24. Caenim
Chapter twenty-four
Caenim
T he caenim were as slow as I’d imagined when I had seen the overlarge figure sauntering down the main road through Belgrave.
Perhaps it set a careful pace due to its blindness, in order to avoid tripping over obstacles it couldn’t see and making itself vulnerable to its prey. Either way, I was not about to hang around and wait for that to happen.
Running for the road, I jumped over unearthed roots as small as steps and darted around trees, leaving a long and winding trail of my scent for the caenim to take its sweet time following. It was the best I could do, considering I didn’t even have a baseball bat at my disposal, and I could not return to the House.
But I couldn’t go home, either.
That had been my intention—to return through the gateway to the human world, where the absence of magic had dulled the kernel of poison inside of me. And maybe where any last traces of me would mysteriously vanish between one place and the next.
I didn’t know what I would do with the caenim tracking me all the way to the High King’s safe house, though. Soulmate or not, I didn’t think there was enough perfume or dung in the world to cover my scent there.
Planning my future took a backseat to my present as soon as I broke through the last of the trees and skidded onto the dirt road.
Caenim—dozens of them—were trudging through the forest on the other side of the road. Forked tongues flicking out of their eyes, they caught my scent alongside the death reek of their comrade as the wind came from behind me, tousling my loose auburn curls, and their black and empty mouths pulled back into wide grins.
I swore violently and didn’t care that nobody heard me.
The Malum had sent a small army into Sthiara.
Returning to the House was not an option. Not if Wren was working with the Malum to overthrow the High King.
Lucais’s vision through the Oracle had contained memories, as if the concept of soulmates defied all logic of time and space, but I was almost certain that mine had been a premonition. A warning.
And I had about five seconds to make a choice that would change that future.
I turned towards the township of Sthiara, knowing full well that there was every chance the caenim had already raided it.
My eyes watched the thicket on either side of the road as I ran, an action that was strangely familiar, like checking for kangaroos while speeding down an outback highway in a sedan. In either situation, I stood to sustain the most damage without a weapon or a bull bar.
Thankfully, none of them jumped out at me, so I decided to risk a glance over my shoulder and immediately regretted it.
Two small armies were joining from both sides of the woodland in the middle of the road, plodding after me at a disconcertingly confident pace.
I realised that I probably should have asked questions about them before I left. How many would have to be killed in order for me to be safe again? Could the Malum create more? Was that why Wren was working with them, because he had access to magic that they didn’t, and they made perfect, blind scapegoats?
The wind changed again, blowing towards me from Sthiara, and my heart withered against the smell of death the breeze carried from the little town.
Caenim attack, Malum infestation, or something else that was very wrong.
I couldn’t go into town when there was every chance that a dozen more of the caenim were waiting there, so I cast a backwards glance to ascertain how much distance I’d gained before I ran back into the forest.
My calves were burning, muscles threatening to seize up, and it made me clumsy.
Sharp branches sliced at my skin, leaves caught and broke off in my hair, and the skin of my toes started to bleed as I tripped and stumbled over roots and rocks.
A hungry, feral growl sounded from behind me as the coppery tang of my blood tainted the air. They were much closer than they had been before.
I was relieved when light pierced the forest, opening up a clearing ahead, though it was short-lived as shadows moved across the golden grass and began to form a line of starving death.
They were everywhere.
There was nowhere to hide.
A sob caught in my throat, rocking my chest, and I wished that I could peel my skin off—could climb out of my body and fly away, leaving my scent in a pile of flesh and bones for them to devour on the ground.
But I couldn’t.
The Malum had enlisted an apex predator for a long hunt. Speed didn’t matter when you couldn’t hide. Sight and sound were irrelevant when the description of the target was a smell that couldn’t be discarded.
I am going to die here.
I made it to the clearing, and I stopped running.
The pungent reek grew more and more unbearable as they closed in around me, skin as grey as the bathroom walls had been when I left the House. Their hoods were up, tattered cloaks billowing out behind them, but their tongues were as red as blood as they extended out of their eye sockets and tasted the air swirling around me.
I closed my ears against the sound of their rumbling hunger until the world went quiet, and not even the rustling grasses pierced my mind.
