully
now.
But no. Not death.
That would be too easy. Too fast.
“No,” I said. “I don’t want her dead.”
The priestess’s eyes gleamed. “Then what do you want?”
I swallowed.
“I want her to forget.”
The words came out hoarse, scraped raw from somewhere deep in my chest.
The priestess didn’t flinch. She stood perfectly still, wreathed in shadows and silver mist, her hood pulled low over her face.
Chapter 266
Only her mouth was visible, painted black and unsmiling.
“Forget what?” she asked.
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I swallowed hard. My hands were trembling, but I curled them into fists at my sides. I was done trembling. Done watching Elena Hart walk through life like everything belonged to her. Her memories. Her mate. Her power.
I raised my chin and met the priestess’s gaze–or what I imagined her gaze to be beneath that veil of darkness.
“Her mate,” I said, voice steady now. Solid as stone. “I want her to forget Derek King.”
For a heartbeat, everything was still.
Even the breath of the forest held.
Then it began.
The wind came first–a slow, curling twist of air that spiraled through the grove like a whisper waking up. It rose with a shriek, violent and sharp, tearing through the trees with the force of something ancient and hungry. Branches groaned and snapped overhead. The leaves lifted from the ground in waves, swirling into the air like ash from a funeral pyre.
The light fled.
And the Blightwood… answered.
I staggered back a step, heart hammering in my chest. The priestess hadn’t moved, but her presence suddenly felt immense- like the earth itself was leaning toward her. Like the roots beneath my feet had turned to watch me.
She didn’t speak.
She didn’t have to.
Because the forest had heard me.
The Blightwood had heard me.
And it did not forget.
The air thickened, heavy and pulsing with static, like a storm was coiling just above the treetops. I felt it on my skin–prickling, tightening, buzzing beneath my bones. A scream built in my throat, but I swallowed it down.
This was what I wanted.
This was what I came for.
Wasn’t it?
Suddenly, the grove felt wrong. Tilted. Like it was sliding sideways. The shadows moved where they shouldn’t. Something brushed past me–fingers? vines?-but when I looked, nothing was there.
Nothing but the blackness pressing in from all sides.
Tcouldn’t see the priestess anymore.
Only trees. Only dark.
My voice shook. “What’s happening?”
No answer came.
Only a sound, rising from the deeper forest–a low, rhythmic changing that I didn’t understand. Not language. Not exactly. But old. Older than anything I’d ever felt. Like the bones of the earth were speaking.
I turned.
Chapter 266
And I ran.
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