Page 11

T ime didn’t flow linearly in Elowas. Just as a century could pass in the blink of an eye, an hour could stretch on for millennia.

The sky darkened and lightened as they walked, but only by degrees.

A sun never appeared, nor did a moon; the expanse remained smattered with only stars.

Each time Aisling glanced down at her watch, her head spun.

Sometimes only minutes had ticked by. Sometimes hours, sometimes days.

Other times, it had skipped backwards. Finally, she’d had enough.

She pulled it off and tucked it into her pack.

Whether it was broken or it was truly following the bent rules of the god realm, she wasn’t sure.

She didn’t want to know either way.

It took Rodney tripping over exposed roots for the third time and nearly taking Lyre down with him—maybe accidentally, maybe on purpose—for Raif to agree to make camp for the night.

All but the captain seemed exhausted; though he’d never admit it, Aisling guessed that he likely was, too.

Still, when they all eased themselves down onto the ground, Raif remained standing.

“Is it safe?” Rodney eyed the small fire Raif had built, then glanced around the forest uneasily.

Raif’s jaw tightened. “It’ll keep the shadows at bay.”

Those figures that had followed the group’s progress across the plain, just out of sight, were still with them.

They’d drawn nearer, pushing the boundaries of exactly how close they could come without being spotted.

Aisling’s neck was sore from jerking her head back and forth, attempting to catch them as they darted past, dipping in and out of the underbrush and peeking at them from behind trees.

Unlike the morgen, these beings were very much aware of the group’s presence.

She didn’t want to sleep—she couldn’t. But Lyre had already nodded off, leaning against the trunk of a tree with his hands folded across his chest. Rodney wasn’t far behind, stretched out on his back, eyes flickering open and closed despite his initial discomfort being there.

Aisling shifted towards the fire, holding out her hands to warm her palms. Raif stepped over Rodney’s legs to crouch beside her.

“Look there.” He nodded towards a tree not far from the edge of their camp.

Beside it, two glowing eyes blinked back at them.

An arm, skeletal and far longer than should have been anatomically possible, reached out to wrap around the trunk.

A loud scraping sound followed as the eyes shifted upward, bit by bit.

It was climbing. When Aisling looked up higher into the trees surrounding them, she noticed several other sets of glowing eyes peering down from various heights.

A cold shot of fear swept through her, seeing them all there. Seeing how close they’d crept before she’d even noticed. “What are they?”

Raif held a finger to his lips. “Listen.”

Aisling screwed her eyes shut, straining her ears to hear past the crackling fire and Rodney’s quiet snores—the only other sounds in that vast, silent forest.

Then she heard them: the whispers. Faint at first, barely there, but they grew louder as she became increasingly aware of the hushed murmurs all around.

The words were incomprehensible, little more than a long string of disjointed noises and syllables that sounded more like a poor imitation of speech than any actual language.

But like those she’d heard on Brook Isle when she went searching for the Shadowwood Mother, they were insistent.

“What are they saying?” she asked.

Raif shook his head. “Gwyllion,” he supplied. “Outside of here, their whispers are powerful enough to lead even the strongest Fae off a path they know by heart. I’ve lost soldiers to them as we traveled across territories we’d traversed hundreds of times. The mind gets lost in their words.”

Aisling tried to bring her attention back to the fire, back to Rodney’s steady breathing. The whispers quieted some, blending once more into the background. Raif still kept his eyes trained on the figure in the tree nearest to them.

“This place takes things from the souls it traps,” he said quietly. He didn’t have to finish the thought out loud for Aisling to know where his mind had gone, or for her own to follow: what had Elowas taken from Kael?

Aisling turned, observing the way Raif held himself: muscles tight, eyes sharp and alert.

Though his hands hung relaxed as he rested his arms on his knees, she imagined he could have a weapon in each of them faster than she could comprehend.

Kael was the same way—supremely focused, always ready.

Lifelong soldiers, the both of them. It had terrified her once, the threat in Kael’s countenance.

The promise of violence in his posture. Until he allowed her to glimpse all the parts of him that warrior’s discipline masked, bearing the softer pieces of his hardened heart and trusting her to keep them safe.

She cleared her throat, pushing the guilt of being unable to protect those pieces down before it could overtake her once more.

“I didn’t realize—you and Elasha” Aisling trailed off, unsure of how Raif might react. The two weren’t close; the longest conversation they’d had prior to this was their argument over whether or not to come to Elowas in the first place.

“We met when we were both very young.” Finally, he tore his gaze from the grotesque form in the tree and shifted his focus to the fire. He reached out with a long stick and stirred the coals. The dying flames kicked back up as he did. “She was a nurse in the first camp I served in.”

“She healed you?” Aisling guessed.

Raif shook his head, what looked like a smirk beginning to play on his lips.

It would have been the first time Aisling saw anything more emotive than a scowl there.

“I was reprimanded for fighting with another recruit; my Company commander—my father—restricted me to the infirmary tent. She had me washing bandages, cleaning bedpans. I’d have done anything she asked of me, though.

She was— is —the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. ”

“Is she…” Aisling couldn’t bring herself to finish the question. Pregnant. That Raif had left behind his unborn child to walk blindly into the god realm was no small testament to his character: loyal, perhaps to a fault. He was making the greatest sacrifice of any of them.

Raif nodded tightly. The humor faded from his face as quickly as it had appeared, his expression turning back to stone.

Cautious not to pry further, Aisling said, “He’ll be grateful, you know. Kael. That you came.”

“He is my king,” Raif responded tersely.

