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‘A monster?’

Wilder nodded. ‘I had a report of one emerging in Naarva,’ he told her. ‘I knew it was only a matter of time until one found its way here too. While you were with Audra, I heard one of the guards complaining about the smell drifting down from here…’

‘It’s disgusting.’

‘The smell is the least of it.’ Wilder paced the area in front of the thing, not daring to touch it, but trying to ascertain what, exactly, the blight had made its victim. ‘From what the alchemists tell me, they start as little more than a seed, drifting through a tear in the Veil… From there, they find a host and feed off it until they’re strong enough. Then, they grow of their own accord, devouring everything in their path.’

Thea frowned. ‘But this is comingout of the cliff…’

‘Is it?’ Wilder asked, not taking his eyes off the monstrosity, his blood running cold as he realised what it had trapped in its snare.

Thea’s sharp intake of breath sounded behind him as she, too, saw it.

Membranous red-and-black wings were crumpled beneath the vines’ death grip. Patches of what looked to be human skin webbed with black veins peeked through the creeping undergrowth.

‘Is it alive?’ Thea murmured.

Wilder forced the bile back down his throat. He knew their kind well, far better than he cared to admit to his apprentice. But he couldn’t help correcting her: ‘He. It’s ahe.’

‘What? It’s gotwings. The… blight… It’s eating another monster,’ Thea argued.

As though sensing their presence, the blight gripped its prey tighter, the creature within its grasp emitting a moan of pain.

‘Do you think it’s one ofhers?’ Thea asked. ‘Do you think the Daughter of Darkness sent it here?’

‘Maybe…’ Wilder allowed.

Thea stepped forward and Wilder’s arm shot out to stop her.

‘Those vines are poisonous. A mere brush against your skin will cause immeasurable pain. It can get into your brain, too – with the right point of entry, it can render you a husk of the person you were.’

His apprentice shuddered. ‘How do we kill it?’

Wilder braced himself. ‘First, you’re going to put the creature it has trapped out of his misery.’

‘The other monster? What is it?’

‘Something that’s part shadow wraith.’ He knew the words would shock her, given all they had faced together.

As expected, her eyes widened. ‘Then shouldn’t we just let the blight kill it?’

‘No.’

‘I didn’t know a monster could be half human…’ Thea murmured, frowning at the sight.

‘Now you know,’ Wilder allowed. ‘You’re aware of the differences between wraiths and reapers?’

‘Reapers are the sires of the wraiths – the leaders of their kind, of a sort,’ Thea recited. ‘They’re bigger. They have horns and more power.’

Wilder nodded, suppressing a shudder. ‘The reapers aren’t only the sires of the full wraiths, but other half-creatures like this as well. In the Bloodwoods, when the reaper reached into your chest… It was trying to turn you into something like that, or worse.’ He nodded to the poor thing in the blight’s clutches.

‘Gods…’ Thea murmured in horror.

Wilder ended his explanation there. He wasn’t about to tell her of his experiences with half-wraiths – or, as some preferred to be called, the shadow-touched.

Thea hesitated. ‘If it’s part wraith, does that mean I need to carve out its heart? I don’t think I can get to it —’

Wilder shook his head. ‘A stab to the heart should do it. He’s not a full wraith.’ He nodded to the dagger of Naarvian steel at her belt. He didn’t want to make her do this, didn’t want to risk her brushing the vine, but if she was to be a Warsword, she had to learn.