by H. D. Gordon
I inhaled slowly. She was right, and I knew it. In fact, as of late, this had been a thought that circled the back of my mind on a loop. I was not the only one who was growing frustrated with our lack of progress in this war, with our inability to do anything on a larger scale than freeing a few pups whenever we could find them.
And though I’d only known Adriel for a relatively short amount of time, I already knew enough about him to know that he would absolutely sacrifice himself if it meant saving the lives of countless others. It was not the sex that had shown me this, but my observations of him with people. In the time I’d known him, he’d already exhibited more compassion and empathy than I’d encountered in all my life, added up, and multiplied by a hundred.
Asha was right, so I only nodded once and waited for her to continue.
“The Seers will know the answer,” Asha said. “They know everything. If we can find their city, we might be able to convince them to share that answer with us, and save the Mixbreed we both seem so fond of.”
Around us, the night bugs chirped and clicked while the town of Mina slept. I didn’t know much about the Seers, had only come across brief mentions of their kind in my readings thus far, but I did know some things.
“The City of the Seers?” I said. “Does it even exist?”
Asha sucked at her teeth. The moonlight shimmered on her brown skin, and she gave me a look that said I wasn’t the brightest creature crawling the earth. “Of course it exists,” she snapped.
“Oh okay, so you’ve been there? You’ve seen it?”
She pursed her lips as her dark eyes narrowed. “Of course I haven’t.”
I nodded, folding my arms over my chest. “But you know someone who has?”
“Well, no…”
“So then you don’t have to act like I’m being a fucking idiot by questioning its existence.”
“Maybe I just think you’re a fucking idiot in general,” the Demon replied.
I tossed up my hands, scoffing as I started to stalk away.
Asha called out to stop me, and if it weren’t for the fact that I wanted to find a way to free the Dogs and keep Adriel from sacrificing himself, I might have kept walking.
“Wait,” Asha said, and hurried over to me. “I just don’t like you is all,” she added, as if she thought that this somehow made it better. “But I do need your help. Your kind needs your help. Adriel needs your help.”
“Why not ask someone else?” I said. “There are dozens of highly capable Wolves running around. Why me?”
“Two reasons,” Asha answered, the response coming swiftly enough that I knew she had pondered this exact question. “For one thing, you are the only one of the leaders who agree with my methods of war. You know the Pack Masters well enough to understand that the only way they will loosen their grip on their power is if it’s ripped from their dead hands. As a former Dog, you know that being nonviolent when facing violent forces will get you killed.”
My teeth ground together at the mention of my former life, but between them I managed to say, “Okay, so reason number one is you know I’m capable of murder. That’s super flattering… The other reason?”
Asha studied me a long moment before answering, and the expression on her face revealed that the words tasted somehow salty in her mouth. “The other reason is that I suspect you think you’re falling in love with Adriel, which means you’re more likely to put yourself in grave danger if it means saving him.”
There was absolutely nothing about what she said that I liked, but also nothing I could deny, so I glared at her and fought to keep my voice from turning into a low growl.
“How do we find the city?” I asked.
Asha smiled, and I resisted the urge to knock the expression off her annoyingly attractive face. “I don’t know,” she answered, “but we both know someone who does.”
Now the Demon’s grin turned downright dreadful. For whatever reason, the sight of it sent a chill racing up my spine that I refused to shutter against.
“Why do you have to be all morbid about it like a damn weirdo?” I snapped. “Get on with telling me the plan already, before I think better of it and change my mind.”
“Fine,” Asha said, turning on her heels and striding out of the garden as if she just expected me to follow. Over her shoulder, her dark eyes gleamed with amusement as she said, “We have to go see the Erl Queen. She will know how to reach the City of the Seers.” A shrug, as if this were no big deal. “All we have to do is get her to tell us.”
I pinched the bridge of my nose and blew out a breath, feeling the start of a headache at my temples. “Oh, is that all?” I mumbled as I followed the Demon down the rabbit hole.
6
We agreed that we would leave the following evening, and I headed back to Adriel’s room to try and get some sleep.
He was still sleeping when I got there, and in the flickering light of the fireplace, I took a moment to look at his beautiful face. I had promised Asha that I would not breathe a word of our secret mission to him, because we both knew that he would not want us to go. Dealing with the Erl Queen again would be bad enough, but traveling to the City of the Seers and dealing with those milky-skinned bastards was a whole other matter entirely.
As I’d told Asha, I didn’t know much about Seer kind, but I knew as much as any other person. They were very rare, and very powerful clairvoyants. Legends claimed that the Seers were connected to the Gods themselves, and they helped to enact the divine will that was directly dictated to them. They were also tricky creatures, if the tales were to be believed, ones who did not give without taking extra in return.
How much of this was true, I didn’t know, as I’d never met anyone who had personally known a Seer.
So we agreed that we could not tell Adriel or the others what our plans were. If there was a chance that the Seers had the answer we needed to remove all the magical collars around the Dogs’ necks, then I needed to take it, because Asha and I agreed on one other thing as well.
