Page 30 of Once the Skies Fade (Immortal Reveries #2)

Chapter 30

Matthias

W e should be nearing the edge of the forest by now,” I muttered, mostly to myself as I double-checked the compass, but Oryn grunted like a bored adolescent behind me.

“How long have we been in here, do you know?” he asked, throwing his head back to look up at the canopy. “I can’t see the sun to tell.”

“Good thing I have this.” I dug into my pants pocket and pulled out my old watch, a gift from my sister. Now it was my turn to groan. “Two hours. Barely.”

Oryn sighed loudly in defeat. “Two hours and nothing? No medallions, no sign of anyone else. How is that?—”

Something buzzed past my ear so fast, I couldn’t see what it was until it struck Oryn in the shoulder.

His hand flew up on instinct, and he stumbled backward, barely staying on his feet. I ran over to him, my hand already drawing my dagger from my belt to dig out whatever dart or spike the forest had spit at him.

I skidded to a stop, a growled “fuck” flying from my lips.

It was nothing from the forest; it was a fucking dagger, identical to the ones we’d been issued.

Whirling around, I shoved my weapon back into my belt and scanned the forest for the attacker, focusing my hearing for any hint of a heartbeat or breath or footstep.

There.

One pulse—no, two—thumped faintly in front of me.

Oryn groaned behind me. Looking back over my shoulder, I barked out an order as if he were one of my soldiers instead of my competition.

“Pull the blade out! Before you begin to heal.”

I couldn’t wait to confirm he’d listened to me, because our attackers’ heartbeats grew louder in my ears.

I spun back around in time to watch another dagger fly past and land somewhere in the grass behind me.

“You missed!” I called out.

Silence.

Someone darted behind a tree.

My hand hovered over my own dagger, not from fear of the forest’s wrath since the pendant protected me, but I sure as fuck was keeping my newfound immunity a secret for as long as I could.

“You really are a piss-poor shot,” I taunted, easing my way forward.

A male stepped out from behind a tree to the right with an ugly sneer plastered to his face.

“And you really are a conceited little shit, aren’t you? Always assuming it’s about you,” he said. The toughness in his voice hung on as shakily as the left hand dangling at his side. The vines tracked his movement.

I shrugged lightly and added a smirk for good measure.

“It usually is about me. The assumption saves time,” I said. “Though usually I’m facing opponents with at least some skill. I mean, that blade you tossed was off by a whole meter. Aric, is it?”

He didn’t answer, just continued to sneer at me as though I hadn’t said anything.

Someone moved off to my left, their footsteps quiet, but still quite noticeable. I kept my focus firmly on Aric. Or Fritz. Whoever he was didn’t appear to have any weapons on him, an assumption further confirmed by the way the forest kept its distance from him—ready to strike, but waiting, watching.

“So what now?” I asked. “You gave up your only weapons. Were you planning to sort this out with our bare hands? Like civilized fae?”

The attack rudely came before I’d even finished my question, but I still managed to draw my blade in time to meet the steel of the other male’s dagger as he lunged for me. He snarled, yanking his arm back and dodging a vine that rushed at his arm. Having missed its target, the plant brushed past my shoulder and quickly swung around, but instead of going after my attacker, it shot off behind me.

I risked a look over my shoulder to see the vine already coiled around Oryn’s legs, pinning them together at the ankles and pulling his feet out from under him. He groaned in pain when his back slammed into the dirt, but with a sharp crack his head thwacked hard against a tree root, silencing him.

The vine started to drag him away, but I leaped toward it, drawing my dagger in the process, and sliced through the plant. Oryn lay still. One hand rested lifelessly on his chest while the other was slowly being pulled under the leaves carpeting the ground, as if the forest was truly trying to consume him.

“Get him, Fritz!” The unarmed man—that would be Aric, then—shouted as he continued to move among the trees to keep the forest from latching on to him.

Fritz bobbed and weaved around me, looking more like a desperate male bird during mating season than a fearsome adversary. I remained still and angled my head as I watched him, pivoting as he circled. Even the forest seemed to be watching him with amusement rather than attacking him, as if even these enchanted trees no longer viewed him as a threat.

I craned my neck to look around his dancing form and caught Aric’s attention.

“Seriously?”

With a growl rivaling that of a baby bear, Fritz charged, slashing at me with one hand. I dodged that strike easily––his second, though, nicked my arm just above the elbow. Fritz kept up his dance, narrowly avoiding the forest’s efforts to subdue him. I dove away from the next swipe of his blade, drawing one of my own daggers as I dropped to the ground and rolled myself into his path. The swift slash of my weapon only caught the back of one ankle, but severing that single tendon was enough to halt him long enough for the vines to seize him.

Two of them immediately caught his arms at the wrists and hauled them in opposite directions so that his body formed a T. He howled in pain as the plants slowly pulled his limbs, but a third vine dropped from the forest’s canopy and looped around his neck several times, silencing him as it squeezed.

I’d seen a lot of death during the war, and witnessed a couple gruesome scenes when the humans had started attacking the fae on our roads in Emeryn, but even I had to look away, bile rushing to my throat, when the vines ripped Fritz apart. I cringed with each heavy thud as pieces of him fell to the forest floor.

“What the fuck,” Aric muttered over and over to himself. He had stopped moving, his hands resting on his knees as he leaned over, seemingly trying not to retch. He didn’t seem to notice the forest closing in on him.

