Yield the Night (27 page)

All these things boiled up inside her until she couldn’t say any of them. So instead, while holding the blanket in place with one hand, she reached up with the other. Grabbing the side of his face, she yanked his head down and kissed him hard.

His hands tightened and he kissed her back just as fiercely.

She pulled back. “That’s what I wanted to say.”

“I see.”

“And I want another one when I get back.”

“Whatever you want.”

“Good.” Inhale, exhale. “I’m ready.”

He nodded. Eyes dark, movements just a little edgy, he pulled her back a couple of steps. They were in the ley line now. She could feel it all around her, sparking against her skin and rushing by her like a breeze that touched only her soul.

“We’ll step together,” he said, moving behind her, hands on her upper arms. He turned them around so she was facing the length of the ledge, the mountain range spreading before her, and the arch of the planet rising above the jagged peaks. “One step backward. I’ll pull you in and then let go. You’ll be right on the edge. All you have to do is step forward again.”

She nodded tersely, heart pounding.

“I’ll be right here. Right beside you.”

She nodded again. Squeezing her eyes shut, she did as Miysis had instructed, imagining a bubble of fire around her head—her magic—protecting her mind. There was no special spell for going into the Void. You just had to have enough magic, and enough concentration, to create an impenetrable shield around your mind.

“Ready,” she whispered.

His hands on her arms tightened. She felt the tingle as he wrapped magic around his own mind to protect himself. Then the tingle rushed over her as he tied them together so she would be pulled into the Void with him.

Panic exploded inside her. Insanity. Madness. That’s what this was. Why was she trusting Natania?

Ash’s lips brushed her ear. “You can do this.”

Yes. She could. She would.

“Now,” she said.

He stepped back, pulling her with him. The world disappeared into screaming black oblivion.

CHAPTER
19

S
HRIEKING
,
tearing oblivion.

Silent, crushing nothingness.

It tore her apart, shredding her into a thousand pieces. Thoughts, memories, emotions ripped away from her, vanishing into the emptiness. Agony. Numbness. Burning heat. Or was it searing cold? She didn’t know, couldn’t tell. The Void was everything and nothing, both trying to destroy her.

She fought to hold herself together. Her entire being tried to expand to fill the vacuum, stretching in every direction at once. She couldn’t think, couldn’t process. Every sense she possessed screamed from sensation overload and deprivation at the same time. She was breaking, splintering, shattering into infinite particles of madness.

She had to move. She had to take a step. One step. Where was her body? Where were her legs? The oblivion tore everything away, ripping her to pieces.
Take a step!

It all stopped.

She crouched barefoot on the hard dirt. Chest heaving. Arms clamped around her middle. Eyes squeezed shut.

Her entire body trembled as she rocked back and forth, tears leaking down her face. Very slowly, one by one, the torn pieces in her head slipped back into place. She hadn’t lost everything, but so much of it had been scrambled, cast about like puzzle pieces in a tornado.

She let out a shuddering breath. Memories drifted back: The beautiful forests of the Overworld. The soaring mountains. Kissing Ash beside the river. Finally, thoughts shivered through her torn mind.

I am alive.

I survived.

I did it.

She cracked her eyes open, blinded by the low afternoon sun. Her rocking slowed, then stopped. She was back. She was free from the soul-sucking nothingness. She didn’t remember stepping out of the Void, but she must have. Sluggishly, she looked around. Mountains. A trail. An empty trail.

Ash wasn’t here.

Panic clenched around her chest. He’d promised. He’d promised he’d be here. Why wasn’t he? She was alone, broken and shattered inside, and
he wasn’t here
. Her breath came fast, speeding toward hyperventilation. She was alone. Alone, alone. Just like the Void. He’d been there, his hands on her, holding her against the tearing nothingness, and then he’d let go. And now she was alone, and it was ripping her apart, and she was shattering into a thousand pieces again.

Gasping for air, she looked from one end of the ledge to the other. Looked back. Looked again. It came to her, oozing through the cracks in her memory: this wasn’t the same spot.

She was in a different place on the mountain. She’d come out of the ley line farther up the trail. It looked higher here, the river a rushing echo far below at the bottom of the cliff. She shuddered, clamping her arms tighter around herself. She was lost, alone, still alone.

