Where The Ice Gives Way novel Chapter 60

Chapter 60 Beneath Ash

the fans. Sexy wore rate was the top the aware and we or fed fu Catebung unle wrists. Hung bukan bagher on that bige as they head to the berk done any eve

board Carch and Blake. They gather fast now the edge of the life thrusters wyvernd farm hand

Sort clipped marsis den who are not healing for the treeline spread our around the brote westwar

as they peel away from tables and flight and take a positives along the fesce, the dark and the side

odde in on itself and comes back out as something protective and bxoprom

right. Then says, voice low now, all the playfulness gone. “We’re going inside? 1 barely hear tom My the others, already moving, already listening, his body drawn tight and ready. Charle presses my crutches into my nec look at him, and Then leans in a little closer, glancing once toward the house, then back at me. “Come on. Mars will kick

you to the safest spot possible.” Under any other circumstance, that might have made se sale. Now all I can do is tod. Charte of me. Theo takes the other, and we start toward the deck. The pack bond under my skin is suddenly too loud Fear rushes fough pulses along with a wave of protective instinct so strong it makes my chest tighten. None of it is mine, and all of it is around me. pering through links I only opened an hour ago. My breathing goes shallow, and my palms dampen against the grips of the crutches

We reach the bottom of the deck steps. The back door stands open, spilling warmth across the boards. Mara is inside now S further into the house. One of the older girls is pulling the curtains shut over the kitchen windows, and a younger child clings to her leg, wide-eyed and silent now. I lift one crutch to take the first step… Then stop. Something togs low in my chest. I turn my head slowly, looking back across the yard. Most of the warriors are moving east. I can see them between the lights and the shifting bodies, spreading fast toward the fence line where the first alarm must have come from. Blake is with them somewhere in that motion. Lots of big bodies are mov with purpose, boots biting into snow, shadows cutting through the pale dark… But the pull in my chest does not go that way. It pulls lef toward the far northern side of the property where the fairy lights do not reach, and the woodshed sits hunched in the dark.

Charlie nudges my side. “Lotty?” Theo follows my line of sight and frowns. “What is it?” The yard seems to fall away around the edges. The voices from the house are dull. Even the bond quiets for half a second, drawing back just enough for me to only feel Shanti. She moves through me like still water slipping over stone, pale and watchful and impossibly calm. The panic in my chest does not touch her. The noise does not touch her. She unfolds inside me with the patient weight of something ancient. Shantih (peace, stillness), she murmurs. I’ve never heard that word before, but something about it is soothing. Theo touches my arm. “Charlotte.” But Shanti turns her attention toward the dark near the woodshed. There, she says. My fingers tighten around the crutches. They chase the cry that was thrown. The quieter shadow waits elsewhere. A chill slides down my spine. I know, somehow, that she is right. I can feel it. There’s a puli under my skin, a tremor in my soul. I lift my arm

with one unsteady finger pointing through the dark. Charlie steps in front of me slightly, trying to catch my face. “Lotty.”

“They’re going the wrong way,” I whisper. Theo’s brows pull together as I look between them. “What?”

I blink, but the feeling only grows stronger, and Shanti rises further in me. Beneath the torn skin of the beast, the atman still trembles (the soul Inside him is still there, still alive beneath what he has become). She says. The feeling of inhumanity comes with that wild, rotten smell on the

wind. It crawls over

flickering

makes every instinct in me want to recoil. But beneath it, deeper down, there is something else still

ath catches. “There’s someone there.” Charlie finally looks where I’m pointing. “What do you mean?”

I can feel the person underneath it.” Theo and Charlie exchange a glance, and I realise the house on the threshold, one hand on the frame, staring at me. Charlie makes me look at him, tapping Yes. I do not know. Shanti’s voice lowers, deepening until it feels less like words and more like th ash, the divine spark does not leave. It waits. It suffers. It remembers. (no matter how broken he is,

l sue he he is Lace the washing rething hard thenings for order th

fice was awky Thas they terest towed the own read round the house and shorts, where cracking lean across the catc hurth side My The swordsiad Mouse Mesand audio the sinow is also hape breaking from the date and vanishing again fies

Pokoupied out the mantis is neidert A To Lears Miss the paad, and the sound tips straighed through m Beaugh heat row with tipe “Tomide” Charlie says Bout cannot top staring Berause behind the rage in that sound behind t wwwdhow winghren

The boat wadeer in He is not lost yet, Hanti says.

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