He led me straight to Danton.
Danton looked very handsome. He wore a black suit that complemented his lean yet muscular build, which had been further decorated by a velvety red cape that was slung over one shoulder—the colors of Orindor. His blond hair was combed back in a way that sharpened the aristocratic angles of his face, and his blue eyes were exuberant as they swept over me. He stood tall, white-gloved hands clasped before him. A pillar of pride. This was what he had always wanted, and we—Stefan and I—had finally surrendered.
The lords and ladies in the crowd watched in silent admiration and relief. This union would bring about peace for all of Gaia. United, the territories could stand against Eris. Otherwise, they would most certainly fail.
And I…I felt numb. Duty had strangled my desires and responsibility had slaughtered my hopes. Hopes for a man who was not here. No, he would not come to witness this monumental day. The day I sacrificed my heart upon an altar. He would not stand to see it, though it was this union that had saved his life. It was this union that allowed him to be. And it was this union that had withered my soul.
Even as I said the words "I do," my heart convulsed in my chest. People cheered as Danton lifted my veil, his blue eyes desirous and happy. So very happy. I belonged to him now. My insides writhed as he brought his mouth to my lips and sealed our vow. And then I heard a voice, echoing inside of my mind, a haunting voice I had heard before.
It will be done. There is no other way, for if you do not, you fate all those you love to death.
"I'm right here." Alex crouched beside me. I could just see his face in the lightening gray.
My heart pounded, and it felt like someone had set a very large and heavy rock on top of my chest. I had just dreamt about marrying Danton. In a red dress. But it had been so real and the circumstances so…plausible, and that voice! I suddenly took back every theory I'd had about my dreams being glimpses of the future. This future wasn't going to happen. It wasn't possible. There was no way I would hand myself over to Danton. The voice had lied. There had to be another way.
A hot breeze slipped over my sweaty forehead.
What if there is not?
No. I refused to believe that.
You may not have a choice, Daria.
I always have a choice!
Even if the repercussions of that choice take the life of the man you love?
"Same dream?" Alex asked quietly beside me. He looked concerned.
I shut my eyes and nodded. I had dreamt of Eris, but I was not telling him about Danton. I couldn't. It had been the mention of a marriage proposal to Danton that had made him shut off his emotions from me in the first place. I wasn't about to tell Alex that I'd dreamt about marrying the guy.
"We might as well leave," Vera said. "Sun will be up in the next half hour."
I groaned inwardly. I didn't feel like I'd slept at all, and as my heart slowly calmed, the pain in my body carved its way to the forefront. I hurt everywhere, and the ache in my shoulder throbbed like someone had shoved the arrow back in it.
"Let me change her bandage first," Alex said.
I didn't argue; I knew it was infected. Vera grumbled her annoyance, but she waited. I shifted a little so that Alex could access my shoulder, and when he peeled back the bandage, I heard his sharp intake of air.
I looked back. The wound was oozing yellow pus and the skin around the puncture had turned black. I swallowed and looked away. Even Vera was quiet.
Alex set to work, but this time there was no cooling effect. Our time was almost up; I needed a healer soon or I would die. It was that simple. He bandaged me up fast and helped me to my feet. I swayed and he caught me. This was going to be a long morning. If I even made it to Mosaque.
We continued along the wooden ramp, but this time Alex tied a small rope to my belt and held on to it as he walked behind me. I wasn't sure how long we walked on that ramp, but it eventually ended, the fog cleared, and the temperature dropped. Now puffy, bruised clouds filled the sky.
A broad, green plain spread out before us, or perhaps it had been one plain at some time. Now it was a cluster of giant mesas, where time helped the rivers erode webs of soil, cutting deeper and deeper into its flesh, slowly turning one landmass into dozens. I thought that if I were to look down upon it, it might look like a giant green puzzle whose pieces were spaced a few millimeters apart, as though this plain was a sheet of shattered green glass.
The Shattered Plains.