He would find her. He’d promised.

Gulping, she loosened her grip and realized she was rocking again. She stopped. She was okay. She was alive. The Void hadn’t destroyed her. It had tried. She’d almost lost. She didn’t know how she’d managed to take that step back, how she’d done it with the Void ripping her open and tearing out her insides. But she’d done it.

Her head throbbed, pain growing worse with each drifting minute. More memories slipped into place. More thoughts formed, coherency gradually returning. And she remembered
why
she’d gone into the Void.

Heart pounding, she raised her hands. Over each of her knuckles, a shiny oval scale glittered, bright as a gem, shimmering like mother of pearl. Blues and greens and teals. Her fingernails and the first joint of her fingers were decorated with the same kind of scales. Her nails were pointed. Stretching her arms out in front of her, she discovered large, shining, shimmering scales plating her elbows and running partway down her forearms and up the backs of her upper arms, even across her shoulders.

Her breath came faster and faster. She struggled to breathe.

Scales covered her knees and ran partway down her shins, tapering away halfway down. Large, plated, almost jewel-like. The scales curved over her hips too. Her frantic fingers slid over her belly and found three flat, teardrop scales forming a triangular shape at the base of her ribcage beneath her breasts. She lifted a shaking hand to her forehead and touched the same three-teardrop pattern in the center of her forehead.

Trembling even more violently, she looked down over her body, at the strange scales, like delicate armor. And she saw the rest.

Drifting around her hips were four long appendages—thin, lightweight, the ends flattened and widening into an almost leaf-like shape with shiny teardrop scales. She recognized them, had seen them drifting about the water dragons’ heads.

Tentacles. She had
tentacles
.

Horror engulfed her. Shame. Disgust.
Tentacles
. Why couldn’t she have been pretty? Or at least cool-looking? Instead she’d gotten tentacles. Her hands shot to her head. A short tentacle-thing sprouted from behind each of her ears, curving toward the back of her head.

A freak. She was a goddamn tentacled freak.

The blanket had slipped from her grip. She grabbed it, swinging it around herself, pulling it tight to hide the awful sight of her body. The material brushed against the tentacles around her hips, making her cringe. It felt like someone was rubbing sandpaper inside her skull. The damn things were sensitive on top of being hideous—weak points. A vulnerability.

She gulped in air. It was fine. It was okay. She would learn how to see magic with her daemon eyes, fix her competing magic, and go back to being human. She would never have to revert to this monstrous form again. Her head throbbed.

“Piper!”

Ash’s voice. Calling her. Frantic.

“Piper!”

Distant. Coming closer. Coming fast.

She pulled the blanket tighter, still crouched in a ball. No. She didn’t want him to see her. She couldn’t bear it. But he was coming and she couldn’t stop him. She withdrew a hand from the blanket and yanked out her ponytail, roughly pulling her hair over her ears to hide the tentacles. It felt awful, more sandpaper scratching inside her head, but she ignored it. Flattening her bangs over her forehead to hide the three scales, she wrapped the blanket up to her neck.

He appeared, running full tilt around the bend in the path. He saw her and didn’t slow—just charged straight to her, somehow managing to stop and drop to his knees right in front of her despite his speed.

“Piper!” he gasped. He reached for her but she flinched away, afraid he would feel the hard scales through the blanket. He pulled his hands back. “Are you okay?”

She nodded, head ducked, unable to meet his eyes.

“When you didn’t come out again, I was afraid you’d ... but then I thought maybe you slipped a little down the line. Are you sure you’re okay?”

“I’m fine,” she whispered. “It was tough but I—I made it out.”

“Did it—” She felt his gaze sweeping over her. “Did it work?”

She nodded again.

He was silent for a moment. Then his fingers touched her jaw. She tried to pull away but his hand followed, forcing her chin up. She looked away from his eyes, unable to bear seeing the inevitable judgment in them. With his other hand, he brushed her bangs away from her forehead.

She squeezed her eyes shut, humiliation choking her.

“I don’t believe it,” he breathed. “How is it even possible? You’re part
ryujin
.”