Heartbreak was silent. Death was silent. I didn’t want to hear a single thing as they killed me; I wanted the world to shut down the same way it had ten years ago, so the circle of my life could be completed at last. The debt would be repaid.
“Do you hear me?” I whispered shakily. “The debt will be repaid.”
None of them smiled this time.
They were close enough for me to strike, but my hands hung limp at my sides.
Maybe they’ll beat me to death.
I hoped they would. That would be fitting.
Sinking to my knees in the grass, I closed my eyes. The line of caenim already treading across the field would get to me soon.
A scream rang out in my head—sharp, soul-wrenching, and final. My mother’s scream as I sat on the floor like a discarded tissue and remained quiet.
A memory.
The memory that had haunted me throughout my life, which would hopefully be laid to rest at last in my death. We deserved that peace.
I thought about Brynn in the brief moments before I died. The happy moments—picking strawberries at the farm two towns away from our home, flooding the kitchen stove with more popcorn than we had room for in our bowls because she had accidentally tipped the entire bag of corn kernels into the pot, reading stories about unicorns, fairies, and mermaids before she fell asleep in my arms—because those were the memories I wanted to take with me.
Those were the memories I needed to hold onto when I inevitably found myself in some hell loop on the other side, reliving the worst day of my life until my soul had been ground down into nothing.
Brynn smiled at me in my mind, twirling a curl of her blonde hair around her finger like I once did to soothe her to sleep, and used her other hand to point behind me.
The caenim was reflected in her eyes, a clawed hand hovering over my head, aiming to swing down and—
“No!”
I screamed and ducked to the side.
She can’t see this. She isn’t supposed to see this .
My eyes flew open, desperate to show her something else, but there was nothing but dark, lumpy figures closing in around me on all sides.
The one she had seen, with its arm hanging over me like a guillotine, took another step to close the extra distance and—
Its head fell into my lap, green blood squirting into my face as its mangled body became limp and flopped to the ground.
The scream that followed was my own.
I braced my hands on the dirt behind me and twisted my hips, urging the head to roll off me, and then I very nearly covered the corpse with a spew of bile that choked the scream catapulting out of my throat.
Wren didn’t even look at me as he whirled, sword dripping with filth, and swung it around at the two caenim approaching him from behind. The third one was a little shorter, so instead of a clean decapitation, his sword cut into its head and became stuck, lodged halfway through its skull.
He grunted with annoyance and kicked its stomach, reaching for his weapons belt and drawing another blade. He took that blade—the poniard he’d used to peel his apple at the cottage we’d stopped at on our journey through the Court of Light—and threw it at me.
Not at me—behind me, straight into the heart of the caenim that was extending two clawed hands right towards my spine.
Pulling his sword from the other caenim’s skull, Wren acquired another small dagger and tossed it on the ground in front of my knees. I stared at it, then at him.
What is he doing ?
“Not to pierce the illusion of chivalry,” he said, throwing me a brief look over his shoulder as he speared his sword through the chest of another beast, “but you’re welcome to participate.”
I had no opportunity to reply as he charged forward, his steps like a dance, skewering caenim and slicing off limbs and heads as he pirouetted through the long golden grass.
His movements left an opening for one to stalk forward, taking his place in front of me, and it was instinct for my hands to grab the weapon he’d left, though I had never used one before in my life. I felt human and helpless as I cried out, eyes darting across the caenim’s body, searching for an opening between its arms as it lunged.
Shrieking again, I drove the blade into its chest, and its iron-tipped nails, closing around my arms, barely scratched my skin as it sagged and tumbled to the ground like a pile of bricks. My heart was beating so loud, I thought it was going to burst from my chest and take flight to the skies.
Wren jogged back and nodded in approval. “Very good, bookworm,” he remarked with a healthy amount of condescension. He leaned over me, dripping caenim blood into my lap, and yanked the blade out of my kill. Giving me a wicked smile, his green-splattered face only an inch away from mine, his eyes glowed like wildfire as he placed the hilt of the dagger back in my hand. “Now do that again, pretty girl.”