But how would we possibly cross here? The gaps between mesas were much too wide to jump across. Then I saw a bridge. It was a little rickety thing, made of rope and wood, suspended between our mesa and the next, and as I looked out, I noticed more of them. A network of connections all the way to the white caps of a mountain range beyond. The mountains blurred even as I looked at them.
Up here, the wind was a free creature, chilled and fierce, and it ripped through the air with a torrent. Or perhaps it was a symptom of the mass of dark blue and purple clouds conflagrating above, churning and frothing in the sky.
"Which way from here?" I asked, holding my hair back with my good hand.
"The southernmost of the Minarets," Vera said. "There's a watchtower there. It is the only point of entry on this side of Mosaque."
The mountains were jagged spires in the sky, as if someone had used a dull hacksaw to carve teeth out of rock. The largest of them—the southernmost tip Vera had motioned toward—was by far the tallest. It was more bulbous than its razor-sharp companions, and as I looked at it, I couldn't help but be reminded of Night on Bald Mountain. At any second, the peak's apex would unfurl enormous bat-like wings, revealing the red-eyed demon within.
Vera hastily tied back her hair with a strip of leather, making a ponytail nub, secured her cloak, and started forward on a rocky trail.
Seeing as how my hair wouldn't stay out of my face, I decided to do the same. Alex had already taken out a strip of leather from my pack, which was still secured at his belt. I took it from him and tied my hair back. The wind clawed some of it free, but most of it held. I was glad, too, because it was hard enough walking without having my vision blocked by my cloud of hair.
An ocean of grasses swelled and rippled on either side of us, flickering silvery green with every strong gust. During one such gust, I paused. There was a large splotch of orange amidst the green, about a hundred yards to my left. I wouldn't have noticed it if it hadn't been for the swirl of the wind that separated the grasses for a split second; there were no traces of orange now. It was as though the wind had wanted me to see it. But that wasn't all that had caught my attention.
It was death. Fresh death.
Vera had said hunters used this path, but there was something…off. Something that made me feel unsettled. Vera walked on; she hadn't noticed. I hesitated, glancing back and forth, and then I started toward the spot I'd seen the orange. My legs screamed as I made them jog, each footfall jolting sharply through my hip while my arm throbbed. But I had to find out what it was.
"Vera, wait!" Alex yelled and wasted no time in catching up to me.
I jogged through the grasses, carefully avoiding small rocks. It wasn't long before I reached the orange splotch, and I stopped, gasping for air and cradling my left arm.
Before me was the carcass of a…a… "What"—breathe—"is that?" It looked like some sort of tiger, but one that had taken some serious growth hormones and steroids. Its spine arched outward and a pair of tusk-like fangs curled over its slack jaw. It was easily the size of a bear, and there were three deep and nasty lacerations along its ribcage, where thick blood pooled all over the ground and splattered over its white belly.
"That," Alex panted, "is a sabre."
I snapped my attention back to Alex. "You're joking."
He wasn't joking. His lips tightened as he crouched beside the…sabre. "One branch of the species existed on Earth at one time, you know." He waved his hand over its pale green eye that stared absently into space. "Most of them left with
Gaia, though, and the ones that remained on Earth died off. Apparently, they needed magic for survival."
And a side of baby elephant daily.
Unfortunately, all of what I knew about sabre-tooths was from the movie Ice Age, and, well, that wasn't saying much. It failed to show that this beast was, first and foremost, a beast. A behemoth of a predator. It wasn't the large, pretty, orange, white-pawed cat that could talk. Its fur was mottled with browns and blacks and rusts, and its strangely arched spine was rimmed with bristly black hair. Its titanium-colored claws were easily the size of my face, course and scratched from wear and use, and the bone of its fangs was ridged and browned in the creases with traces of dried blood from its last meal.
It had been alive. A creature that prowled and hunted and killed. A creature that could've easily killed all of us, and it had been rendered lifeless in one fell swoop. By something with claws the size of its body.
