A dreaded unease turned my stomach over. We said nothing to each other. Though I was new to the woods and a stranger myself, I was fey—and I knew now this person was not. Whatever he was doing, the Wildwoods didn't like it. He was a criminal and I was a voyeur, and this was that pause which would determine if I would become a fellow criminal or a victim. We both knew it.
My heart started to race.
“What are you doing?” The sound was from my own throat, but I didn't feel connected to the question.
He held his knife as though he wasn't sure if he wanted to sheath it or turn it on me. In the end he just traced his thumb over the handle, contemplating my question. “Would you like to see?”
To refuse would be to shatter this game we were playing, to break the pretense that he was innocent and I was a passer-by. We both knew the gilding would rub off soon, but to do so now would be to not allow a chance for the alchemy between us to change lead into gold. Slowly, I felt my feet lift and cross over ground, leaving waving heads of tall grasses to close behind my hips. Mud sucked at my feet as I went from one clump of sod to the next, until at long last I stood before him.
His was a face often seen and soon forgotten, an indistinct mesh of features which would look perfectly normal everywhere. His hair was darkish, but that was all the moonlight allowed me to see. As he invited me nearer to his work, I wobbled. He reached for me. I grasped his arm and balanced, then our eyes met and we realized what we were doing.
It made no sense.
None of it made sense.
But instead of questioning it, I stood tall and faced the tree the way a critic faces streaks of paint on a canvas. That the slices were surgically precise was not lost on me, but to admire the pattern would be to admire lashes drawn across skin.
The meadow was perfectly still, no wind wove through branches, not a thing issued a single sound, yet I could scarcely draw a breath as though I were drowning within the quiescence. I closed the gap between me and the tree, let tentative fingers stroke down the rough bark and dip into the smooth crease where the cut had exposed her pale flesh. Behind me, he took in a breath and held it, waiting. My nail scraped a droplet of sticky sap. Who was she? I'd thought at first it was the tree, but that wasn't right. The tree was a thing connected to her. The more I tried to understand, the less I succeeded.
Awareness of the man behind me, of his magic and of this spell, of the hearing and Gregor Cole's death, collided with this moment. All at once it all became a tangle of phrases and symbols crisscrossed and knotted so that to pick up one thing was to grab them all. I shut my eyes and pushed the mess out of my mind.
I was posed in front of the tree, my fingers were numb and my right hand had seized into a painful fist. My feet were caked in mud and a stick scraped my ankle. Behind me a dangerous man was awaiting my response, waiting to see what I'd do when I realized he was unleashing another Unwritten into the world. Another spell so wrong it upset the very existence of being alive.
The ground seemed to pass beneath me. My eyes locked on the knife in his hand, suddenly not so far from me. Old instincts kicked in, the ones from facing a beast with nothing to use against him. The man just looked at me and angled his head to the side.
“Be gone from here,” I said.
The man said nothing, just wiped the bark chips and tree sap off his cuff, and slid his knife back into the sheath. I wondered how I'd ever gotten into this spot. Life resting on the mood of a forest. The man standing before me, out to achieve his own mysterious ends. I froze in place as long as I could—then it all happened at once.
Everything had stopped in the woods and animals were standing at the edge of their perches to see. There wasn't a sound. The man's cloak whipped in the breeze, thrashing loud in the silence, and a spell appeared in his hand.
A death spell.
Frantically I reached for my magic and found it all around. I organized it, just as the man took a step forward and extended a finger at me. I yanked my magic to the side, striking him across the side with all the force I could muster.
He buckled under the force, his spell still in hand.
A root tripped him. He landed on the sharp branch of a weather-worn log.
The spell went awry.
Something struck me a glancing blow, casting me against the trunk of the tree.
The man cried out in pain, the branch impaling him like a stake, a burst of crimson splattering the white as bone log beneath him. The forest echoed his scream, a softer cry which tore into my very chest and made me stagger.
I heard something move at the far end of the clearing. I squinted through tears, but the man did not even bother to look up. Hand against the tree, I narrowed my eyes against the unsteady shimmer of tears in the starlight.
I bit my lip. The Unwritten couldn't have possibly been activated. His spell had missed and hit me, hadn't it?
A drifting darkness rose up from the shadows, preceding a black shape that was forming from empty air, then the thing itself entered the clearing.
At first it was impossible to know if it was tall and intimidating or not, until it paused beside a boulder. It was short, but too gaunt. Too dead. Inhuman.
Then there were more of them, this time accompanied by distant, discordant sounds which couldn't decide if it wanted to fall together to form a rhythm or fall apart to a dissonant tumult. It seemed to come down from the trees and moon and stars themselves, to whirl in around on the faintly drifting fog, to rise up from the steaming mire of the meadow.
