Page 7 of Where the Shadows Land (Garden of Hope #1)

ASTORIA

T he bed was softer than anything Astoria touched before.

Petal-smooth and warm enough to block out the winter chill without a fire, even though she laid atop the blankets.

The comfort the bed provided was a gift she didn’t deserve, but she laid there anyway, staring at the wooden beams and clay ceiling.

A burn in her left thigh promised she did more than twist her leg in her mad dash through the forest. Her neck ached, too.

The tender blooming of a bruise spanned from under her jaw to her collarbone.

Her right hand bled freely from her knuckles, each twitch of her fingers adding to the burn.

Astoria did not bother undressing to check her injuries or tend to herself.

Instead, she focused on the building discomfort of her injuries and the itch of dried blood across her skin to offset the gentleness of the bed she laid in.

The night passed as most did. Astoria clutched to Bastian as if he was her only tether to life and she drifted in and out of sleep.

The nightmares never left her to her peace for long.

Inara’s little hands clasped over her chest in repose.

Eyes Astoria never got to learn the color of, forever closed in eternal sleep.

Soft, round cheeks painted with false color to hide the paleness of death.

A bouquet of white roses in her hands growing one by one as the villagers mumbled their condolences.

The sharp, frozen bite of reality that all she lost was real.

Astoria tried to repel the memories from her mind, to think of anything else, but they always returned in her nightmares.

She couldn’t escape the worst days of her life when the reminder of them lingered in her home, her body, her face.

A sick, twisted part of her was grateful the village burned and took all the memories she couldn’t release out of her grasp.

The inability to return was a gift. The lack of mirrors in this gods-forsaken place was a gift.

Perhaps, in time, her haunted memories would vanish like smoke on the wind.

Astoria deserved every ounce of suffering she faced.

Here she sat, safe and warm when her friends and neighbors burnt to death or were murdered by the Ardeloks.

Blythe, darling, kind Blythe didn’t make it out of the temple.

She wouldn’t leave her Lady’s Light. Everyone was dead, and Astoria was sick enough to feel grateful. Gods, I hate myself.

The thought circled in her mind over and over until the first rays of dawn kissed the glass window and painted the room in pale pastels.

Bastian nudged her legs, hopped off the bed, and wandered into the other room.

Astoria’s fingers twitched, but her body ached.

It stuck to the bed, too heavy to move after two full days of running in her shifted form.

Bastian ran with her for countless miles. She didn’t even know how far she went.

The Rholctai stomped into the house, their heavy steps vibrated through the ground as they moved.

The door to the bedroom flung all the way open and their immense form halted there.

Three pink eyes narrowed on Astoria’s prone body and they crossed their large, meaty arms. Their voice broke into her mind, aggressive and loud enough to shake her skull.

“Failing to uphold our bargain eight hours after we sealed it does not bode well for your survival, human. ”

“I imagine it does not,” Astoria murmured. She pushed herself upright, then cradled her aching head in her hands. Their voice was loud enough in her mind to shake her from the frozen state the night abandoned her in. “I will meet you outside in a few moments.”

“If you do not, we will feast on your flesh, drink your blood, and give your bones to the land,” they snarled.

Once they left, Astoria tended to her basic morning needs as best as she could manage. Without food in the house and her skill at ignoring her hunger from a childhood in poverty, Astoria trudged outside. Still dressed in her tattered robe and nightclothes, she met the Rholctai on the stone path.

Astoria followed Mairuk through the vacant village, or garden as they called it. Each of the quaint stone houses held dark interiors with furniture similar to hers. The silence prickled her skin more than the frozen air, the emptiness of the village more unsettling in the daylight.

No plant life grew in the village other than the mossy roofs.

The closest trees were more than three hundred feet from the farthest building.

The land between the forest and village was dry rock and pale red dirt.

A few dry, brittle patches of moss tried to survive, but all of it was brown and long dead.

The land of the village was silent like in cities, but different enough to raise the hair at the back of her neck.

