Page 21 of Skalterra By Nightmare (The Skalterra Duology #1)

The laughter of the village children sounded far away, the docks turned cold, and the light of the steam-lamps seemed to dull. Skalterra was collapsing in around me, and my breathing hitched.

I’d given Ciarán my name. Now he held power over me.

“Get out,”

I hissed, my eyes trained on the back of Fana’s hood.

“Or I’ll tell Galahad—”

“Now don’t do that,”

Ciarán chided. His voice was so clear, so loud in my head, that it took everything in me not to search the boardwalk for him.

“You know what Galahad will do if you tell him, don’t you?”

“He’ll tell me how to get rid of you.”

“Oh, Blue, there’s no getting rid of me. Not now that I know your name. We’re tethered, the same way you’re tethered to that old man. But don’t worry. I promise not to get too jealous.”

I ripped my eyes away from Fana to glance up and down the walk, searching for Galahad and Tiernan at the neighboring shops.

“Galahad will fix this,”

I asserted, both to myself and Ciarán.

“He will,”

Ciarán conceded.

“By killing you.”

I froze with my hands balled into fists at my side.

“He wouldn’t,”

I said, but the scars on my hand said otherwise.

“You’re a liability,”

Ciarán sang.

“You can’t get rid of me, but he can get rid of you. You think he’ll let you tag along if I’m in your head? You think he’ll let you go back home knowing I might call you to my side and make you my weapon?”

Fana giggled at something the pastry woman said, and I shook my head, trying to clear it, trying to dislodge Ciarán’s voice from the ridges of my brain.

Would Galahad kill me if he knew I was compromised like this? The fact that I even had to ask the question was a bad sign.

“I saved your life.”

My voice trembled.

“I helped you.”

“Did you? I still have questions about that, but they’ll have to wait. Because, again, you’re being followed.”

“By you.”

“No. Well, yes, but like I said, I’m still far enough that you don’t have to worry.”

His laughter sent a shiver down my spine.

“No, Blue. I’m talking about the brute with the tattoos hiding behind those crates three huts over.”

“Tattoos?”

I spun, and my foot slipped on the edge of the walkway. I managed to catch myself before I fell into the river, but Fana turned back to look at me, her arms laden with fresh pastries.

“Fana, we’re going.”

Fana pushed Tiernan’s money across the counter to the woman, and skipped to reclaim her spot at my side. I put a protective arm around her and tried to pull the hem of my hood lower over my face.

Titus was supposed to be preparing for his trip back to Vanderfall with Tamora, not following us through Riverstead. I couldn’t imagine the Baron letting her bodyguard go too far without a good reason. Maybe he was helping to restock the boat? But that didn’t explain why he’d hidden from sight.

“Taking my warning seriously, then?”

Ciarán crooned.

“Good. I was afraid it might take extra convincing.”

Not only was he in my head, but he could see what I saw. He’d be able to track us all the way to the Second Sentinel through me.

Galahad would absolutely kill me if he found out.

I glanced back as I led Fana down the busy walkway, but it was hard to see through the fishermen and stacks of crab cages.

“He’s still there, to the left,”

Ciarán said, and I saw a flash of tattooed arm disappear into a cabana.

Tamora had only helped us after seeing what I could do as a lucid Nightmare. She’s spent the voyage up the river testing me and my limits, studying me.

Now that study was over. She’d gotten what she wanted out of us. She could revert back to her original goal.

She wanted Fana.

The shifting light of the steam-lamps brightened as night fell heavier. The patterns of white light cast across the boardwalk and up the walls of cabanas reminded me of sunlight refracting through water, and I felt like I was drowning.

Titus was following us.

Ciarán was in my head.

Galahad would kill me.

“What’s wrong?”

Fana asked through a mouthful of pastry. Bits of jelly and crumbs stuck to the corners of her mouth.

I chanced another backwards glance. Children played with orbs of Skal, and a teal ball of skalfire escaped their game. It rolled through the air, dissipating as it went, but not before its green-blue hues illuminated the side of a hulking man hiding in the shadows of towering crab cages.

I recognized the edges of Titus’s face just as the fizzling light returned him to the dark.

“This way!”

I tightened my grip on Fana’s arm and took a hard turn to the left.

