I paused for another second before I shut the door softly.
The door to my room creaked open an hour later and Hawk filled the door. Wide awake, I shifted until I was partially sitting up.
He didn’t come in but rested his shoulder against the frame of the door.
“I haven’t been holding back as much as you seem to believe. Magic isn’t a precise art. I sent the finder out to locate a person who would be able to accomplish what I needed. I didn’t expect it to go to Rest, and when it found you, it didn’t tell me how you could help. I’m still trying to figure that out. The only thing I know is you’ve got the magical chops to do what I need.”
“Then tell me what you need.” I moved to the edge of my bed.
“Dress warm and meet me downstairs if you want to know more.” He straightened and left.
All I’d wanted to do for the last hour was to fall asleep. Now you couldn’t keep me in bed if you planted an elephant on my chest. I was finally going to know what he wanted, get some answers, know why I was still here torturing myself.
I layered two sweaters and pants. Xest was a cold place to begin with, and I’d never gotten a warning about warm clothing before. Wherever we were going, it was going to be bad.
He was waiting on the bottom landing. Instead of walking out the door, and into the office, he began walking up the other set of stairs, the “die stairs,” as I’d begun to think of them. Seriously? Was he screwing with me? I could’ve been lying in bed instead of looking like a colorful marshmallow.
“I had to dress warm to sit on a couch?” I was still following him because I was promised answers, and I was going to get them.
“You’ll see.”
We walked upstairs to the same sitting room we had last time. The die stairs really hadn’t lived up to their reputation thus far, and I couldn’t say I was anticipating them to be an overachiever this time either. Maybe the wood stove wasn’t working in this portion of the building.
He opened the door and a fierce wind blew out. The sitting room was gone and a forest was there. Okay, the “die stairs” might’ve redeemed themselves slightly, but not completely unless I saw some monsters.
Although some things were making sense. That was why there was no third floor in the building when you looked at it from the outside. That door led to other places. That was why when I was listening to the fight he’d had with Belinda, they hadn’t heard the blaring noise until the door had been open. He’d been in a different place altogether.
Hawk stepped into the snow, and I followed, glad I hadn’t taken my jacket off in the midst of my doubts. If the fifth wind was typically biting cold, here in the forest it devoured you whole in one chomp.
“Where are we going?” I asked, raising my voice so he’d hear me over the whistling of the wind through the trees.
“You’ll know soon,” he said.
He was right—or sort of.
It was maybe five more steps when I began to feel it.
The closer we got, the more I didn’t need an explanation any longer. The heaviness of it, the sinking feeling in my chest as I neared it. The closer we got, the more the stars in the sky dimmed, the sound of owls quieted, and everything seemed to hush to a foreboding quietness. I could still feel the wind, but the whistle was dulled. Nothing else had changed. The forest was still all around, but it didn’t feel like that anymore. It felt like I was walking into a pit of despair, and with every step, I was losing all joy and happiness.
When we’d walked out of Jasper’s and Hawk had told me he knew evil, this was what he’d been talking about. And now I knew it too.
Hawk’s eyes were trained on me.
I stepped slightly farther in the direction the heavy feeling was coming from, and only because he was ahead of me. But then I stopped, afraid to go one more inch, terrified this feeling would suck me in whole and never let go.
He was waiting and watching to see if I’d continue.
I shook my head and took a step back, and then another.
“I want to go back,” I said, turning and walking toward the door I