But when my eyes snapped open in the pentagram-shaped room on the third floor, I was alone.
I stood and searched for Zara, calling her name. I opened the door to the library, and found her sitting on the floor, tears falling like rain against her cheeks.
A small book was cradled against her chest, and when I went to her, she handed it to me, her finger holding the book open to a page toward the end.
“What’s this?” I asked.
“My mother’s journal,” she said. “Read it.”
My eyes dipped to the passage Zara pointed to.
And if any of you, my lovely daughters, are reading this now when I am gone, know this. If I’m dead, it’s because you either failed to protect me, or you betrayed me. Now, you will know what betrayal feels like. You’ll see it in the way your hair changes color and begins to decay. You will know it when you look at your face in the mirror.
If I cannot rule, I will not allow one of you, the ungrateful, to rule in my place.
I have placed a curse on my own bloodline, which will activate shortly after my death. It will affect the oldest of my daughters first, following through, in time, to the youngest. You will become what all witches who’ve betrayed me have become. Hunters. You will live forever, and your decaying body will serve as a constant reminder of what you did to me.
There is no cure. There is no way out.
Accept your fate as you watch your life slip through your hands, for you brought this on yourself.
I lowered the journal and grabbed Zara’s hand, unable to hold back my tears. When I killed Priestess Winter, I never imagined she would be able to reach out from the grave and continue to spread such evil.
Hopelessness overwhelmed me, and I pulled my dear friend into my arms.
There were no words to say. There was only this moment to let her know how much I loved her.
He’s All That Matters To Me
The heat of six suns beat down on us as we traveled through the Southern Kingdom toward the borderlands. Lea and I traveled in shadow form for a while, through the forests and across the grassy plains, but when we lost the trail of the hunter’s magic, we took solid form and traveled on foot.
Lea was good at tracking. I remembered that from when we were younger. It was something I had been trained in as a shadowling, but I had forgotten most of what I’d been taught. I was impressed with the way she was able to quickly pull up a spark of memory from a place and easily see which way the hunter had gone.
The more traditional way of tracking was to follow the path of someone’s magic. Most beings who traveled here in the Shadow World used magic in some way, either shifting to a shadowed form or using speed spells. The distances between cities could sometimes take days to travel on foot, and since we didn’t use cars like they had in the human world, most demons used magic.
But magic was relatively easy to track, if you knew what you were looking for.
Lea knelt low to the ground and stared ahead, studying the ground and the air just above it.
“She went this way,” she said. “Toward the borderlands.”
“How did you know she would go this way?” I asked.
“What do you mean?”
“Earlier, when we were back at Brighton Manor, you said you wanted to reach the borderlands by nightfall. How did you know we’d be going this way?”
“I didn’t,” she said. “Not for sure, anyway. But most hunters have no reason to be in the south anymore. When Harper’s father built the domed city, he invited everyone who lived in the entire Southern Kingdom to move their families there. He said it was the only way he could protect them from the Order. Villages spread out across the countryside were much harder to patrol and protect than one single city.”
“It makes sense,” I said.
“He was a wise king,” she said. “Unlike my father, who built walls around himself and locked everyone else out.”
Her tone was thick with bitterness.
“A few villagers refused to live in the domed city, not wanting to leave their homes,” she said. “The hunters came for them first, but eventually, there were too few demons left unprotected here in the south, so all the hunters who used to live on this side of the border went north.”
I swallowed, understanding now why she was so angry and sad.
“North, where the villages were left unprotected,” I said.
“Yes.” She stared at the swampy land that made up the borderlands between the kingdoms. “Aerden, when we cross over to our old homeland, you need to prepare yourself for what you’re going to see.”
I followed her gaze, my skin growing hot.
“It’s nothing like it used to be,” she said. “It shocks me every time I come back, just how much our homeland has been pillaged and destroyed by the Order. It’s a lot to take in.”
“I need to see it,” I said. “I can’t hide from this forever.”
She nodded and began to walk across the swamp. She chose each step carefully, finding solid footing on rocks or upraised moss. It took nearly two hours for us to make our way across less than a mile of swamp, but when we came through the other side, we quickly made our way to the stone wall that separated north from south.
The suns were already making their descent across the sky, joined by two moons already showing through the purple sky to the east.
“There’s a crossing about a mile from here,” she said. “We’ll make our way along the wall until we can cross the bridge to the Northern Kingdom. The suns should be mostly set by then. We’ll see if we can make camp somewhere just north of the wall.”
“Why not just shift and fly over it?” I asked. “No one’s following us or tracking us.”
“Not that we know of,” she said. “But I don’t want to take any risks. The hunter definitely went over the wall here. I can sense her magic strongly in this area, but I’d rather cross at the bridge and double back in the morning. We’ve been using our own magic up to this point, but from now on, I think we need to be more careful. No more casting unless we have to. I don’t want anyone tracking us.”
We crossed into the Northern Kingdom just as the suns began to set.