“Aric,” I said, slowly rising to my feet and moving toward him. “You need to keep moving.”

He didn’t seem to hear me, his eyes fixed on the chunks of his friend strewn about.

“Move, Aric,” I warned, louder this time. His eyes slid to mine slowly, but still the encroaching danger didn’t register on his face. “Move!”

This final shout finally snapped him out of his stupor, but he acted too late. He’d barely straightened up, his foot in mid-stride, when a vine plunged into his back, its end—armed with multiple sharp thorns—shooting out of his chest. His gaze locked on mine before the light in his eyes dimmed. His head lolled to one side before falling forward. When the vine retreated, Aric crumpled to his knees before his lifeless body fell forward, his head making a sickening thunk as it hit the ground.

Fuck.

I pressed my hand to my chest where the black vial lay hidden and thanked the stars I had found it when I did. How did the queen and her general expect any of us to survive this wicked place? I had to admit, though, this was an efficient way to diminish the pool of suitors.

Maybe too efficient, I thought, eying the two dead males lying in front of me.

Shit, Oryn!

Remembering my friend, I whirled around. His arm was now mostly buried by mud and leaves and small tendrils from the deadly vines. I dropped beside him, relieved when I caught the faint, but thready, sound of his pulse. My knuckles scraped against the sharp grooves of the root he’d struck as I reached behind his head, but I barely registered the discomfort as my hand slipped into the thick and sticky mess of blood coating his hair.

“Better to just leave him,” said a voice, flat and emotionless, from somewhere to my right.

Gritting my teeth, I cleared my throat as I met the cold eyes of Graham. “He’s not dead.”

“Not yet, but he will be soon.” He stalked around me, clicking his tongue and shaking his head when he looked past me to the fallen males. “Looks like you’ve had some excitement here.”

“Sorry you missed it,” I quipped.

He let out a single, dry laugh, continuing to circle Oryn and me. The vines didn’t seem to pay him any attention, and my scowl pulled at my lips before I could think better of it.

Another laugh erupted from him, this time longer, louder. “You’re not the only one to find one of the vials, friend .”

Oryn groaned then, a weak and pitiful sound that sent guilt rippling through me. I should have shared the vial with him somehow. Should have protected him. As much as I hated to admit it, Graham was right. He wasn’t going to last much longer unless he got help. Reaching across his body, I pushed aside the undergrowth to free his arm and shifted his other off his chest. Well aware of Graham’s scrutinizing stare, I lifted one of Oryn’s legs, threaded my arm underneath it, and rolled my back onto his chest, bringing his leg onto my shoulder as I moved. Using the momentum of the roll, I hauled him up so that his body lay across my back, an arm over one of my shoulders and a leg over the other. Pushing to my feet, I shifted his limbs so they draped comfortably.

“You can’t be serious,” Graham protested, his tone more bitter than incredulous.

I raised my brow innocently at him. “You may be a heartless prick, but lucky for Oryn here, I’m not.”

Something shifted in Graham’s expression, like he almost felt bad for being such a dick. His voice softened, only a hint of bitterness remaining, when he asked, “Where do you plan to take him?”

“They have the forest guarded, right? Surely one of them will take him to the healers.” Careful not to let Oryn fall, I reached into my pocket to retrieve my compass.

“You’re planning to carry him the whole way?”

If I didn’t know any better, I’d think he sounded impressed, but from what little I knew of Graham, I was probably imagining it.

“We should be nearing the forest’s outer edge,” I said, pivoting with my compass until I found the heading I wanted. Slipping it back into my pocket, I adjusted Oryn higher onto my back and set off.

“They’ll have to carry him around the forest back to the castle, though,” Graham protested.

I called back to him but didn’t stop. “Better than trying to keep him alive in a forest trying to kill him.”

“Wait,” Graham said, and this time I did pause. He strode past me and knelt beside Aric’s body. I was about to ask what in the stars he was doing, when he suddenly produced the medallion. He barely even glanced at it before tossing it at me, and I nearly missed reaching out in time to catch it.

“Why would?—”

“Maybe this prick isn’t as heartless as you think,” he said, standing and brushing dirt from his knees. “Plus, I already have my own.”

“Thank you,” I said, shoving the large medallion into my pocket. “Will you be coming with me? Or is this where we part?”

“Don’t misinterpret my actions as actually liking you, Matthias,” he said, but the disdain in his eyes seemed less potent now, and I couldn’t help but chuckle to myself as I walked away.

I had only walked a hundred meters when I got the uneasy sensation that I was being watched. Stopping, I turned slightly to look behind me. Maybe Graham had changed his mind and was trailing after me. But no one was there. Something moved to my right, but again, I found nothing—nothing but darkness among the trees, except this darkness was thicker, heavier, as if nightfall had already reached that part of the forest.

These woods might not kill me now, but they seemed stars-bent on toying with my mind.

Shaking my head, I drew in a deep breath to clear my mind. But when I looked that way again, the darkness seemed to move, like a shadow dancing with the shifting of the light.

Shadows.

I stiffened and stared deeper into the lingering darkness.

It couldn’t be. Could it?

Though spying on her contestants did seem like something the shadow queen might do. I listened intently for a heartbeat, but could hear nothing beyond mine and Oryn’s, growing slower and weaker still.

“Is that you, Killer?” I threw the question at the shadow, which seemed to still for a moment, drawing a smirk from my lips, before slowly retreating deeper into the woods.