One of them swung down from the tree, a shrunken head grinning. White-hot energy bolting through my body, I backfisted it before I even realized what I was doing. The woods erupted with these things, swarming forward. Spells rolled from my left hand, easy defensive things, just as easily knocked aside as I escaped the meadow and reached the trail. The Vanguards were retreating, outnumbered, spells cutting through the fog and breaking the monsters into inky blackness, but one was replaced by three almost instantly. The dark shapes cut me off from joining the feys.
Remembering my illusion lessons, I duplicated the fog around me so it was so dense that the only way I could see was by feeling my way with magic. But my own movement must have triggered their senses because they were traveling with me. I wanted to stop, to feel the bruise on my chest, but I knew I couldn't. I reached for my magic. And I took every wisp of fog and transformed it, gave it a steady beat of flashing wings, then darting flight. My pursuers came nearer.
At last, I released the fog in a flurry of white moths, giving the illusions razor-tipped wings and long stingers, intended to terrify rather than damage.
It worked. I made it to Lyall, and we knew: my interference was done—we had to go. There was a scream, a very human scream. Female. Cut off too fast for any hope of rescuing her.
“This way,” I said. Lyall didn't object. I snared him by the hand and raced through the woods without slowing when branches whipped us. They bent aside and scarcely touched us with their leaves. Then we were well out of the clearing and still running.
“We are followed,” Lyall said.
When we looked back, there was an animal of some sort bearing down on us. High up in the trees, something the vague shape of a monkey moved about the branches, coming closer. Then another and another, the moon back lighting them so I could not see any details.
The closer the husks in the trees got to me, the more convinced I was that there was something very, very wrong with them. It started with the empty pits of their eye sockets and ended with the tufts of hair they left behind in the branches.
“What are they?”
“Husks,” Lyall said and there was no time for any more explanation than that.
As the husks darted forwards, I felt a whisper on the wind. It was the same tone that I'd listened to my whole life. A faint nagging breathed words into my ear. I grabbed Lyall and forced him to hold still, drawing up every last dredge of energy that I had.
Disguising us to look like the surroundi
ng foliage, I remembered the way that Lyall's late partner had looked as she flitted through the woods like a shadow chasing tree leaves. I made an illusion just like that some thirty or so feet away. The husks screamed shrilly and clenched their roosts. I made it happen again, even farther. And again.
When I opened my eyes again, they were just gone, as though the wind had caught them and blown them away.
Lyall was several feet from where I stood when he turned to face me.
“I'm going hunting,” he said.
Then he, too, was gone.
With the spell over, I clenched my fists tight, drained.
The forest had known that it would happen. It was alive, sentient. I felt it there at the edge of my mind now, just a presence. Something waiting and watching. But what was it waiting for? It wouldn't say. As I let my mind go, I knew that I was signing my fate over to the whim of the Verdant Wildwoods.
“Fera!” the voice was distant, but I felt a jerk on my arms. “Fera!”
The voice was closer this time, and I focused on it, the falling sensation abandoning me as though it were a dream I was waking up from. I gasped, my eyes springing open to see the leaves of a fern waving in front of me, too close to focus on it.
“Feraline!” Mordon shook me, jarring my head against my shoulders.
I winced, blinked, and stared at him. My shoulders were in his lap, my feet soaking in a creek bed, and all about us were ferns and moss that coated every inch of exposed ground. Focusing on Mordon, I took one shaking breath after another, noticing that my eyes had been watering. I pulled myself into a sitting position, wiped my eyes on my shirt.
“What was that?” I asked. Had that been as bad or worse than when my compass trinket had failed?
“A defense mechanism. Or a test. It's hard to be sure,” Mordon said, his hands not leaving my shoulders. I leaned against him, cradled my head, and let out a groan.
“What now?” I asked.
He rubbed my shoulder. “It doesn't get much better from here.”
“How long did you spend in the Wildwoods last time?”
“A day, a week, an hour. It's difficult to tell unless someone outside is timing you, but even so, there's a distortion in effect. I came in search of a boy who was lost in the edge of the woods, and I found him as a young man. He agreed to go with me back to his parents. Not certain what he did after that,” Mordon said, his fingers finding and working on a knot in my muscle.
I gasped in pain, then wondered aloud, “What do we do now? Where do we go? I don't see any trails.”
“The Wildwoods don't have roads.”
Shaking my head, I said, “No, I mean there aren't any game trails. Is there nothing living on the ground here?”
Mordon was too quiet in response. I looked over my shoulder at him, and he gave me a tight smile that ended up looking more like a grimace. “If that is what you see, it is more than I do.”
“What do you mean?”
My fingers brushed his face and he jerked, turning and squinting his eyes as though he were trying to see what had touched him. “It's me,” I said, and laid my hand on his arm firmly. He reached up and took hold, patting down my arm until he came to my shoulder, then to my neck. A finger brushed my lips as I spoke again, “What do you see?”
