The Shadows Have No Face || 𝐀𝐂𝐎𝐓𝐀𝐑

You Better Run

My mouth went completely dry. Slowly, the world went still. As if a layer of frost covered everything. Yet, I could still move. Slowly, though. It felt like I was standing in a thick tar.

There was a tightness in my chest I couldn't understand, a tightness that kept trying to ache into a stab. This... fear—that's what it was. This crushing feeling of empty pain, a pain so numb and cold that it wasn't as much pain as it was the ghost of pain. An undescribable feeling that everything was hurting—and yet I couldn't find the culprit, I couldn't find the black hole.

That strange string pulled again, and I wasn't looking through my eyes anymore.

I stared at a white forest floor. Pine trees stood scattered on the mountainside. The sky was clear, and light fell through the branches above. I sat against a tree, looking around a clearing.

I knew this mind, this body. I knew it because it was a mirror of my own. Because I spent endless nights thinking of it—remembering the touch of it. Even if I lost all memory of myself, I would still know him. My mate.

He was searching for something in the trees, wings tucked in tight. He then turned his head to another spot and motioned to be quiet. I saw Elain sitting between two roots of a tree, her hand over her mouth.

It was eerily silent, and Azriel was trying to listen around him for something that moved slowly. The snapping of a branch was enough to make him pull his sword, yet there was nothing.

He didn't know I was there. Why didn't he know I was there? Could he not feel my eyes over his? My mind against his? Could he not feel my skin above his like I felt his beneath mine?

He sent me a message. I knew he did. He needed my help.

I called out his name, screamed it. I felt his ears pin back slightly, and he turned his gaze back around, looking for a voice that wasn't there. He heard me. I knew he did because I could feel it down the bond, this feeling that eyes were on me when there wasn't anyone around, like there was someone in my mind that didn't entirely belong there, but wasn't a threat.

Something grabbed me from that string that wrapped around my body and pulled. I felt my body jerk and couldn't stop it when my head fell back and I closed my eyes.

Only to open them again and find myself hunched over in the living room of the town house. No more snow. No more pines. His mind wasn't beneath mine. His skin wasn't attached to me.

"I found him," I said, not entirely sure of my own voice. "I know where he is."

"How did you—" Nesta started.

"It's complicated," Amren said, raising her hand to stop Nesta from finishing her question.

I went to the front of the house and said, "they're in the mountains—near the House of Wind."

"Let's get Cassian, get ready, and go," Nesta said, standing from her chair.

I shook my head and looked at the High Lord. "I don't think we have that kind of time anymore."

"Tell me where to take you," he came to my side, and I felt his magic against the back of my skull, asking. Like dark sand snaking around the room, the sound of the tiny glass particles bouncing off each other.

I showed him the image of those mountains I had seen. He nodded and held out his hand, which I took. In a moment, a gush of wind fell over me, and it forced me to close my eyes, opening them again and feel a freezing air.

We stood in the middle of the forest, on a slight incline of the mountain. Rhysand looked around like an animal stalking prey.

"Nothing seems wrong," he said after a moment.