Perhaps it’s the howling wind, but I swear, I hear a moan.
“Auren?”
This time, I know I’m not hearing things, because I feel the moan vibrate from her chest. It sounds pained and exhausted, and her brow puckers in the tiniest of grimaces.
My heart leaps into my throat and grips my airway, making it hard to breathe. Not once has she made a sound or an expression since she collapsed.
I sprint up the incline of the mountain, bypassing the timberwing’s roost. I pass a cluster of craggy trees where the stone path stops, and with it, the shoveled maintenance. With labored steps, my legs slog through three feet of snow as I head along the incline of the mountain’s base.
“Keep trying to wake up, Auren.”
Every foot of distance I put between us and the village could be a matter of life and death. I have no idea what will happen if her gold fully awakens, but I have a feeling that this steady drip is just the beginning.
My chest heaves with the effort of trying to run through deep-set snow, and several times, it almost tips me over. It’s by sheer determination that I keep hold of her as I climb. Every second that passes, the blankets grow more weighed down, and I feel the syrupy heft of more and more gold soaking through the fabric, and it’s heavy.
The whistling wind freezes my ears, and the punishing snow makes it nearly impossible to see, but I finally get to the bend of the path just as her gold starts to drip onto the ground, no longer contained by the layers.
Rivulets burst free of the blankets, landing in splashes on the snow, and with it, Auren starts to tremble. Her pained moans are now constant along with the shivers racking her body, but I have a feeling it’s not due to the cold.
When I adjust my grip on her, my gloved hands come away sticky. The gold is no longer simply wicking away like oil, but soaking into the fabric, gilding every fiber as it continues to pour from her skin. I don’t know how far off nightfall is, but the sky is darkening, though not fast enough.
“Fuck.”
When I reach the crevice cracked through the side of the mountain, I practically dive for it. Once we’re hidden in its fluorescent depths and out of the storm, I kneel to the rocky ground and set Auren down.
With gold-smeared gloves, I peel back the layers of the blankets, and as soon as I do, her body quakes. Thick, syrupy gold comes pouring out, gathering against the ground of the cave. This is no longer a slow, steady drip. It’s pouring from her in streams, snapping and groping around the room like it’s searching for someone to maim.
It soaks into the knees of my pants where I kneel, while some of it starts to creep toward the cave’s entrance. I reach up to try and hold her steady as her body thrashes, while fear pummels against my chest and rings in my ears. If she doesn’t wake up, if the night doesn’t stop her and her gold reaches the village…
My glove sticks against her cheek when I cradle her face. “Wake up, Goldfinch. You have to wake up!”
Her power is splashing, her aura gone erratic, and panic surges through me so thoroughly that I might be quaking too. “I’m not going to rot you again, do you hear me? I can’t fucking do it. So wake up!”
Her lips part, and then she lets out a scream that echoes through the hollows. The gold seems to snap in answer as it clambers up the walls, masking the dim fluorescence as it covers the veins of blue etched into the rock.
Yet the force of her scream and the floodgate of her power makes her aura suddenly flare to life, the brightest it’s been in days. I have to squint against the sight, but then it flickers back to near-nothing, and my heart halts in my chest, barricading any breath that might’ve passed through my lips.
Her gold thrashes, rushing back toward her, like it’s going to encase her whole so that nothing else can get to her. “Auren!” I call as I start shaking her by the shoulders. “Wake. Up!”
And then, so suddenly that it makes me rear back, her eyes snap open.
My voice is nothing but shock caught in the net of an exhale. “Auren.”
I see her pupils dilate. See the golden depths of her irises shimmer. All around her, the gold goes still. It stops dripping. Stops flooding. Perhaps night has fallen, and now the gold is watching me as closely as she is.
My pulse pounds in my head, but I don’t dare move. A deeper intuition is keeping me rooted to the spot. “Goldfinch?” I ask.
But I already know. I can see it in the depths of her eyes.
It’s not fully Auren looking back at me.
All I have time to do is suck in a breath. Because in the next second, she attacks.