I had never been this far south when I was younger, so I’d never visited any of the borderland villages. Still, as we approached a set of thatched roof houses on the dusty road, my stomach grew nervous and thick with tension.
From a distance, it looked like any small village with a circular arrangement of houses on the outside and a town’s center where the market would set up every day. But as we got closer, I noticed holes in the roofs of the houses. Long brown vines had grown up around their exteriors, tangling in the wooden slats.
When we were close enough to see the market at the center of the village, I realized that it was nothing but a bunch of broken stone boxes, filled with rain.
A young woman peered out of the doorway of one of the worn-down homes, a small shadowling hiding behind her skirts. I stepped closer, but she backed away. She had a small sword clasped in her hand.
“We don’t have any food,” she said. “There’s nothing of value here, so whatever you’re looking for, you might as well keep going.”
I shook my head. “We don’t want anything,” I said, my heart aching for this woman and her small child. Were they the only ones left here? Why hadn’t they moved on? “Where is everyone else?”
She stared at me blankly, as if she hadn’t understood my question.
“Where are the rest of the demons in your village?” I asked. “You can’t be the only ones left here?”
The child at her knees poked his head around the side of her body and stared at me, his eyes dark and full of curiosity.
“Hi,” I said with a smile.
His mother made a hissing sound and the child stepped back behind her, but I could see the glint of a knife in his hand.
I stared at that weapon, clasped in the hand of such a young little thing, wondering what this world had come to when someone so
young had to know how to protect themselves because there was no one left to keep them safe.
“Do you need food?” I asked.
“Aerden,” Lea said in a hushed voice. “We barely have enough for ourselves to last three days. We can’t go giving it out to every weak villager we come across.”
I ignored her and stepped closer to the woman in the hut.
I shifted my pack and set it on the ground in front of me. The woman moved backward, her arm outstretched protectively to guard her child.
I held my hands up and shook my head. “I won’t hurt you, I promise,” I said. “But I have some food in my bag if you’d like some.”
The woman’s eyes grew wide and her mouth opened. The hunger that pushed through her was like a passionate need. I pulled a protein bar and two apples from my bag and held it toward her.
She leaned her head forward, studying me. But then she gasped and backed away.
“Where did you get that?” she asked. “It doesn’t look natural.”
I laughed, realizing she meant the wrapped protein bar. “I’ve been in the human world for a very long time,” I said. “It doesn’t look good, but it tastes okay, and it’s enough to get you through for a little while. Where are the others from your village? Were they all taken?”
She looked down at her feet and then placed a hand on top of her son’s head. “Most of them were taken,” she said. “Some joined the Resistance, but my family stayed here. It’s our home. We didn’t know where else to go. A few years ago, my husband was taken. Since then, it’s just been the two of us out here. The hunters don’t mess with us anymore. Too many villages with more demons to take than here, I guess.”
“Have you seen a hunter pass by this way recently?” Lea asked.
The woman looked up at her, as if just now noticing I wasn’t alone. Slowly, the woman nodded. “An army of them, headed south. We hid in the cave near the water as they passed, but they didn’t seem to care,” she said. “They were going after something else.”
“Did any of them come back through when they were done?”
“Only one,” she said.
Lea and I glanced at each other. “Which way did she go?”
The woman stepped out of her hut and pointed toward the mountains to the west. “She went into those hills,” she said. “Why are you asking?”
“Because we want to find her,” Lea said.
A pained expression crossed the woman’s face. “Why would you go looking for a hunter? That’s madness.”
“Maybe,” Lea said. “But the whole world is madness these days, isn’t it?”
The woman smiled and nodded. “Yes, I suppose you’re right.”
She met my eyes and leaned down to take the food I’d offered. “You sure this stuff is okay to eat?”
I smiled and tilted my head to look again at the small boy inside the hut, his face just peeking out from behind the door. “I promise,” I said. “If I can, I’ll bring more later.”
“Thank you,” she said.
I hoisted my backpack on my shoulder and nodded to Lea. She turned toward the mountains and started walking.
“Take care of that boy,” I said.
“He’s all that matters to me,” the woman said, her words tugging at my heart. “And if you’re really going toward those mountains, I’d wait until sunrise if I were you. In the dark, the hunters roam those hills in packs.”
I nodded and followed Lea through the deserted village and out toward the rocky path that led up toward the mountains.
Something More
“Let’s make camp,” I said. I looked to the rocky black mountains just beyond the next hill. We were close, and if I had to guess, the hunter’s cave was hidden somewhere close. “We can start up again in the morning.”
Aerden set his pack on a large boulder at the edge of a grassy space that looked flat enough to sleep on for the night.
“Don’t stop for my sake,” he said. “I can keep going if we need to.”
I studied him. I knew it had been a rough day for him. It was hard for me to see the destruction and ruin that had come to our lands, but at least I had seen it happen in slow motion, taking it in one year at a time.
He had to see it happen all at once, like waking up after some kind of major apocalypse. Sadly, he hadn’t seen the worst of it.
