Chapter 28

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

MAEVYTH

A n earthy-root and leather scent invaded my nose, tugging me out of a black void. Something moved between my thighs in a steady cadence. Wet. Like something splashing water. S-clop, s-clop, s-clop.

A thick fog clung to my brain, and I could neither make sense of the sound, nor the sensation. I opened my eyes to … hair. Black hair. Draped across a wide, muscled black neck.

My mind puzzled the view and the sound. A horse.

A horse?

I lifted my head and double-blinked, the fog thinning as I took in the sight of jet-black ears, a flash of metal, and a set of reins.

What is this?

Images snapped through my mind in frustrating piecemeal.

Woods. A cell. An emblem. Bugs.

Scorpion .

Gasping, I jerked back into a hard surface, and something banded around my stomach. I kicked my legs, clawing at the limb restraining me. The scorpion?

No, that didn’t make sense.

“Let me go! Let me go!”

“Still yourself, unless you’d like to be thrown into the black bog.” The voice, deep and threatening, sent a shiver down the back of my neck.

I scanned over the surrounding shadowy landscape. Even in darkness, I could make out spikes of rotted trees sticking up from the mist-covered ground ahead, and walls of rock on either side that, when I tipped my head back, disappeared into the night sky overhead. Two moons shined against a star-speckled sky, offering an illuminated path through what appeared to be a wide gorge.

A void separated me from the last thing I remembered. What had happened between the scorpion attack and now?

“Who are you?” I asked. “What is this place?”

No response.

“Th-th-there was a scorpion. A big … scorpion.” I hated the way it sounded so ridiculous and unlikely in my head. Spoken in a weak voice, dry from thirst.

Still, he said nothing.

“I have to go back. My sister … she’s in trouble.”

“She followed you into the woods?” he finally asked, and I focused on the voice, not recognizing it from any of the guards I’d encountered. It carried an ominous tone, every word like a warning spilling from his lips.

“Yes.”

“She crossed through the archway?”

“No.”

“Then, she’s dead.” Not a speck of emotion, or empathy, in his voice.

“She is not … dead.” In spite of the tears in my eyes, I choked back the urge to break. Not yet. I refused to break until I knew for certain what had happened to her. “Take me back.”

Silence.

“I am asking you to take me back. I will return to where I came from. I won’t say a word. About this place. Or you. Just take me back.”

Still nothing.

He tugged on the reins, bringing the horse to a stop and my attention zeroing in on the scorpion inked on the back of his hand.

“You can leave me here, and I’ll …” The very thought of trudging back, of moving any part of my body that had become so laden with exhaustion, I could hardly keep my head upright, made me want to cry, but still, I said, “I can walk–” My words were cut short by the slap of his gloved hand over my mouth.

I clawed at the barrier, an angry retort pounding across my tongue.

From the quiet rose a squelching sound.

Through the darkness, I searched for the source, and found it crouched by a fallen log. A beast, the size of a fox, that reminded me of an oversized toad, with its stout, squatty body, big bulging eyes and flat snout. Long branching horns stuck out of its head, and when it lifted its nose up into the air, sniffing, I caught sight of fangs hanging down from its wide, upper jaw.

“It smells you,” my captor said, and I noticed the creature’s eyes were milky white, perhaps blind, the way it seemed to search the air with its flat nose. “Mortals make delicious little snacks. Much more exciting than its usual fare of snakes and swamp spiders.”

“S-s-snakes and swamp spiders?” I trailed my gaze over the glassy, black surface of the water below me.

“They’re all over this bog. Still up for a walk back to the woods?”

Before I could answer, the beast ahead let out a roar and opened its maw to show hundreds more teeth. It sniffed again, and lurched closer.

Closer.

“Shouldn’t we be on our way?”

“Those things can outrun any horse. Their eyes aren’t so keen, but their nose is spot on. And if they catch you? Well, imagine those teeth tearing across your delicate mortal skin?”

“So, what do we do?”

“I’m puzzling that very question as we speak.”

I didn’t dare turn to look at him. His voice was threatening enough, without needing a glimpse of his face. “Well, can you puzzle faster? It seems rather interested.”

“Oh, to be sure. We don’t get many mortals on this side. What luck that it stumbled upon you.”