If we didn’t make some kind of progress soon, the Pack Masters would find another way to come after us, and this would likely push Adriel into giving himself up for the common good.
As I watched him now, the perfect lines of his face relaxed as he dozed in the near darkness of the room, I knew that I had to at least try. I’d never known enough of love to know if this was it, but I knew that I would move mountains to protect the male lying in the bed before me. I knew that Mina was his home, and the people here were his people, and that meant they deserved my protection as well.
Tomorrow, I would follow the Demon into the Dead Forest and cross over into the Erl Queen’s realm. I would barter with her, and get my directions to the City of the Seers—if it turned out the place even existed. Then, I would go there and get the answers we needed.
And when I put it all like that, it sounded downright insane.
Despite the warmth of the nearby hearth, another phantom chill raced up the center of my back.
I pulled back the covers and crawled into bed beside Adriel. Without opening his eyes, he lifted an arm to welcome me, and I tucked myself in beside him while he tugged me closer. I drank in the feeling of safety that surrounded him with a feeling in my gut that it would be many moons before I felt such security again.
An adventure, Asha had called it. Willing to put myself in grave danger, if it meant saving him.
I would learn to absolutely hate it when the Demon was right.
Adriel was so observant, that I knew keeping the plans from him, even for a few hours, would be a struggle.
Luckily, we both had work to do the next morning, and we parted ways after sharing a nice breakfast and a cleansing dip in one of the natural hot springs nearby. I watched him glide into the streets of Mina and check on the people, asking questions and providing answers, doing all of the things real leaders do for their followers.
Then, there were the usual tasks to do. I harvested some vegetables for supper and pruned the
weeds in one of the gardens. I washed linens and helped repair a roof that had been damaged during a storm the previous week. At midday, I went to the kitchens and helped prepare and serve lunch, and in the afternoon, as was becoming my habit, I went back to the library, where a slowly growing group of people were gathering for reading and writing lessons.
We’d started with five attendees, all children that Adriel had convinced to come, including Amara and Freya. Now, there were twenty students, and half of them were adults. At first, I’d been very intimidated when more and more people had started showing up. My reading was adequate, and getting better with every book I read in the massive library, but I had never had a formal education, and my teachers over the years had consisted of hard-learned life lessons.
But when I’d gone to Adriel and voiced my concern about my skill level and abilities, he had kissed me and told me that I was perfectly suited for the job, and it was hard to deny the male anything when his lips were moving over my skin.
So here we all were. I’d started the same way the working lady who’d taught me to read had started—by presenting the letters and sounds of the common tongue. We went through the alphabet slowly, adding new marks and sounds day by day, and now, most of the class was able to recognize a handful of one-syllable words.
This progress had fueled something in me that I had never known existed, and on top of the missions with Goldie and Yarik, teaching the others how to read and write had filled a hole in me that I had never been aware of.
As they learned, so did I.
At the end of this particular lesson, Freya hung back, as usual, to ask me a dozen or so questions about this word or another. She was way ahead of most of the class, despite her mental disability, mostly because she could not seem to get enough of words on a page. She carried a book with her everywhere she went, tucking them into her pockets as she leapt between the rooftops and played with the other children. She’d begged me to teach her beyond the hour-long class the rest of the students attended, and she was no easier to deny than Adriel, albeit for very different reasons.
So I had been indulging her these past two moon cycles, reading to her and letting her read to me. She read to me at meals, while we were walking through the streets, before she fell asleep at night. And if she wasn’t reading to me, she was reading to Adriel or Goldie or Amara or one of the others. The light that came into her eyes as she discovered new stories was contagious, and I knew in those moments that teaching her to read and write was likely the best thing I had ever done, and would ever do.
The girl had stolen my heart, and I didn’t want it back.
That evening, as she read me a tale that she had herself written, one about a Wolf pup who escapes the clutches of an evil Sorcerer, I told her that I would be leaving, because I didn’t want her to be upset when she woke up in the morning and I was gone.
“Where are you going?” she asked, the disappointment on her innocent face tugging at my heart.
I told her that I was going somewhere that might help me save Adriel.
Freya game me her crooked smile, and with hope and goodness gleaming in her brown eyes, she simply said, “Good.”
I stood at the edge of the Dead Forest, the toes of my boots stopping just outside the dead bramble.
Asha stood beside me, a pack slung over her shoulder and a curved blade shaped like a crescent moon in her hand. I’d gawked at the weapon when she’d met me in one of the gardens in Mina before our departure, and this had only made her smirk.
“You scared?” Asha asked, dark eyes studying my face through the shadows.
I considered lying, but staring into the cold deadness of the Erl Queen’s forest, there was no denying the fear that crept into my blood.
“Are you?” I asked instead.
Asha blew out a breath and pushed past me, stepping over the border, her boots crunching on the forest floor as though it were littered in dried bones. “Only a fool wouldn’t be,” mumbled the Demon, so lowly that I wasn’t sure the words were even meant for me.