Caenim bodies were littering the field, and Wren resumed his dance, felling monsters that came too close or tried too hard. He ducked and weaved through skinny arms and outstretched claws as he brandished his sword, the high-pitched whip of it slicing through everything in its path the only sound I could hear. Green, festering blood coloured the land, squirting across the sky like paint being squeezed from its tube. My hands were covered in it, its texture thick and oily.
Most of the caenim lost their heads or suffered a blade through the chest, but others he took apart slowly—an arm, and then a hand, and finally a slash across the belly that sent grey mucus pouring out of their bodies as they withered to the ground like dying flowers.
It was over before I could get to my feet.
Wren twirled the sword in his hand, a flash of silver against the dark forest as he faced down the final caenim.
This one was tall and gangly, wearing an ill-fitting robe that revealed its canine-like hind legs, impossibly long and misshapen. I couldn’t be sure, but I had a feeling that it knew it was over, too. Still, the monster made one last, valiant effort to kill its attacker, lunging at Wren with a wide mouth open—
He ducked and rolled, leaping to his feet behind it, and brought the blade upwards between its legs with unimaginable strength, nearly slicing the creature in half. Making a disgusted face, he spared a glance in my direction as the caenim’s body hit the ground, his sword still wedged inside it.
The horror-struck look lasted for a split-second before Wren vanished, abandoning his sword in the body of his last kill, evanescing through the air in a blur of black and gold.
He reappeared at my side, almost stepping on me as the toes of his boots touched the dirt and he tackled a straggler to the ground behind me.
I’d been so enthralled with his violence, I hadn’t even realised…
The caenim was bigger than him, almost as big as the last one, and he didn’t have the advantage of a sharp sword to spread between them. In a swift move, the caenim twisted, pinning Wren to the ground. It was all the High Fae warrior could do to bring his knee up at the last second, creating a barrier to keep the monster’s enormous mouth at bay.
The caenim lifted an arm in the air, iron-tipped nails glinting in the light, poised to slice open his throat.
Wren snatched its raised arm first, and then its other, holding the caenim’s hands down by its wrists. The beast’s neck was so short that it was prevented from leaning down and chewing off Wren’s head, and he kept his knee firmly between their bodies while it struggled to free its arms.
I waited, eyes wide with shock, for him to make the killing blow.
He didn’t have access to his weapons, but he didn’t need them. He was a weapon. Wren had magic in his veins strong enough to light up an entire city with an arrogant wink, but instead of frying the creature from the inside out with the scalding light on his palms, he looked at me.
“Kill it,” he ordered, his tone as light as it would be if he was asking me to close a window. Golden eyes bore into mine, simmering with impatient expectation.
I didn’t move, didn’t give him even a hint of salvation in my own gaze. I had no weapons, and I couldn’t remember where I’d dropped his dagger.
The caenim snarled, mouth dripping with saliva, and Wren craned his neck away from it, giving me a demanding look. “Aura, my love,” he said with lethal sweetness, voice tightening, “will you please pick up the dagger at your feet and kill it?”
I glanced down at the blade in the grass, edges dulled with crusted green gunk, and then back at Wren.
He was beginning to squirm.
The caenim struggled against him, teeth-filled eyes hissing and snapping, and I saw the killing blow—my killing blow, if I picked up the blade and drove its point right into the base of its neck.
And I hesitated.
Wren saw it. His face folded in disbelief—a handsome face, a truly handsome face that some part of me might have eventually missed being able to appreciate from afar.
But maybe Lucais could commission a statue created in his likeness using marble, which was probably the only type of rock that would do justice to Wren’s strong features and sharp jawline. Although, I wondered what they would do for his eyes, which were incomparable and fast glazing over with hurt as he watched me and understood.
I had stopped hesitating.
I was refusing.
And I thought that, for some reason, my refusal hurt him the most—more than anyone else—because there was not even a spark of magic left at his fingertips.
The whole world saw my choice to let Wren die.
I hoped the damn Oracle saw it, too, and gave me some sort of sign in my next dream that I had made the right choice for the High King of Faerie. For Lucais, who would probably never understand.
Not the way Wren did as he glowered at me.
And let go.