He shifted at my back, and I twisted just enough to see my captor slide from the saddle, his boots making only a minor splash as he landed in the water.

“What are you doing?” I whispered. As much as I didn’t want anything to do with him, I also didn’t want to be abandoned by him, either.

“Stay quiet.” His voice held a strange, level tone that didn’t match the frantic thrumming of my heart just then.

“How can you be so calm right now?”

“I’m not the one he wants to eat.”

The hood of the cloak he wore covered his face, making him appear more shadow than a man, but I caught a flicker of black and metal at his mouth, as though covered by a mask. Before I could examine him too thoroughly, the beast roared again. I snapped my attention that way and nearly choked on the panic shooting up into my throat, as it lowered its maw and charged toward us.

The horse didn’t rear up. Didn’t whinny, or shift on its feet. It remained still, as if unmoved by the creature. I turned to find my captor had disappeared. Vanished, as if into thin air.

“What? Where’d … oh … dammit!” I kicked the horse’s flank, hoping to stir it into motion, but the unflappable creature didn’t move. “Move! Damnable beast! Gallop on!” Another kick, and the horse let out a deep, guttural growl.

A growl?

I’d never heard a horse growl in my life.

The toady beast splashed toward us, and my muscles locked up. I let out a scream as it leapt into the air for me.

A black object speared it mid-flight, plowing down through its head and out of its chest so fast, the beast still hovered in the air. The infernal toad cantered forward, sliding toward the water to reveal a shiny black blade that had impaled it, before it splashed into the bog beside the horse.

From a black curling smoke, my captor appeared, his gloved hand gripping the hilt of said sword.

Before I could process what had just happened, the horse bent forward and tore away a bite of the dead creature’s flesh, chewing on it like it’d just innocently stuffed its head into a bucket of carrots.

Mouth hanging open, I silently sat, certain I must’ve been dreaming. Or worse.

Perhaps I’d died back in those woods. Maybe Moros had captured me, and this was some sort of strange purgatory.

My captor wiped his sword onto a white kerchief, leaving a green ooze across the fabric. “Well, you’re free to go, if you’d like.”

I was about to tell him he was free to go to hell, but he lifted his head, and I caught sight of his face for the first time. Moonlight struck him just enough that I could make out the features otherwise hidden by the hood of his cloak. A black mask with metallic embellishments covered the lower half of his face, but even with his disguise, I recognized him. I’d seen those unusual eyes before, in what had seemed like a dream. The burnt orange and bright gold that surrounded his pupil, like an explosion of light, nearly glowing from the depths of his hood.

“You,” I whispered. “You …. I’ve seen you. You were in my room.”

He didn’t say anything as he shoved his sword into some unseen sheath at his back.

“I thought I’d imagined you, but … it’s you! Why?”

Still not answering, he gathered the reins, and it was as he stood alongside the horse that I took in the size of him. Close to seven feet tall, by my estimates.

“I’ll give you one of two choices. Get off this horse and find your own way back to the woods. Or stay quiet and don’t ask another question.”

“Can I at least ask your name? So that I’m not mentally calling you angry eyes?”

A sound of disapproval followed. “Zevander.”

“Zevander,” I echoed. “I’m Maevyth.”

“I didn’t ask.” He waited a moment longer, and when I didn’t move, he turned away and gave a slight tug of the reins, guiding the horse forward, on through the bog.

“ I don’t suppose you drink water here?” I dared to ask, after we’d gotten through that awful bog and he stopped to dry off his boots on a cushy, mushroomy object, just off the stone path.

He let out a huff and reached into a satchel behind me, pulling out the most elaborate-looking canteen I’d ever seen. What looked like moon phases, etched into the metal, loomed over the silhouette of a castle. Its back bore an inscription: May you never go thirsty. Love, Rykaia.

I didn’t bother to ask who that was, figuring he wouldn’t have told me, anyway. A lover, I guessed. Instead, I popped the cap open. Tipping it back sent a rush of cool fluids down my throat, practically sizzling as I gulped them back. Sweet mercy, had I ever tasted water so delicious? Unlike the well water back at the cottage, which’d often had an eggy sulfur smell, this was clean and crystal-like. Ice cold, as if it’d sat out in the winter snow.