This land didn’t slumber, something killed it.

Turquoise water in the nearby bay glittered in the morning light.

The magical effects of the water pulsed against the shoreline in time with the steady rhythm of the waves.

It sang with life. Fish, plants, and insects all thrived under the surface.

The land died just past the point where the water hit at high tide.

Mairuk stopped at the edge of the northern wall and Astoria had to catch herself so she didn’t fall into them.

A large pile of rough cut logs, an enormous bucket of wet clay, and a shovel the same height as her body rounded out the tools.

The Rholctai lifted three large logs in one arm and leaned them up against the wall .

“You will hold the logs straight while I seal them. Are you capable of such a thing, human?” the Rholctai asked in her mind.

“Yes,” she said.

Mairuk hummed, the sound unsure. They got to work and dug a hole for each log, then they gently set them in.

The logs were taller than the monster in front of Astoria, but they were heavy enough they didn’t move too much.

The pair worked in silence, moving down the line one log at a time.

Bastian danced between Mairuk’s legs, looking up at them with an excited tail.

The giant creature never scolded the little fox, despite almost tripping over him.

Astoria called Bastian to a heel, and he obliged, curling into a donut at her side.

“Stop irritating the Rholctai!” Astoria mentally chided Bastian.

The fox lifted his head and twitched his tail. The communication she interpreted from the subtle movements and glimmer in his eyes was clear as the sun in the sky. “No.”

Astoria rolled her eyes, but returned her attention to the wall in front of her.

Hours passed in continued silence, and Bastian vanished off into the forest at one point.

Alone with the monster, Astoria did everything she could to look anywhere but at Mairuk.

She failed. Their vibrant colors and otherworldly features stunned her into silence and kept drawing her eye.

She never saw anything that looked like them. She’d never seen an Ardelok at all outside of the night they attacked her village. The art the king put forward of them made them look like nightmares, but even the most terrifying ones she witnessed didn’t live up to the horror she imagined.

The pink, purple, and blue tones of Mairuk’s body all gleamed in the daylight, as if damp.

Their three digits moved more like tentacles than fingers, with shocking delicacy as they packed the clay into the space between logs.

Their arms were as wide around as her torso and nearly as long as they were tall.

They sat in a squat as they worked, and despite sitting at half-height, they were still taller than her .

A torso, four limbs, a head and a neck. If Astoria overlooked their imposing size, odd proportions, and the fact they were the color of the sunrise, they appeared almost human.

If she squinted. Though she doubted she’d ever get used to their face.

Triangular in shape with one point at the bottom and covered in a strange, fibrous texture that stretched across their entire body, their face was too alien to read.

Their three pink eyes held no irises or pupils; they were completely solid.

They had eyelids that seemed to vanish into the rest of their skin, but Astoria couldn’t see where.

No visible nose or ears marked their face, and when it was closed, the thin slit of their mouth vanished, too.

Their amethyst purple cap shone with a waxy glow and cast the sunlight right into her eyes.

“Your village burned. How far away was it?”

Astoria shook her head and blinked. The unexpected intrusion of their multilayered voice in her mind shook her from her observations. “I ran for two days straight.”

“Why flee into the Bounoss woodland? It’s a dangerous place to travel for a human,” they said.

“I was not a human in the wood. I followed Bastian for most of our travels,” Astoria said.

“You maintained a shifted state for two days without rest?”

“Yes.”

Mairuk huffed and continued their work. “It is good your village is gone.”

“There were innocent people in my village. Children, sick folk. The elderly. They did not deserve to burn!” Fire ignited in Astoria’s veins. Hot and writhing, it pushed under her flesh and danced into her fingers.

“Do you think your kin ever hesitated to raze a garden for the sake of the sprouts or the elderly? We hope our folk left enough alive to grieve the loss of those they could not save.”

“I doubt that any are left. ”

“Other than you. A shame.”

Astoria balked at Mairuk. The harsh words and bright tones echoing in her mind were the definition of cruel and callous.