“And your friend,” she amended. “You might be the closest thing to family he’s got.” “If we find him—if there is anything left of him to find—I am certain that gratitude will be the last thing he will feel.”

She’d seen it in Raif’s eyes in the armory, and now she heard it in his voice: the same guilt she carried, the guilt that welled up in her chest and throat until she was sick with it. Strangled by it. And she knew all too well that any attempt to assuage it would only fall on deaf ears.

“Well,” she said after a moment, “I’m grateful that you’re here, despite your misgivings about this whole thing.”

He just nodded once before rising again and stepping around Rodney to walk the perimeter of their camp.

Eventually unable to fight off fatigue any longer, Aisling lay down on her side, curling as close as she could to the fire. Her pack made for a passable pillow, if uncomfortable, but she wished for a blanket to ward off the chill that had settled in her bones.

Before her, the meager flames leapt and snapped, devouring the logs and licking at the ring of stones Raif had placed in search of more kindling.

With its heat on her face and her eyes closed, she could almost imagine she was someplace else entirely.

Camping with her friends on Brook Isle. Laying with Kael in front of the blazing hearth in his chamber.

Anywhere, anywhere but lost in a broken realm.

Aisling awoke with a start to the call of a horn.

Long and low, the whole of the forest seemed to tremble with the foreboding note.

She’d heard this sound before, or a version of it.

She could still picture the look of pure terror on the tree sprite’s face as she fled them: the hunters.

The way the tiny being had frantically, desperately thrown herself into Aisling’s backpack to escape those cruel Fae riding her down.

“Get up,” Raif growled, already on his feet.

Aisling scrambled to stand behind him. Lyre and Rodney were slower to wake, slower to realize what was happening.

What was about to happen. But it only took them one look at Aisling’s pallid cheeks and Raif’s defensive posture to compel them to move.

The group stood together near the fire that had all but burned out.

The glow of the smoldering embers did precious little to illuminate the area beyond the tight perimeter of their camp.

The horn sounded again, closer this time, but from a different direction entirely. Then another, and another. Even the gwyllion in the trees had taken heed and disappeared into the deeper parts of the woods.

They were surrounded.

Aisling withdrew Kael’s dagger and gripped it tightly in one hand. Its weight brought some small amount of comfort, though she wouldn’t have a clue how to wield it if she needed to. The thought brought her a step closer to Raif’s broad back.

She should have been more afraid than she was—she thought that her hands, at least the one that held the blade, should have been shaking.

Her breath should have been coming in fast, erratic bursts; a cold sweat should have broken out over her skin.

But she was somehow calm, even as Rodney seized her free hand and Raif urged the group to tighten up around him.

“What do we do?” Rodney’s words came out strangled and breathless, nearly overpowered by the resonant horn blasts around them. One after another they sounded, like a call-and-response chant, spurring each other on.

Then, hoofbeats. Heavy and aggressive, they pounded against the forest floor. They grew louder by the second.

Raif shook his head, sliding the arrow back into his quiver and slinging the bow across his body.

“There are too many— move.” His command was sharp and unyielding.

The group fell into a tense formation, with Raif leading and Aisling directly behind him, her heart pounding in time with the approaching hoofbeats.

Just as they began their retreat, the first two hunters appeared at the edge of the small clearing.

Not mounted riders, but centaurs: great, colossal beasts with bare male chests of pure muscle that flexed and strained as their powerful legs drove them forward.

Fanged and fierce, their expressions twisted with savage delight.

Without warning, they charged. A dense and unnatural darkness trailed in their wake.

“Move,” Raif barked once more, shoving Lyre forward and tugging Aisling and Rodney into a run behind him.

They flew through the forest, dodging branches and crashing through the thick, untamed brush that tore at them as they passed.

A cacophony of horns and hoofbeats echoed all around them, a disorienting labyrinth of sound.

Aisling’s grip tightened on Kael’s dagger.

The cold metal grounded her in the midst of the chaos.

To their left, a shadow darted through the trees, too quick and too close. Raif loosed an arrow swiftly in its direction, never once breaking stride. Aisling’s breath caught in her throat, but Rodney’s hand grasping hers pulled her onward.

“Keep running,” Raif called over his shoulder.

“Come on, Ash!” Rodney implored frantically.

She tried—tried so hard to clear her mind, to let her feet carry her as they did through the forest on Brook Isle.

Her forest. But she couldn’t let go, couldn’t trust that her affinity would take over and guide her safely through the dark.

The fear of tripping, of falling into a rabbit hole or sliding down a hidden embankment or catching herself on a sharp branch slowed her down.

With strides far longer and smoother than her own, the three males quickly outpaced her.

She lost sight of Lyre first.

Then, another centaur burst from the underbrush just ahead, sending them reeling backward. Raif was the quickest to regain his balance and grabbed Aisling’s arm sharply.

“Go that way,” he urged. “Circle back and meet me at the tree line.” Without waiting for a response, he peeled off in the opposite direction, drawing the charging centaur and several others after him.

“Fuck, Ash,” Rodney swore. “We need to go.”

The pair took off running again, their pace and direction far less deliberate than they had been with Raif at the helm.

Their movements were frenzied now, uncoordinated and wild.

So much so that Aisling didn’t notice at first when Rodney’s hand had slipped from hers.

With her eyes focused on the ground in front of her feet, and his on what appeared to be a clearing up ahead, the distance between them grew and grew, until, keenly aware that she could no longer hear his noisy breathing, Aisling stopped. Looked around.

She was alone.

And the eerie sense of purposeful calm that had settled over her from the first blast of the hunting horns was shattered.