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They stood like that, frozen as the rain shifted to solid pebbles of ice and bounced off the frost coated earth.

But why was Talon afraid? Ice meant Móirín, that Fae from their own nation were close. But the ice didn’t explain why nothing else in the forest seemed to move. Why her hair stood on end and her instincts begged her to run.

Slight rustling sounded in the bushes nearby, so faint she almost didn’t hear it. Talon only tightened his grip on her mouth and pressed closer, his large frame shielding her from view.

She wanted to ask questions—she just needed him to look at her—but before she could move, claws reached out from the darkness and sank into Talon’s shoulder, ripping him away from her.

His resounding roar filled her ears and he spun to sink his now drawn blade into the—what the hell was that?

The creature howled in pain and the tattered hood covering its head fell back, revealing pointed teeth and black lips. Its black, spindly hair covered a gaunt face pale from the lack of sunlight.

Its limbs looked too thin, as if all the fat had been sucked away, leaving loose skin to hang from muscles and bone. Arianna tried not to cry out when the creature lunged for Talon again, those black eyes drinking in their target. Its teeth snapped and Talon sunk his blade into the creature again.

Or she thought he had. To her horror, the blade bounced off as if it had struck rock.

Dread pooled in the pit of her stomach.

A piercing wail that had Arianna clasping her hands over her ears echoed from the darkness, and a second creature with a slightly smaller frame emerged from the shadows, causing Talon to trip backward. He righted himself, but not before the wicked thing sank her fangs into his forearm.

Talon cried out in pain again, then Arianna was moving, ripping her own blades free. She let them fly, first into the larger creature, then into the second. Both rebounded off and hit the ground.

She spun her magic down her arms next and launched it at the spindly creatures, sending both flying backward into the trees.

“What the hell are those?” she screamed, her voice high and desperate.

“Run,” was his only answer. Arianna turned to obey, then heard him unsheathe his long blade. She pivoted to find him standing before the hissing pair as if . . . as if . . .

Arianna grabbed his shoulder. “Let’s go.”

He shook her off. “I’ll buy you time. You have to get ahead of them, get away from the cold. Find the river, jump in, and heat it as hot as you can stand. They can’t take the heat.”

“I am not leaving without you.”

Talon launched another bolt of water at the creatures, knocking them back again before he turned to her. “I’ll be right behind you.”

No, he wouldn’t. In every story she’d ever read, in every recounting of events told from older warriors, the one who stayed behind rarely ever made it back. They sacrificed themselves for their allies.

Arianna drew her long knives and stood at his side. “If you stay, I stay.”

“You’re so damn stubborn.” He cursed and Arianna summoned her magic again, knocking the creatures back a third time. The pair were furious now, clambering to their feet and wrestling against the icy restraints she tried to clamp around them.

Talon shifted tactics. She watched steam rise from the ball of liquid between his hands and she mimicked it. Hot. Right. If their magic utilized ice, then they wouldn’t be able to stand anything hot. She’d give anything to have Raevina here right about now.

Talon launched his sphere at the larger thing and it let out a horrendous hiss and collapsed in a writhing heap on the ground. Arianna hit the smaller one, then Talon grabbed her hand and they were bolting through the forest.

Another high-pitched scream echoed through the shadows. Then another. There were more. Gods. Gods. She tried to look back, but Talon shoved her forward.

“Don’t look, go straight for the water.”

“What are they?” she panted.

“Damn it.” He spun and the creature caught Talon’s blade between its pointed yellow teeth. It almost seemed to smile at him with those milky white eyes. Its flattened nostrils flared and Arianna used the same tactic as before. She heated a sphere of water and blasted the creature away.

Talon grabbed her arm again and they were sprinting through the dark, ducking beneath branches and leaping over fallen logs.

“I don’t know,” he admitted. Well, clearly he’d encountered them before, but they could talk about that later, when they weren’t running for their lives.

Dark Fae, something in her gut suggested. But they were so different from the ones on the mountain.