But the voice was stronger.
Enter. You are safe. I am waiting for you. Just a little further now.
Lilith stepped into the forest and the trees closed around her like a cage.
There was no path but she walked forward anyway, her feet finding purchase on roots and rocks and uneven ground without stumbling. Branches caught at her nightgown and tore it, scraped against her arms and left thin scratches that welled with blood, but she didn’t feel any of it. Didn’t react. Just kept walking deeper and deeper into the woods with her eyes fixed straight ahead.
The forest was alive around her.
She could hear things moving in the darkness, small animals scurrying through the underbrush, owls calling from the branches overhead, the distant howl of a wolf somewhere far away. The moon was hidden behind thick clouds and the only light came from the faint silver glow of moss growing on the tree trunks, just enough to see shapes and shadows but not details.
Lilith walked for what felt like hours but might have been minutes. Time had stopped meaning anything. Distance had stopped meaning anything. There was only the pull in her chest and the voice in her head and the compulsion driving her forward step by step by step.
Almost there. You are doing so well. Just a little further and you will see. You will understand everything.
The trees began to thin.
Lilith stumbled slightly as the ground changed beneath her feet, became smoother, more even. And then she broke through the tree line into a clearing she had never seen before but somehow recognized anyway.
It was circular and perfectly symmetrical, ringed by ancient trees whose trunks were so massive it would take six men holding hands to encircle them. The ground was covered in moss that glowed with that same faint silver light, and in the center of the clearing stood a circle of stones, tall standing stones arranged in patterns
Lilith stopped walking.
For the first time since she had left her bedroom, her feet stopped moving , she stood completely still in the center of the clearing with her arms at her sides and her eyes staring blankly ahead.
Good. You are here. Now sleep, child. Sleep and dream and when you wake, everything will be different.
The compulsion released her all at once like strings being cut, and Lilith’s legs gave out. She collapsed onto the moss-covered ground, her body folding in on itself, and her eyes drifted closed as unconsciousness pulled her under.
****
Nicholas’s POV
Nicholas woke with a jolt so violent he nearly fell out of bed.
His heart was slamming against his ribs and Kael was roaring inside his chest, clawing at him from the inside, trying to force a shift that Nicholas barely managed to hold back. Something was wrong. Something was terribly wrong.
The bond.
Nicholas grabbed for it immediately, reaching for Lilith’s side of the connection the way he had done a hundred times over the past weeks whenever he needed to check on her, to feel her presence, to reassure himself she was safe.
And found nothing.
Not pain. Not fear. Not distance or fading or any of the things he had been bracing himself for.
Just... nothing.
Like she had vanished completely.
Nicholas was out of bed and pulling on clothes before his conscious mind had fully caught up with what his instincts were screaming. He reached for the mindlink and found Sebastian already there, his presence sharp and jagged with panic.
"Something is wrong with Lilith," Sebastian said before Nicholas could speak. "I can feel it. The bond is...."
"I know," Nicholas cut him off. "Where is she?"
"I don’t know. I was about to check her room....." Sebastian replied.
A third presence slammed into the mindlink with enough force to make both of them flinch. Lucian. And he was not just panicked. He was furious.
"She’s gone,"Lucian snarled. "Her room is empty. Door open. Windows open. She’s just fucking gone."
Nicholas went completely still. "What?"
"I’m standing in her room right now," Lucian continued, his mental voice razor-sharp. "Bed is cold. She’s been gone for a while. And before you ask, yes I’ve already started searching. I’ve swept her wing twice. She’s not here."
Sebastian: "The estate...."
"I’m checking it now," Lucian interrupted. "But Nicholas, the bond. Can you feel her? Can you track her?"
Nicholas reached for the bond again, pushed against it harder this time, trying to force a connection through sheer will. He should be able to feel her. Even unconscious, even asleep, the bond should show him where she was. Kael had marked her. She was his. He should be able to find her anywhere in the territory.
But there was nothing.
Just a blank empty space where Lilith should have been, like something was blocking the bond completely, severing his ability to sense her.
"I can’t feel her,"Nicholas said, and his voice was deadly calm in a way that made both his brothers go quiet. "Something is blocking the bond. I can’t track her."
Silence on the other end of the link for three seconds that felt like an eternity.
Then Sebastian, very quietly: "Victoria."
"Yes," Nicholas agreed. "It has to be. She’s close enough now to call Lilith to her. And she’s powerful enough to block our bond while she does it."
"So what do we do?" Lucian demanded. "We can’t track her through the bond, we don’t know where Victoria would take her, and every second we waste she’s getting further away...."
"The forest,"Nicholas said. He was already moving, striding out of his room and down the hall toward his office where the maps were. "Victoria would need somewhere significant. Somewhere with power. There are old ritual sites scattered throughout our territory from before it was claimed. Sites the Morvaine coven used before they were hunted."
He shoved open his office door and went straight to the large map on the wall, his eyes scanning the markings he had made over the past weeks tracking Victoria’s movements. She had been moving steadily toward their territory from the east, getting closer every day, and if she was close enough now to call Lilith....
***
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