-SELENE-
"NOOOOO!" I screamed.
The evil spirits were slipping away. I could feel it—like fog peeling off my skin. The despair, the emptiness, the bone-deep cold... all of it was fading.
But they hadn’t come to scare us. They came to take. And they did.
"Please wake up," I begged, shaking the guard’s body.
His face was twisted in a way no face should be. Eyes bulging. Mouth slack. Head tilted at a sick angle.
He wasn’t breathing.
"Selene, it’s not safe. Stay down," Lohe whispered, trying to push me back.
I shoved his hands off. I wasn’t letting the boy die.
"He looked at the spirits?" Sander asked. No one answered. We already knew.
He was younger than me. Nineteen, tops. Barely any facial hair.
Lohe had pulled him from the East Kingdom’s patrol. The kid had been too trusting, too