“What is it?”

she whispered, fear creeping into her voice.

“Nothing.”

“Wren?”

Fana stopped next to a barrel that reeked of fish and algae to stare up at me over her pastries.

I took a steadying breath. I didn’t want her to panic, and I didn’t want Titus to realize I knew he was behind us.

“You said you wanted to play.”

I forced levity into my tone.

“So come on. You better run fast if you want to make it across.”

“Across?”

I took off at a sprint, and Fana laughed as she chased after me. The edge of the walkway approached quickly, and I slowed down just enough to let Fana jump first. Her hood flew backwards, her robes billowed out, and her laughter, trilling and infectious, echoed across the boardwalk. A bit of pastry fell from her arms and into the river as she leapt, but she didn’t seem to notice.

She spun to face me after landing across the gap, and I sped up to leap after her.

“See?”

She bounced up and down.

“That was fun!”

“Great!”

I prodded her forward.

“Then don’t stop now!”

A group of fishermen stepped aside as we sped past. An old man grumbled at us, but we were running too fast to make out what it was he said.

“Clever,”

Ciarán said.

“Make it a game. I like that.”

“Shut up,”

I growled.

“I especially like playing games with you, Blue.”

“I’m going to kill you.”

“Are you? My wounds that you so lovingly cleaned for me say otherwise.”

“What did you say?”

Fana slowed to look up at me.

“Just talking to myself. Keep going, we’re almost at the next jump!”

She grinned and sped up to hurdle over the next stretch of river. A group of nearby children cheered for her, and I hurried to catch up.

The steam-lamps became farther apart the closer we got to shore, but swirling lights spilled out from the windows of cabanas and the cabins of small, moored boats. The people were more sparse here as well, which only made our sprint easier.

My footsteps must’ve been echoing, because as we hurried forward, I could’ve sworn I heard an extra set of foot falls, but every time I glanced behind us, it was to an empty boardwalk.

“Stop looking,”

Ciarán said.

“He’s still there. Keep going.”

The rolling hills of the riverbank loomed ahead. We were almost there, but we hadn’t lost Titus yet.

“Faster!”

I said when Fana’s running strides faltered at the sight of the next gap in the boardwalk.

“It’s too wide!”

she protested.

“I can’t jump that far!”

“I can!”

Stronger, I willed my muscles. Galahad would have to understand. Stronger. Faster.

I scooped Fana into my arms without breaking pace as I sprinted towards the dark water at the end of the boardwalk. The walkway that ran parallel to this one was a bit farther than our last jumps had been. I’d never make it in my real body.

I willed my legs one last time as I hurled us out over the water. Once in the air, there was nothing I could do but hope I’d managed to inject enough strength into my Nightmare form to get us across.

My boots slammed into the wooden planks of the parallel dock, and Fana shrieked in delight.

“Well done, Nightmare,”

Ciarán chuckled.

“I thought you might be taking us for a swim there.”

I dropped Fana in a mess of cloaks, and she staggered back into a run beside me, laughing.

“What’s so funny?”

I wheezed.

“You’re right. You are more fun than Tiernan!”

We seemed to have lost Titus after that final leap, and I pulled our hoods up to better blend in with the dwindling crowds. Campfires dotted the riverbank, and townspeople gathered around them to sing and roast fish on spits together. The river city glowed on the water behind us, and I glared at the trees that loomed ahead.

Ferrin had said to wait in the forest, and while the trees weren’t nearly as tall as the ones in the mountains back at home, the way they swayed in the dark still made me nervous.

“He’s not following you anymore,”

Ciarán said in my head.

“No need to get your heart racing. Unless it’s because you’re thinking about me, of course.”

I exhaled heavily through my nose as I led Fana towards the dark of the tree line. Not only could Ciarán see and hear everything I could, but he somehow knew my heart was thundering too quickly in my chest.

Could he hear my thoughts too?

I waited for confirmation, but my mind stayed quiet.

Good.

It was a small relief, though. Galahad would absolutely kill me if he found out. And then he’d kill me again, and again, until I’d used up my limited lives.