I didn't want to think about what might have claws that size.
I glanced up and caught my breath. "Alex." I placed my hand on his shoulder and he followed my gaze. There was an entire pack of them, and they were all dead. Most of the bodies were severely mutilated. I swallowed and glanced back to the carcass at our feet, and then crouched, trailing my finger over one of the long fangs as the wind ruffled its mane. The sabre's life force was almost depleted, the heat fleeting from its mighty build, as though the wind were carrying it away. "He hasn't been dead for more than an hour," I said, surprising even myself.
Alex looked sharply at me.
I stood, dusted my hands and squinted at the sky. "The question is: what killed it?"
Vera appeared beside us. By the look on her face, I expected to get some sort of reprimand, but when she saw what had stopped us, none came. She approached the sabre and took in the massacre beyond with a look of utter shock mixed with something like grief. She touched one of its wounds, then pulled her hand away and sniffed the dark red blood on her fingers. "She's right," Vera said, looking up at me. Her expression was carefully stoic. "How did you find him?"
"I noticed him through the grasses."
She studied me, and I could tell by the look on her face that she was disappointed in herself for not having found them first. She then exchanged a look with Alex, and Alex stood with his sword drawn.
"This isn't a good omen," Vera said.
"You said to pray we weren't hunted," I reminded her.
Her eyes flashed with angst. "By sabres. I do not know what hunted them."
"Well, whatever killed them had to have come from the sky," I said. That unsettling feeling inside of me was creeping into my limbs and making the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end.
"That's not possible." Vera stared at the sky, but she looked like she doubted her own words.
"And up until yesterday, we thought dragons weren't possible," I said. "Wait, could it have been dragons?" When neither of them answered, I continued, "The watchtower you mentioned…they would've seen an attack from the sky, wouldn't they?"
Something flickered across her face, but I couldn't tell what it was. "Yes…"
And I knew why she hesitated. If it had been an attack from the sky—which I was growing more and more certain it had been—why hadn't those guarding the watchtower sounded an alarm? Why weren't they investigating right now? "We should get moving," I said, a seed of fear lodging deep in my gut. "I don't like this."
Vera nodded once and stood, placing her hand on the sabre's brow. She shut her eyes for the briefest moment, then removed her hand and stepped away.
Alex and I followed, an ominous silence pervading. The wind howled, beating our cloaks like flags in the wind. My body ached, but the constant adrenaline running through my veins acted as an effective suppressant. We crossed our first rickety suspension bridge, and I thought my non-acrophobia had been challenged enough lately. The bridge swayed and creaked as we crossed, and when I looked down, I could see nothing but dense, low-lying clouds. A perfect place for a winged enemy, like a dragon, to hide. We landed on the next mesa and continued on our way.
I couldn't get the image of the sabre carcasses out of my head. Such magnificent animals. Deadly, yes, but magnificent. I kept my eyes on the dark sky. The seed of fear inside of me had sprouted, and while we crossed the next rickety bridge, that seed started wrapping around my organs and squeezing them. I knew something was out here, watching us. I knew it as surely as I knew it would rain soon. There was a foul stench upon the wind, and the grasses rippled and bent, taunting me like a great curtain hiding evil within.
We crossed the next bridge, and the rain began to fall. I could no longer see the mountains before us, hidden as they were behind a dark curtain of rain. It was like we were standing at the edge of the world, where ground and sky collided and the mesas were the last vestiges of earth, and they were slowly breaking off into oblivion. Thunder rumbled in the clouds and the rain fell harder, soaking us through.
There was movement in the distance. I squinted through the sheet of rain and spotted tiny black dots in the sky—one…two…three.
My heart jumped as we crossed the next mesa.
"Do you see that?" I pointed.
Alex's eyes narrowed as he focused. "What am I supposed to…" His voice trailed as the dots differentiated into wings and a body. He could see them now. He cursed under his breath. Vera followed our gazes and her dread slammed into me with more force than the gales.
