by Jayden Woods
“I can’t believe you, Kyne. If Father saw you right now, or if he heard the sort of questions you were asking ...”
“Please don’t tell him. Please, Fayr!” His blinks became more rapid and violent.
She shook her head and clicked her tongue reproachfully. “Not this time, I won’t.” She moved to her horse, grabbed the saddle, and climbed upon its back.
“Are we going back home now?” asked Kyne.
“No.” She huffed as she settled her skirts about her. The heavy jewelry upon her neck and wrists only made her movements awkward. She resisted an impulse to rip them all off. “I want to go further.”
“Father won’t like that at all!”
Fayr flung her head back and breathed deeply of the air. “Can you smell it, little brother? I didn’t realize it until now. The Haze. It stinks!”
“Mother says it smells like jasmine.”
Their mother was not like the two of them. She was their mother, of course. But she did not have the Violenese blood of their father. She did not share the bright purple hair of her husband and children. “Does it smell that way to you?”
“Well …” He bowed his head, letting his short purple locks fall over his brow. “I suppose not ...”
“Come on then.” Her horse could feel her impatience. She pulled on the reins as the beast writhed beneath her. “Let’s go just a little further. Let’s get away from the safra.”
“But Father says the Haze covers all of Dearen!”
“Then we’ll get closer to the cliffs of Vikand!”
“What about Gornum?”
“Never mind him. If the Haze covers all of Dearen, then it will protect us as always.”
She did not wait for him, but kicked her horse and bounded forward. She did not even care if he followed.
Now that she had caught a whiff of fresh air, she wanted more. She wanted it like a horse wants water after running for miles. All her life, she had lived in the safra-infused Haze and endured it. While it intoxicated everyone else with joy, it blinded her with its constant glow. The stench, which she’d breathed so long that she stopped noticing it, had been suffocating her since birth. Now she needed to escape, if only for a moment. She needed to breathe pure air. She did not know if she would find such purity any closer to the cliffs of Vikand. But it seemed worth a try.
The palfrey’s white hooves thudded down the slope and into a thickening stretch of trees. The cliffs of Vikand always seemed to cast a long shadow over the Dearen valleys underneath, even if the sun shone upon them. For this reason, the forest growing beneath them was called the Shadowed Woods. The tree limbs cast shapes like intertwined hands across the soft auburn soil. Dandelion tufts from the meadows floated through the air and brushed her skin as she passed. The darkness wrapped around her and sent a chill down her back. For some reason, she liked it.
“Fayr? Fayr!”
She glanced over her shoulder and saw her brother galloping after her. Very well. He would catch up to her, or he wouldn’t. It didn’t matter. The only creatures in the woods were birds and tigers, and the latter never attacked Dearen natives: only strangers. Whether the siblings got separated or not, neither of them faced any danger.
A dark shape flitted past her vision.
For a moment, she felt fear. But almost as quickly as it came, the fear dissipated. She had thought she saw a man in strange leather clothes. For a moment he had seemed to glitter, but of course this was probably a consequence of the safra in the air. Even here, deep in the Shadowed Woods, safra hovered about, drifting and sparkling. In one sense, its presence continued to irritate her. But on the other, she was relieved, because wherever there was safra, there was safety. It was a tremendous blessing, even if sometimes it felt like a curse.
Her horse neighed and flung Fayr from its back.
As she flew through the air, she watched the soil rise up to meet her, and in that moment before she struck, she pondered what had happened. A breath ago, she and her horse had thundered through the forest with a perfect rhythm. The shadows danced, the safra blurred by, and her hair trailed behind her in soft purple streams, unable to keep up with her momentum. Now everything stopped, and her hair spilled ahead of her.
Her cry became lost in the soil as she smacked against the dirt.
Pain. Pain. Pain. She forgot that anything else existed. Then she heard the moans of her horse. She also heard the snapping of twigs as something crept towards her. The second sound came from the opposite direction.
With a groan, she tried to rise up. The world spun. She wondered how long she had been lying there, and how badly she was hurt. But more importantly, what had happened? Horses were rarely so clumsy as to fall like that. She saw the beautiful white beast sprawled in the dirt some distance from her. Crimson blood rolled down its leg.
A leather hand wrapped around her mouth and nostrils. A knee struck her between the shoulder-blades and pushed her back down. The pain was excruciating, but she couldn’t scream. She couldn’t even breathe.
“Fayr? Fayr!”
Tears filled her eyes, blurring her vision. Even through the watery ripples, she saw the white shape of her brother riding closer.
“Call to him.” The voice of her captor was as deep and grating as metal against stone. It also sounded muffled, as if he spoke through a mask.
She wriggled and thrashed, but this only tightened his grip on her. He flung her around, pressing her back against the earth. He straddled her chest, and if she could have, she would have screamed with terror as she looked up at him. He was the same man she glimpsed running through the trees. He wore a tight suit of leather, and indeed it did glitter, but not because of any safra. It glittered because it was covered with metal spikes, small but sharp. A mask covered his face, shaped and painted to resemble a wolf’s. Through two small holes she saw his real eyes, glinting with a cruel shade of red.
Cold metal pressed to her neck. This surprised her because he did not seem to be holding something as large as a knife. “Call him here, or you die now.”
END OF EXCERPT
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jayden Woods is the author’s pen name. She grew up on a farm in rural Tennessee, then pursued her dreams of film-making in Los Angeles. After receiving a BFA in Screenwriting from the University of Southern California and working on a primetime TV show, she decided to return to her original passion of writing novels. Since then she has lived in St. Louis with her wonderful husband and three beautiful pets, throwing all her will and energy into becoming a successful writer.
www.jaydenwoods.com
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