“If we could see in the dark like Jackson, I’d say let’s keep going, but neither of us will be any good during the darkest part of the night,” I said. “If we use our magic to light the way, the hunter will see us coming and anyone who might be following could track us in an instant. It’s safer to rest and start again in the morning.”
He nodded and removed his sleeping bag from his pack. I looked around for some firewood in the area. Normally, I’d have had Aerden use his magic to keep us warm. He was naturally gifted with fire, but we’d have to stick to the basics. Luckily, we’d been in the human world long enough to have things like matches and sleeping bags and other comforts that didn’t take any magic to use.
I walked a little ways off from the camp and gathered some sticks and twigs to use for the fire.
As the last bit of sunlight disappeared behind the cliffs, I returned to our camp and settled in for the night.
We’d chosen a small alcove at the edge of the mountain, and I hoped no one would be able to see the flames from here. It felt hidden and secluded, something I hadn’t had the pleasure of feeling for a long time. Living in a house with a dozen people meant privacy didn’t really exist anymore.
And I happened to like privacy.
“What’s that smile for?” Aerden asked. “You don’t smile enough these days.”
I hadn’t even realized I was smiling, and warmth rushed to my cheeks.
“It feels good to be out on the land again, fending for myself,” I said. “When I first joined the Resistance, we didn’t have an underground hideout or anything like that. We lived in the mountains at the very edge of the province. Supplies were sometimes hard to come by, but we made it work. After living in a castle where servants waited on me hand and foot, I kind of liked it, to be honest. I miss that.”
I realized as I spoke that I was brushing up against a dangerous topic, but Aerden didn’t seem to mind.
He put his dagger through the core of an apple and sliced it into pieces. “Why did you leave the castle?” he asked. “We’ve never really had the chance to talk about it.”
“I always assumed you didn’t want to talk about it,” I said. “I don’t want to say anything that will hurt you or bring back bad memories.”
He shrugged, his face hard to read in the firelight. “It all hurts these days, doesn’t it? All the memories or thoughts of that time. I’d like to know why you left instead of staying behind and taking your place on the throne.”
I sat down next to him on the log of an ash tree he’d pulled over. “I left because Jackson left,” I said. “He felt you when you were taken, did you know that?”
Aerden shook his head and looked over at me, waiting for me to say more.
“We were inside the veil, and I had just opened his heart stone,” I said. “We were supposed to kiss to seal the promise. I’m sure you know all that, but before we kissed, Jackson collapsed. I didn’t understand what was happening, but he was in agony. And then he finally looked up and told me you were dead.”
Aerden looked down. “Dead?”
“He said he’d felt you ripped from him, as if you had died,” I said. “It wasn’t until later that he figured out what had really happened.”
“This happened while you were inside the veil? But you did kiss to seal the promise?” he asked.
“Not officially,” I said. “I kissed him to bring the veil down so we could get help, but no. Jackson never kissed me. But I saw his heart stone.”
I stared into the fire, thinking that even the light from these flames could not compare.
“Seeing that stone was the greatest joy of my life. It surprised me, that light.
I’ve never seen anything so strong and pure in my life, and even though it only lasted a few seconds before it all started to fall apart, there have been times when the joy of looking into that stone and knowing I was loved has sometimes been the only thing that’s kept me alive,” I said, warm tears pushing to the surface. “I have no idea what made him stop loving me, but it was there, if only for a little while.”
Aerden tensed beside me, and I knew I’d probably said too much. The last thing he wanted to do tonight was listen to me complain about losing Jackson. Especially when my pain couldn’t compare to what he’d been through.
“Lea,” he said, softer than I’d heard him speak for a very long time.
I turned to him and he set his dagger aside. His eyes shone with tears and his chest rose and fell, heavy with each breath. He lifted his hand to my face, his fingers trembling slightly.
I started to move away, not sure what he was doing, but something in his eyes held me there.
His hand reached for the long, dark braid that fell down my back. He pulled it over my shoulder and removed the tie at the end, letting his hands gently untangle each crisscross.
I was speechless, not understanding why he was doing this, but not wanting to move away.
I kept my eyes locked on his face, the firelight flickering across his features. He looked so much like Jackson, but now, I noticed subtle differences I wasn’t sure I’d caught before.
The line of his jaw was slightly stronger and more pronounced. A small scar on his forehead above his nose that he’d gotten when we were shadowlings. And when he’d finished taking my hair down, the blue eyes that looked at me were very different from the green eyes of his brother.
These eyes held unimaginable pain behind them, but something more I had never seen in Jackson’s eyes. I couldn’t define it.
Aerden ran his hand through my hair and pulled it over my shoulder.
“This is how I remember you,” he said in a whisper. “Not as a harsh warrior, but as a beautiful princess. You have always been incredibly strong, but you used to have a softness to you that I haven’t seen since I went free. I loved that about you.”
Emerald Darkness Page 16