Once satisfied, I wiped my face with the back of my wrist and returned the canteen to him. He didn’t bother to take a drink before tucking it back into the satchel. Pity. I’d hoped he’d remove that terrifying mask at some point, so I could catch a glimpse of more than just his eyes.

“What is this place?”

At first, he didn’t answer, and I resigned myself to not knowing, because my guess was, the man couldn’t be swayed.

“Aethyria. The world beyond the Umbravale.”

“Umbravale?”

“The shiny barrier you passed through to get here.”

The shiny barrier that’d also kept me from returning to my sister. “Another world,” I said in disbelief. Complete disbelief. Surely, I’d hit my head too hard at some point. “One last question. Is it much farther? I’m only asking because … well, I’m not sure if Aethyrians relieve themselves, at all, but … that water only has one path to follow.”

He groaned, adjusting the saddle on the horse. “Not much farther.”

Another question bobbed at the tip of my tongue, begging to be asked. The same question that’d echoed over and over as he’d guided us through the bog, undoubtedly farther from the woods where I’d come through.

Where are you taking me?

I had every confidence the man would’ve probably thrown me off the horse if I’d asked aloud, though. And did it matter? I had no intentions of trudging through that bog again on my own.

Tingles of anxiety rushed over me, as he climbed onto the horse behind me, bringing to my awareness just how small I was compared to him, when his arms came around from behind, practically swallowing me as he took hold of the reins. With a light kick to the horse’s flank, he set the animal into motion again.

I tried to not think about how broad and solid his chest felt against my back, or that he smelled of leather and tobacco mixed with a hint of something delicious I couldn’t pinpoint. A scent that left me wondering when I’d last eaten.

The night seemed so long. Endless. My eyes burned with a longing for sleep, but I didn’t dare close them. In the silence, I thought about my sister, lying naked and crouched, bleeding. How she’d waited there for me. How she could’ve easily stepped through that archway without me. And what? Would she have been safer, if she’d been found by those guards? Would they have captured her? Taken her to that cell so the prisoners could have their way with her before throwing her into whatever the pit was?

And if she had, would I have ever learned what’d happened to her?

“You’re wrong about my sister,” I said quietly, fighting to hold back tears. “She’s alive.”

“Then, I’m wrong,” he said with little interest, sounding entirely unconvinced.

I ground my teeth in anger at his insouciance. “You’re horrible for saying she was, in the first place.”

“And you’re a fool for crossing over.”

“I had no choice. We were being chased by something in the woods. Something awful.” My thoughts wound back to the strange beast-like version of Moros, and although it hadn’t been the most terrifying creature I’d encountered tonight in its appearance, it was certainly one of the more sinister. “It tore the flesh off Uncle Riftyn …” I said mindlessly, lost to the memory.

“This creature in the woods. What did it look like?”

“My grandfather told me bedtime stories of a wrathavor. A beast half-man, half-stag. One that eats flesh voraciously. That’s what it looked like to me. Anyway, it chased us to the archway. It was the only way out.”

“It sounds like you’re lucky to be alive.”

“I’m tired, is what I am. I don’t know what your intentions are, but I could really just use some rest.” The guilt of having said that aloud crushed me, while not knowing if Aleysia was suffering at the hands of Moros and whatever had possessed him, or if he’d offered her a quick death and her body was lying on the cold ground. Having to imagine either, alongside my own survival, felt so heavy. Overwhelming. I had no idea what this Zevander had in mind for me. If he planned to do worse than the men who’d trapped me earlier. An edge of tension vibrated through me, while the pull to close my eyes and slip away from it all had me silently chiding myself to stay awake.

Until he said, “There, your wish has been granted.”

Ahead of us stood a narrow path that wound up through the mountainside to a dark castle ahead, and while the sight of it, ominous and neglected, should’ve frightened me, it felt oddly safe. The kind of castle that scared even monsters away. Formidable enough to offer protection so I could close my eyes.

As the horse cantered up the path, I could make out flickering torches around the outside of it, illuminating its stony black and moss-covered walls.

“Ith’tu somninis profundiet,” Zevander’s deep voice whispered in my ear.

The scene before me narrowed to a pinprick.