Chapter 21-Part One: Break the Skin
913 Words
The cold stung differently here.
Not like winter.
Like grief.
Raine stood barefoot in the frost-bitten field beyond the ridge, sweat clinging to her skin despite the bitter air. Wren circled her slowly, like a predator sizing up prey—not cruel, not unkind. Just honest. Raine appreciated that about her, even if it made her want to scream.
“You’re still holding back,” Wren said flatly. “That’s why it’s winning.”
Raine clenched her fists. Her pulse echoed in her temples like war drums.
“I’m not holding back. I’m—”
“Afraid?” Wren finished.
Raine looked up sharply.
“Do you think fear makes you weak?” Wren asked.
Raine didn’t answer.
Wren stopped pacing. Her gaze pierced clean through her.
“You’re terrified of what you’ll become. Good. You should be. But if you don’t choose who you are soon, Raine, the thing inside you will choose for you.”
⸻
They’d returned from the Seer’s woods two days ago, and nothing had been the same since.
The bond between Raine and Luca buzzed like a fault line beneath her skin—fragile, crackling, uneven. He hadn’t touched her since that night by the creek. She could feel him wanting to. She could feel herself aching for it.
But the connection sparked now. Burned, like her skin couldn’t hold his warmth without setting fire to everything around it.
And worse—her reflection in the water kept smiling back at her when she wasn’t.
That wasn’t metaphor.
It smiled. As if something on the other side was watching, waiting. Growing bold.
⸻
“Again,” Wren snapped.
Raine gritted her teeth and moved.
She lunged, striking at the straw target with bare hands, her nails longer than they used to be. Thicker. Her strength, too, was increasing. Unpredictably. On the first day, she’d shattered a training dummy in half. On the second, she’d nearly broken Silas’s wrist in a spar.
Today, she tore the wooden post from the ground entirely and hurled it across the ridge.
Wren didn’t flinch.
“Better,” she said. “Now bleed.”
“What?”
“Control isn’t forged from calm. It’s born from the edge. If you want to master the power inside you, you have to summon it.”
“I don’t know how—”
“Then stop trying to know. Feel. Feed it pain. Feed it memory. Break your skin if you have to.”
Raine stared at her. “That sounds like something the Ember Pack would say.”
“No,” Wren said softly. “They feed power for power’s sake. We feed it to learn how not to be ruled by it.”
Raine hesitated—then raised her clawed hand.
And drove it into her own forearm.
⸻
Pain bloomed.
And with it—something else.
The air snapped, charged with static.
Her blood hit the snow, steaming, and the world bent at the edges. Not fully—just a tremor. Like something watching through her eyes had blinked. Her pulse spiked. Her vision flared.
And suddenly she saw…
A cave. A woman on fire.
A baby crying.
A man screaming her name—Luca?
The vision vanished.
Raine stumbled.
Wren caught her before she hit the ground.
⸻
“You’re bleeding,” a voice said from the trees.
Luca.
He stepped out of the shadows, face pale, eyes storm-dark. “What the hell are you doing to her?”
Wren didn’t flinch. “What you’re afraid to.”
Raine wiped her arm, smearing blood across her skin. Her breath shook, but her voice didn’t. “She’s helping me, Luca. I need this.”
He came closer, eyes locked on the wound. “That’s not help. That’s self-destruction.”
“No,” Wren cut in. “It’s restraint. This”—she pointed to the blood—“is choice. Better she bleeds by will than kills by accident.”
Raine looked between them. “She’s right.”
Luca flinched, just slightly.
And something in Raine broke.
⸻
Later that night, Raine sat alone beneath a crooked pine, knees drawn up, arms wrapped tight around herself.
Her arm still ached.
The vision still burned.
And her bond with Luca… flickered, like the last pulse of a dying star.
She didn’t hear him approach—but she felt it. The bond tugged, raw and desperate. She didn’t turn when he sat beside her.
They were quiet a long time.
Then he said, “You’re not alone in this.”
Raine laughed bitterly. “Aren’t I?”
He winced. “You’re still you, Raine.”
“Then why do I feel like a stranger every time I close my eyes?”
He reached for her hand. She pulled away.
“I can’t—” she whispered. “It hurts.”
“I know.”
Silence again.
Then she said what she hadn’t dared say out loud.
“What if I’m meant to become the thing she was? My ancestor. What if this isn’t about resisting… but evolving?”
Luca’s voice was barely a whisper.
“Then I’ll follow you. Even into the dark.”
⸻
Suddenly, the ground shook.
Not gently.
Not naturally.
Explosions lit the sky to the south—green fire—and howls tore through the silence.
Not pack howls.
Something… wrong.
Luca was on his feet in an instant.
“Ember Pack.”
And this time, they weren’t after him.
- Writer
