In order to save the world from eternal night, Red must find a way to unlock the dormant power of the Sun Goddess running through her veins without killing herself and everyone she loves.
...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
Salt water scrubbed the inside of his throat raw as he sank, utterly alone again.
There was no gradual descent, nor slippery slope; only the cold slap of an unrelenting void, hungry as the spaces between the stars. One moment the wolf cub was cradled in his mother's arms; the next he was thrown into the sea and paddling desperately for the surface.
He tried to swim back to the woman on the shore, cold and proud with a veil of moonlight obscuring her eyes, but she dismissed his pitiful whine for help with an elegant hand motion, willing the tide to take him further. The cold sept into his bones and unseen forces worked beneath him, pulling him out to sea.
That was the cub's first lesson in the way of the world. Life was something to be fought for, and it could be taken away at any moment. He protected his fiercely, desperately, barely keeping his head above water as the riptide drew him out across the channel. By the time it dumped him on a distant shore, he was utterly soaked, cold beyond shivering. The body shut down and dragged the mind with it.
It's a wonder I didn't die that day, Sebastian thought, looking back with a measure of detached nostalgia. As difficult as things had been, life was simpler then, as an animal with nothing to care for save where to find its next meal and steal an hour of sleep. Always moving, always watching and listening, but never feeling.
He felt so much these days. It was overwhelming at times, the way a simple glance from Red or the brush of her skin against his could leave him aching more. Other times he felt like he was going to explode from frustration or need, and the pressure only mounted with every day that he didn't vent his feelings.
But this was well before he'd learned the torture of love. Before he'd even had a name, or a human body, or a sense of where he was. At first he'd thought it pure coincidence — a lucky stroke of fate — only to realise later that his mother had deliberately stranded him on the Wyld Heart, an isle of myth and legend that no boat had ever managed to dock due to unpredictable storms and vicious sea serpents.
He'd thought it was normal, back then; the sand that glistened like crushed gold, the moss that sparkled like emeralds on the trees. The thousands of little deaths that lurked his every step, taking on the guise of succulent berries, fat and fluffy rabbits, water so crystalline it sparkled as it fell over cliffs, turning to actual diamonds before shattering back into liquid on the rocks.
The Wyld Heart had two canopies: the forest itself, and the gigantic wisteria that sprouted from the centre of the island, whose branches stretched all the way to the beach, trapping the humidity and making the plants sweat. When the sun set the rainforest came alive, from the neon hides of bug-eyed frogs to the brilliant plumage of previously unassuming birds, all brought out by the faint violet glow of the highest branches. It was laughably easy to hunt at night, and therein lay his next lesson: that some things were too good to be true.