His fingers slid into her hair, pushing it aside to reveal the tentacle thing.

“I don’t believe it,” he whispered again.

Her brow furrowed. He didn’t sound disgusted. His voice was filled with ... wonder? Her eyes opened of their own accord.

Ash stared at her with amazement etched on his face.

“Piper, this is—it should be impossible. Ryujin never leave the Overworld. How could you have a ryujin grandparent? It’s—it’s astounding. It also explains
a lot
about your encounter yesterday.” He brushed a thumb across a scale on her forehead. “You have the blood of one of the rarest and most powerful Overworld castes. You couldn’t have been luckier.”

“Lucky?” she croaked, anger filtering through her shame. “
Lucky?
”

He blinked.

“I’m not lucky!” Tears filled her eyes. “I’m hideous.”

He blinked again. “What? No, you’re—”

“Don’t lie to me!” She turned her head away. “I’m a freak. I have goddamn
tentacles
.”

He grabbed her arms and stood abruptly, pulling her to her feet with him. She clutched her blanket with every bit of strength she had, head turned away.

“You are not a freak,” he growled.

She looked back at him, startled by his sudden anger.

“You’re beautiful.”

“No, I’m—”

“Do you think
I’m
hideous?” he demanded. He waved a hand over his body, safely in glamour.

“No!” His daemon form was frightening and alien, but not ugly. There was a clear beauty to his dark, interlocking scales, the way they followed the curves of his body and muscles. The grace of his wings. The mesmerizing way he moved.

“Do you know how many times I’ve been called a monster?” he asked her.

“But I’m—you—you haven’t seen—”

“Show me, then.”

She shook her head, shrinking away.

“
Piper
,” he said in exasperation. With a dart of his hand, he grabbed one side of the blanket and gave it a hard yank.

Squealing, she clutched the other end to her chest, scrambling to hold on to it. She wasn’t nearly as worried about him seeing her naked as him seeing the non-human stuff. He didn’t actually try to pull the blanket out of her hands though; he just pulled the one end away, letting it drop so the entire blanket hung in a strip down her front.

And she knew he could see it all—the scales on her shoulders, elbows, hips, knees. Even the tops of her feet. And the awful, dangling tentacles that originated somewhere at the base of her spine and swayed out around her hips, the longer pair falling just past her knees. They didn’t actually seem to do anything; they just hung there, not limp, but not moveable like a tail either.

Hands on his hips, Ash studied her. She pressed the blanket to her chest, the other hand holding it tight to her belly.

“You don’t have tentacles,” he said.

She looked down to see whether the blanket was still hiding them, but there they were, in plain sight. “Uh, are you blind?”

He stepped closer. “Do you see any suction cups? Can you wriggle them around like little arms? They aren’t tentacles.”

She looked down at them again. “Not tentacles?”

“No.” He reached out and touched one, sliding it between his finger and thumb.

Her entire body shuddered, tingles rushing across her skin. She jerked back. “Holy
shit
, don’t do that again.”

His eyes widened. “Sorry.”

She sucked in a deep breath. As well as the physical sensation, his touch had felt like he’d stroked the inside of her brain. Freaky as
hell
.

“Did I hurt you?”

“N-no. It just felt ... really weird.”

He let out a slow breath, and his eyes travelled down her new form and back up again. “Piper ...”

She shrunk a little under the intensity of his gaze. “What?”

A long moment of silence. He abruptly cleared his throat and looked away from her. “We should go get your clothes.”

“Huh?”

“You need to put some clothes on.”

“I—I do?”

“This way.” He started walking, his steps quick.

Piper blinked. Rewrapping herself in the blanket, she hurried after him—then stopped. Again she took a couple quick steps—and stopped. She looked down, sticking one leg out of the blanket to examine it. No, her legs didn’t
look
any more muscular than before.

She ran three steps. Stopped. Hoooooly crap. A grin spread across her face. She hadn’t moved around enough to realize it before, but she felt
strong
. Really strong. She felt strong and lithe and flexible and agile. She felt as if she could run for hours. She glanced back and wondered how long she’d been crouched on the ground without feeling the slightest twinge in her legs.