Fana finished off her pastries as we waited in the shadows of a birch grove, watching the main gate of Riverstead. I pulled at my eyelashes in the privacy of the dark. We were barely ten feet into the woods, but it was still nearly too much to handle. When Ferrin and the others finally came ashore together, carrying knapsacks full of fresh supplies, I breathed a sigh of relief and flagged them over with a tiny silver flame.

Galahad jogged ahead of the others with ruddy cheeks that puffed out with the exertion of running up the embankment.

“Watch out, Blue,”

Ciarán chuckled in my mind, and I realized too late that Galahad was beelining towards me.

He balled my cloaks in his fist, and pulled me off balance.

“What did I tell you about taking my magick, Keldorian?”

“Stop!”

Fana pushed Galahad away, and while I knew the tiny girl couldn’t be the stronger of the two, Galahad fell back. He flexed his gnarled fingers, and I wondered if he was imagining them around my throat.

“We were just playing!”

“Playing?”

Tiernan screwed up his face as he, Ferrin, and Orla caught up with Galahad.

“Yes. Just-Wren and I made a game.”

Fana crossed her arms and stood between me and the men.

“You wasted my magick on a game?”

Galahad snarled.

“Titus was following us,”

I admitted.

“I invented a game to get us away without him knowing we knew he was there and to keep Fana calm.”

Tiernan grabbed Fana so he could scour her for any trace of injury. Galahad, meanwhile, held his breath. I knew he still wanted to be mad at me, but Ferrin pushed past him to put a reassuring hand on my shoulder.

“That was very clever, Wren. Good work.”

“But why would Titus follow them?”

Orla asked from under her new cloak.

“The Baron doesn’t still want Fana, does she?”

Galahad finally deflated and turned to look back at the river town. The smokestacks of Tamora’s boat were visible over the roofs of the cabanas, still spitting red steam into the night sky.

“What does Tamora love more than anything?”

he growled.

“Power?”

I guessed.

“Skal.”

His head swiveled towards the dark woods that lay ahead.

“And she knows I’m from Tulyr. She’s probably guessed that’s our next stop, and she’s going to follow us all the way there.”

“Okay,”

I said slowly.

“If she wants to go to Tulyr so badly, doesn’t she have a map?”

“Tulyr is hidden,”

Galahad explained.

“Most people don’t care to find it because they believe the Skalsprings there dried up fifty years ago when the city fell. Old, dry ruins aren’t worth the risk of the surrounding terrain and rotsbane, but Tamora knows better. She’s always looking for ways to expand the Barony, and if there’s any chance she’ll find Skal in Tulyr, then she’ll want it.”

Ferrin exhaled heavily.

“Then we better move fast. No magick, and cover your Skal. If they do manage to follow us, we’ll lose them at the Umberdust Plains,”

Ferrin said, readjusting his belt so his travel cloak blocked out the glowing light of his Skal bottles.

The birch trees rustled overhead, and I suppressed a chill. I did not want to go farther into this forest without a light.

“Ferrin and Orla, take point. Tiernan and Fana, with me. And Nightmare,”

Galahad turned towards me.

“you’ll follow alone. If you sense someone following you, divert your path away from ours. Lead them off course.”

I gulped and nodded.

Alone. In the woods. Without a light.

The scars on my palm itched.

“Is that panic I feel?”

Ciarán’s voice asked.

“Afraid of the dark, are we?”

Orla tried to say goodbye, but her words sounded far away and garbled. I managed to nod in response, unsure of what she said, and I focused on my breathing as the others left one by one.

I stood swaying in the grove. I could stay put. Galahad wouldn’t know, would he?

But I didn’t want any harm to come to Fana, and if that meant venturing into the forest, then dammit, I guess I was venturing into the forest.

“Tulyr, huh?”

Ciarán sighed, and I punched a birch tree in frustration.

“That doesn’t help you. You don’t know where Tulyr is,”

I snarled.

“No one does. Galahad just said so.”

“No, but that only makes this more fun for me.”

“I’m so glad one of us gets to have fun.”

Low bushes crowded the forest floor, and I pushed my way through, trying to focus on the leaves of the undergrowth rather than the tree trunks that towered overhead.

“So. The dark.”

The way he said it, I knew he was smiling.

“I don’t care about the dark.”

I pushed through another thicket. Some creature howled in the distance. It sounded more like a coyote than a rotsbane, but my heart jumped into my throat.

