Book 17: Gray Like Me

Posey

Snow coats the ancient cobblestone in wet streaks of silver. Flakes stick to my gray wool cloak, the hood pulled over my hair, which is braided down my back. I blend with the landscape in shades of steel and ash, but my black boots catch the gleam of lantern light swirling a familiar magic that settles in my bones and turns my heart to dust.

Roman walks beside me in silence, his phone screen illuminating the space between us in artificial blue-hued light. I try to swallow, but the knot of nerves pressing against my vocal chords makes it impossible.

“He knows I’m coming, right?” I ask in a croak that sounds like a toad. Roman nods, shrugging a shoulder like this isn’t the end of the world as I know it. Like I haven’t spent three months in a purgatory of my own making because of the man who lives in the castle now casting us in its snowy shad