Chapter 119

Quinn

Black blood oozed out of the kings’ necks and flowed over their sons’ hands, down their chests, and into the earth. The ground bubbled and boiled like a tar pit and stinking steam rose up in the air. The kings were so corrupted, that nature itself tried to reject their blood.

Sparks exploded behind my eyes and a sharp pain shot through my own neck. I gasped and gagged, trying to breath past the unknown thing stuck in my throat, and instinctively reached up to feel for a wound, but Ida and Nell, dear sweet Nell that was always so gentle and shy, held my arms down. “Don’t,” Nell hissed. “It is not real.”

The woods started to float in and out of existence, and a loud drone like millions of buzzing flies filled every space in my head. Something tore my soul from my chest, and the real world simply ceased to exist.

I looked out over a vast wasteland. There was nothing here but parched, cracked earth as far as the eye could see. In the distance, the skeleton of a lone tree tried to ca