Down that suffocatingly dark path, Silver's voice cut through the heavy mist, raw, fractured, and frantic.
"Evangeline! Eva!"
He screamed her name until his throat burned, but no answer returned. The hollow, dead silence of the blackened forest seemed to mock him, absorbing his cries like dry sponge. A cold, sickening knot of doubt began to twist in his gut, clawing at his insides. Had he taken the wrong turn? Had that disembodied voice and the line drawn in the ash been a malicious trick designed to lead him straight to his demise? Had he been fooled like a desperate, pathetic idiot while she was out there, dying?
Then, a sudden, sharp metallic tang hit the back of his throat.