Feeling like very much the fool indeed, I adjusted my own pack on my back and followed after.
Just as it had been the previous occasions I’d been here, the effect was immediate. The temperature instantly dropped fifteen degrees, and each breath I drew now hung in clouds in front of me. If not for my Wolf eyesight, which allowed me to pierce the dark, the black would have been pitch enough to swallow me whole.
The smells changed. Whereas before, the scents of plush greenery and fresh water were filling my senses, as I stepped over the border into the Dead Forest, the smells of death and decay rushed in to take their place.
Though we did not speak a single word, Asha and I kept close together, our shoulders nearly brushing as we picked our way through the trees. Here, there was no chirping of insects or scuttling of small creatures, only a silence that somehow seemed deafening.
Goosebumps broke out over my arms, and the instinct to shift into my Wolf form struck me, as it did for every Wolf when they felt threatened or in danger. I pressed onward, nonetheless, reminding myself that I was here for Adriel, that the Erl Queen might have the answers we were looking for, or at least, the start of a thread that would lead us to them.
Something snapped to our left, and Asha and I stopped in our tracks, our heads whipping in that direction. It was wise to remember that the Erl Queen was not the only danger in the Dead Forest, not by a long shot, and this time, there would be no Adriel to save me from an encounter with Ogres or Enenra.
We waited three whole seconds that felt like tiny eternities, but when no drooling beast leapt out of the shadows and tried to eat us, we pressed onward again.
Time seemed to move differently in the Dead Forest as well, or maybe it was that it ceased to move at all. Whatever it was, one got the sensation that they could grow old here within the space of a day.
We continued on, and rather than one of my five physical senses alerting me to the presence of the Erl Queen’s soldiers, a feeling in my gut sounded the warning bell.
I halted in my tracks, thrusting out an arm to stop Asha as well. She cursed as she ran into my hand, but when a torch flared to life nearby, and the flickering flame illuminated just how close we’d been to walking right into our death, she snapped her mouth shut.
If I weren’t so unsettled, I might have taken some pleasure in the moment.
The torch belonged to one of the ten Valac warriors now surrounding us, and the tips of two spears were poised right before the soft skin of our throats.
There was little to do other than hold our hands up.
“We’ve come to see your queen,” Asha said, and I wouldn’t have admitted it, but the strength and ease in her tone was impressive.
The Valac warriors said nothing at all, and for a moment, looking at the dark masks that hid their faces, I thought perhaps the mindless bastards might just kill us for the fun of it. Whatever kind of creatures they were under all that thick black armor, they certainly struck me as beings that saw killing as sport.
For obvious reasons, killing as sport held a particular repulsion for me.
We were shoved forward from behind, the Valac in front of us raising the tips of their spears just before they could impale us. Then we had no choice but to follow. I felt my heart beating out of my chest, but forced myself to focus, hoping like hell that there was another way into the Queen’s realm that didn’t involve the ground opening up and swallowing us whole, as it had the last time.
That was an experience I could live another ten lifetimes without.
Asha and I were herded along, the sound of our boots crunching over the dead ground the only accompaniment. Not only did the Valac not seem to even breathe, despite their enormous size and heavy armor, they made absolutely no sound as they traveled along beside us.
It was impossible to calculate how much time passed, but eventually, we reached a black gate that stretched on endlessly in either direction. The gate was wrought iron, fifteen feet ta
ll, and tipped with sharp points that were very much like the spears the Valac carried.
Creatures unlike any in the books in Mina’s library had been depicted along the fence, hideous beings whose terrible faces were twisted in eternal agony. If not for the morbidity of the entire scene, I might have marveled at the artistry and craftsmanship that had gone into it.
Beyond the gate, hellhounds roamed, their gazes glowing a bright red that was somehow at a contrast with Adriel’s. Their eyes had no whites, no irises, were only glowing red orbs that stared unblinkingly at us from beyond the wrought iron.
The hellhounds walked on all fours, their bodies a mass of bulging muscles, like living gargoyles. The Valac who were escorting us seemed to take no notice of the creatures, and as we approached the gates, they swung open silently, allowing us to enter, as if they had a mind of their own.
Asha and I exchanged glances, and I didn’t miss the way her throat bobbed as she swallowed, the only indication that the female Demon was nervous.
That made two of us.
The last time I’d come here, I’d had to trade my fertility for my friends’ lives. I shuddered to think of what the Erl Queen might ask for this time, and wondered just what I had left to give.
Through the gates, past the drooling hellhounds, over a barren stretch of land, and finally, through a dark mist that hung in the cold air, the Erl Queen’s castle came into view.
It looked exactly how I remembered it from my previous visit, sitting on a giant shard of dark rock in the center of a depthless abyss.
A bridge stretched across the deep drop, and standing at the end of it, in all her lovely and terrifying splendor, was the Erl Queen herself.
“Hello, Rukiya Moonborn,” the Erl Queen said, a smile stretching over her face, as though she’d been expecting us.