“The woods? You did so well in them last week! What happened?”

Last week, when I’d fought Ciarán in the forest, I’d thought Skalterra was a dream. It hadn’t been real.

Now, the trees that threatened to swallow me felt all too vivid, and even though I knew if I let myself look up, I’d only see branches and trunks, another part of me feared I’d see my effigy swinging by its neck from the canopies, put there by Linsey and her friends.

I didn’t want to see any more bodies in trees, real or not.

The coyote howled again, and I stopped to hide against the paper-like bark of a birch.

“Blue?”

Ciarán’s voice prodded.

“I’m fine,” I spat.

“I can help you.”

My fingernails scraped against bark as I curled my hands into fists against the tree.

“How?”

“Galahad’s grip on your consciousness is strong, I’ll give him that. I can’t take you away from him without your permission. But if you yield to me, if you take my magick, I can take control and reform you at my side.”

“What?”

I looked up, half-expecting to see his orange eyes glowing at me from the shadows.

“You’ll be out of the woods, because you’ll be with me as my Nightmare.”

“Screw you.”

I marched deeper into the trees.

“It was just an offer, Blue.”

“It’s a trick.”

“I don’t want you to suffer.”

I laughed at the trees, but the sound was humorless and scared. My heart thundered, and I couldn’t breathe deep enough.

I was in danger.

No, no I wasn’t. Not immediately. And even if there was something hiding in the shadows to hurt me, I had three lives left in Skalterra.

But I hadn’t died in the forest behind that mountain cabin, either, and I still couldn’t shake that night.

“Breathe, Wren.”

Ciarán’s voice turned uncharacteristically gentle.

“You’re okay. Keep moving.”

I struggled through another patch of bushes, and thorns pulled at my arms. Droplets of blood formed on my skin, then turned to ash that clung to my arm hairs.

“I don’t need help,” I lied.

“I know you don’t. You’ve faced worse than anything in this forest.”

Worse like him. He’d already killed me once.

“Why are you being so nice?”

“Because you’re useful. Now breathe,”

he said again. I forced air into my lungs to take several deep breaths.

“That’s right. Just like that. I don’t like feeling your panic any more than you do.”

“Then leave.”

“If I stop talking, you’ll be alone in the dark. Do you really want that?”

“Yes.”

Except that wasn’t true. He was infuriating and unwelcome, and if Galahad somehow figured out he was in my mind, I was dead. But I did not want to be alone. I wanted even less for Ciarán to know that. “Get out.”

“Very well. See you in Tulyr, Blue.”

I paused with a hand braced against a tree, waiting and listening.

“Ciarán?”

I hissed into the shadows. The coyote yipped again, and it sounded like it was laughing at me.

The dark pressed in, and I screwed my eyes shut and sank to the dirt, unable to bring myself to keep walking, even if it meant helping Fana.

I curled up beneath a tree and waited for Galahad to release me.

The hours passed dark and slow, but when the first hint of daylight dusted the edges of the canopy overhead and the birds started to sing, Skalterra dissolved around me, and the forest ebbed away.

It was the most comfortable position I’d woken up in all week, with a soft pillow under my head and blankets pulled up to my chest. I was sure that Gams had to have called an ambulance, and I had to be in a hospital bed. However, the smell of the quilt that weighed me down was too familiar, and someone nearby was purring.

“Jonquil?”

I mumbled. She was curled in the crook of my neck.

“Are you trying to smother me?”

I sat up, taking stock of my bedroom. I was on top of my bed sheets, but under the quilt from Gams’s couch. A glass of water sat on my bedside table, and my stomach churned at the sight of the note that lay next to it.

“I told Jonquil to keep the nightmares away, but here’s some water just in case. -L”

My cheeks burned with embarrassment at the thought of Liam having to carry me to bed a second time, but at least I was safe. I was out of the woods. I wasn’t in a stairwell or a hospital bed.

But my mind wasn’t my own anymore, and now my consciousness belonged to more than just Galahad.

“Ciarán?”

I whispered at my room, wondering if the Grimguard could hear me.

However, the only sound to reply in my head was the buzzing of my own thoughts. If Ciarán could hear me from across the Rift, he wasn’t about to let me know.