“It's dark. Darker than night. I see well in low light, so this is disconcerting. But if you see things, know that it may not be as you think it is.”
“I will mind that,” I said, feeling my trousers and shoes and finding that they were soaked through, so perhaps the creek I was in was real. “We can't stay here.”
A slow nod from Mordon. He was unwilling to let me go, so I did not press him to release my shoulder.
“We can't wander, either.”
We were in a place with no orientation, just a nudging feeling I got that we needed to move. It could be paranoia from a spell. Nothing was certain here, and what Mordon had been trying to tell me before sank in: the rules that applied everywhere else did not apply here, and if anyone had a hunch about what the rules here were, it would be me. I swallowed hard, and stood, helping Mordon up.
If there was one thing we could not rely on, it was our sight. Maybe mine was fine, maybe it wasn't. I put one foot into the muddy bank, and guided Mordon with me. “Pretty sure this is a stream. We'll follow it downhill, and hope it goes somewhere.”
Mordon shrugged, and held on to my elbow. “Sounds like a better plan than trying to walk in a straight line.”
Unwilling to fully trust my sight, I sent my magic in front of us, and while what I saw proved to be fairly accurate, there were times that an illusion covered up a pitfall or a large boulder.
After a quick experiment with my trinkets, I found that none of them worked. While disappointing, it was a relief that they had not been changed by my bringing them here.
Chapter Six
By the time we stopped again, the sky had darkened and crickets chirped in the foliage nearby our makeshift camp. Like Barnes said, it did seem that the trees had eyes and were watching us, but I never saw any literal sign of this being the case. Still, I shivered. Mordon had a fire crackling at his fingertips, but wet wood made it a smoke signal rather than a source of heat. The feel of eyes on my back persisted, and I had no doubt Lyall would find us when he was ready.
The husks hadn't bothered us today, but I sensed their presence. Not nearby, but not far away, either. While we huddled close to the fire for relief from biting insects, namely mosquitoes and smaller bugs, I wondered what I could do for the husks. What would release them. What caused them. And if I was intended to do something for them.
All day Mordon and I scarcely let go of one another for fear of being parted by way of the Wildwoods, though if it wanted us to separate it would find a way to do it. That wasn't a comforting thought, nor was it comfortable to have such an empty stomach. We had stopped at a berry bush at about midday, but that had not been nearly enough to satisfy me for long. Mordon lasted better, and was less cranky.
Mordon's body was suffocatingly hot, but I didn't want to put a gap between us.
“Rough day,” Mordon said.
“Yeah.”
His body pressed against mine a little firmer. “Can you sleep?”
“Not a chance.”
Mordon's rough fingers moved a strand of hair off my neck, then he kissed me below the lobe of my ear. Nerves tingling, I let out a slow breath. This explains the questions. I was surprised by how quickly I adjusted to the new topic. He kissed me again, and I closed my eyes.
It felt a little like electric shocks searing my skin with every press of his lips. It was very … intense. Excitement stirred through my stomach, I tried to decide if I liked the sensation or not. How far did he intend to go tonight? I couldn't imagine he had energy for anything besides a good-night kiss. His lips were chapped.
I could feel the warmth of his mouth and the abrasion of stubble which I couldn't see. My heart couldn't pick a pace, one beat stopped, the next in rapid-fire succession of several beats. It was all so much, the heat of his body, the pressure of an arm around my side, the musky scent of him, all overpowering and overwhelming, too much. Not enough.
I wanted his hands to be all over me, skin against skin, to be overwhelmed by his heat and pressure and scent and body. The thought made me dizzy and made my chest feel constricted, but a part of me also recoiled from it. Saying, Hold on, just a minute here, think about this. But I wanted the voice to shut up, we were just kissing.
He nuzzled my jaw, then rubbed his stubble across the tender skin of my throat; and I groaned and tipped my head against his shoulder, giving him permission to continue. Teeth nipped my flesh.
Don't be easy, the little voice hissed.
We're engaged, I wanted to argue back at the voice.
For now.
His mouth was on mine, and I kissed him back. The woods drifted out of my attention and all that mattered was this, the way the line dividing him from me blurred until we formed a single e
ntity. Then I was gasping for air I couldn't get enough of and he was tracing a slow path down my throat. His hand slid about my waist, a thumb touching my bare belly, and I felt warmth spread down my spine. My mind dimmed, shutting out any thoughts of right or wrong.
“You smell wonderful like this,” he said. His words across my flesh sent thrills down my back. I arched into him.
My lips felt clumsy and my voice hardly worked when I asked,“Like what?”
Mordon took a deep inhalation which made my cheeks glow. “Tree sap, earth, open air, sweat, life.” He nibbled on my jawbone. “Arousal.”
He could smell that? The comment made me keenly aware of our position, how we weren't just kissing. What was I doing? I flushed scarlet and hid my face in my arms. Mordon's chuckle washed over me.
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