Chapter 28. The Price of Wind
1121 Words
The forest breathed in green shadows, deep as memory. Mist slid like whispers through the trees, curling around roots older than grief. The air carried a scent that was both knife and lullaby—pine, wet earth, something wilder lurking underneath.
Bradley knew this place. Knew it in his bones the way scars know fire.
He also knew he was dreaming.
But that didn’t stop the ground from crunching under his boots, from pulling him forward down a path worn smooth by centuries of ghosts. His ghosts.
The trees thickened until the world narrowed to a tunnel of moss and dusk. And then it opened—into a clearing slicked silver with moonlight. The stones were still there, jagged teeth in a circle, black with age. In the center burned a fire that didn’t need wood, its flames blue as curses.
Figures stood in the glow. Three of them.
Bradley’s gut knotted, the weight of déjà vu crushing his ribs.
The first figure: a man carved from pride and bone—broad-shouldered, head high, wearing power like armor. His father. Eyes bright as iron struck against stone, mouth set in the line that had ruled packs and broken men.
The second: a boy—tall for his years but still raw at the edges, hair wild with wind he hadn’t yet earned. His own face stared back at him across centuries, younger, softer, carrying the hunger of someone who still believed blood was a crown, not a chain.
The third: her.
The witch.
She was more shadow than woman, a silhouette stitched from smoke and silver thread, her eyes two lanterns filled with storms. When she spoke, her voice slid like silk over steel.
“You summon power like it is yours to summon,” she said. “And you think power comes without weight.”
His father laughed then—low, rolling, a sound that thought itself thunder. “Speak your price and stop singing riddles, woman.”
The witch’s gaze cut to him—the younger Bradley—then drifted past, straight through the dreamer standing unseen. It felt like knives pressed to his soul.
Bradley’s hands curled into fists. He wanted to move, to break the script, to rip this night from its root. Instead he watched, trapped, tasting the same old rot on his tongue.
The witch stepped closer to the fire. “What do you desire?”
His father didn’t hesitate. “Immortality,” he said. “For my son.”
The boy flinched. Not from the word—but from the weight of it.
Bradley—older, hollowed by centuries—wanted to scream. Don’t take it. Don’t let him carve chains into your skin. Run, you fool. Run before this oath eats your name.
The witch tilted her head, black hair slicing like ink. “A heavy gift,” she murmured. “It will cost blood of your blood.”
“What blood?”
“Your youngest,” she said, her voice soft as shrouds. “The girl child. Her life for his endless breath.”
The clearing held its breath. Then his father smiled—the kind of smile that could sign wars. “Done.”
The boy staggered a step, horror blanching his skin. “Father—”
“Quiet,” his father snapped, and the word cracked like bone.
Bradley’s throat ripped with a shout that didn’t touch the air. STOP! For God’s sake, stop! But the dream ate his voice, swallowed it whole.
The witch’s eyes glimmered like knives tasting rain. “And your second desire?”
His father’s chest swelled with greed dressed as glory. “Power,” he said. “Enough to bend storms. Let my son command the skies.”
The witch’s smile was a wound. “Then hear the price.”
“I’ve paid one,” he barked.
“Not this,” she said, and the blue flames leapt higher, painting her face in ruinous beauty. “For every wind he calls, for every storm he bends, he will drag a curse through centuries. Every soul who learns what he is—every tongue that names him wolf—will choke on death by his shadow.”
The boy gasped. “No—”
“And,” she whispered, her voice sliding into the marrow of time, “he will walk eternity alone. The longer the road, the louder the silence.”
His father threw back his head and laughed—a sound that mocked fate to its face. “What is loneliness to a god? Give him the gift.”
Bradley lunged, howling soundless fury, but his hands passed through smoke and centuries. The script wrote itself in blood and blue fire. The boy lifted his face to the witch, tears streaking rage across his skin.
“I don’t want this,” he whispered.
The witch’s eyes softened for a flicker—then hardened into knives. “Desire is no longer yours.”
Her hand cut the air. Light split the clearing like lightning frozen mid-scream. The boy’s mouth opened—Bradley’s mouth—echoing across time in a roar that never reached the sky.
NO—
And the dream shattered.
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Bradley jerked upright, the car ceiling slamming into focus. Breath ripped through his lungs like claws. Sweat slicked his skin, stinging his eyes. For one jagged second he thought the smell of smoke had followed him out of the dream. But it was only leather and rain, and the faint sweetness of cheap brandy bleeding from an uncapped bottle.
The road purred under the tires, endless and black. Wipers dragged rain across the windshield in rhythmic smears.
Sandra was curled in the passenger seat, her head against the glass, lashes wet with exhaustion but mercifully closed. Behind her, under a heap of blankets, Liam’s small shape shifted in sleep, the rise and fall of his chest steady as fragile hope.
Bradley stared at them—two anchors in a sea of centuries—and something in his chest ached like old iron splitting.
He scrubbed a hand over his face, dragging sweat and ghosts away, then reached for the bottle. The brandy scorched down his throat in a single brutal swallow. Another. Until the burn was louder than the memory.
“Christ,” he rasped, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. His fingers shook. Not from the liquor. From the echo of his own scream strangled by time.
Outside, the wind rose—soft at first, then stronger, curling the rain into crooked spirals that clawed at the glass. Bradley gripped the wheel tighter, jaw iron, willing the storm back into silence.
Because storms had teeth.
And so did promises.
- Writer