Gargons.
I'd met gargons before, and I wasn't eager to meet them again. At least last time we'd had air transport of our own. Where were we going to hide up here? And now we knew what had killed the sabres. Which would be us, soon, if we didn't— "Run!"
We all took off sprinting through the grasses. Of course, we could never outrun them, but maybe it would put us closer to the watchtower, where hopefully we would get help.
"I was hoping you'd lied about the gargons, Alexander!" Vera yelled over her shoulder.
She had meant from when the Del Contes and I had been attacked by gargons after rescuing me from the depths of Lord Tiernan's caverns. We'd blown up the caverns afterwards, which had also blown up all evidence, unfortunately. As far as the council and lords were concerned, we'd made the story up. But everyone who knew my father and the Del Contes also knew they were people of integrity, so as much as they wanted to disregard the truth, they couldn't. Still, hard truths are difficult to accept, even when they're armed in scales and fangs and flying straight at you.
We bolted over the next bridge. Wind ripped across the fields and giant drops of rain splattered against my nose and forehead, but the gargons' flight was steady. Those enormous and powerful wings beat against the wind, challenging it, subduing it, as they held tight to their formation. A boom of thunder cracked overhead. The ground trembled, followed by a torrent of rain.
The gargons were gaining fast.
Harder and harder we ran, our boots splashing through new puddles. The bridges swung violently as we trampled over them, crossing mesa after mesa. Through the pouring rain, I could barely see the dark structure of what I assumed was the watchtower. My pounding heart sank. There was no way we would reach it before the gargons reached us, and even so, if there were guards there, shouldn't they have seen us by now?
A soul-splitting wail cut through the air, silencing both thunder and rain. My heart drummed in my ears, the rush of adrenaline pushing me faster and faster. My body would pay for this abuse tomorrow…if I'd even get a tomorrow.
The first gargon descended. Its long, reptilian neck bent low as its hulking black body sped toward us, wings stretched wide like a ribbed glider. The beast was massive—even more so than I'd remembered. It was like having a building collapse on top of you.
"Look out!" yelled Vera.
Air exploded at my back and I dropped. A line of fire burned down my right shoulder blade, and a shriek sounded above me. Alex jerked me to my feet and shoved me forward as the other two descended.
Vera threw something
at one of them—a boomerang? Gold streaked across the gray; one of the gargons snorted a cloud of fire and jerked its head back and forth. Even from here I could feel the heat, but the heat still searing down my back was much hotter.
The gargons plunged. Erratic and terrifying, toying with us like a game of cat and mouse. Every time one dropped near me I dodged, narrowly missing their iron maiden grip. My dagger was nothing against their scales. Bursts of light exploded from Alex and a few from Vera, and the air filled with the acrid scent of burnt flesh. It only seemed to enrage the gargons rather than injure them, and the magic cost too much energy. Alex and Vera's strain was visible even without my ability to sense Alex.
I heaved as I trudged forward. A pair of claws descended and would have skewered me if not for a sudden burst of wind that knocked the gargon off course. But that same gust of wind knocked me over, too.
I landed on my face in a puddle of mud and rolled over. Grasses huddled over me and the dark sky showered rain upon my face. A black shadow suddenly filled my vision, blocking the rest of the world from view—a scaled shadow with a pair of blood-red eyes. It let out a deep, guttural growl as it prepared to close razor-sharp jaws over my body.
Frantic, I reached for my dagger, but it wasn't there. I must have dropped it when I'd fallen. I felt around in the grasses, hoping—praying—it was within reach. The gargon reared back its head and I shifted. Something hard pressed into my hipbone. My dagger.
I tilted my body in as slight a movement as I could, wrapped my fingers around the hilt, and just as the gargon brought its massive head down, I rolled over, pushed myself up and sliced.
The gargon shook its head and raked madly at the air, screaming so loudly I covered my ears.
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