Petal's Pov

The ground was still trembling from whatever monstrous thing Nera had awakened, but Aslaan’s hand closed around my wrist before the darkness could split open fully. His grip wasn’t harsh, it was desperate. Raw. As if the moment he let go, everything else would slip away with it.

“Petal,” he said, voice tight in a way I had almost never heard, “are you hurt?”

Smoke still curled from the ruined stones. The corrupted creatures lay in mangled heaps around the clearing. ...