Chapter 19
HEMMING
W e’d been walking through the woods calling for Ariel for far too long, with no sign of anyone or anything. The beast could find no trail, so Eldrien had taken to the skies to search from above the canopy, to no avail. Above or below, Ariel was nowhere to be found.
“This place reminds me of the Black Forest,” I said to Shayfer as we trudged over the mossy ground. The woods were so overgrown that I wondered if anyone had passed through there in centuries.
“Let us hope that it is more benign.”
With that sobering thought, I looked up just in time to see a streak of azure above the treetops. Eldrien making yet another fruitless pass. My irritation grew higher still.
“She will be all right,” Shayfer said, breaking the temporary quiet between us.
I wheeled on him in an instant. “You don’t know that.”
He raised his hands in surrender. “I’m merely saying that she is smart, capable, and highly motivated to survive because, above all else, she’s in love with a hotheaded, half-blooded shapeshifter. Don’t forget that, Hemming.”
“Forget that? It’s driving my every step.” I looked back up at the sky in the hope that she might suddenly appear. “We should never have come here.”
“Ah, yes, but it was her idea, and you are rubbish at saying no to her.” My attention snapped back to him, and he shrugged. “You’d let her march into a burning building as long as you went first, you know. And that’s a dangerous dynamic for any relationship.”
“I would throw her over my shoulder and carry her in the other direction.”
Shayfer made a show of taking in the woods towering over us. “And yet here we are, flames closing in around us—figuratively speaking, of course.”
“What should I have done? Told her not to save her people? To let those boys starve to death?”
“Of course not?—”
“To forget about learning the truth of who and what she is?”
His smooth expression soured at my words.
We stood there for a moment, eyeing each other, until a rustling sound above drew our attention. Eldrien crashed backward through the canopy, wings flailing to right himself before he landed hard on the ground next to us. He looked up with a bloodied face and fear in his eyes. Before he could even tell us why, another being dropped from the sky and landed with ease only yards away, sword drawn.
A sword nearly identical to my own—but that was not what had me frozen in place.
It was the midnight wings framing his massive body.
Face shrouded in the shadows they cast, he slowly stepped toward us, hilt gripped tightly in his hands, prepared to strike. I knew that posture well; it was the stance of a Nychteride warrior. I drew my blade from my back in response and edged in front of Shayfer.
The warrior paused.
“Name yourself,” I said as I raised my sword.
His wings twitched in response, then slowly folded in tight behind him as he stepped into the light penetrating the forest. And it was with that step that he answered my question. The fading sunlight highlighted his features, and I stared at him in disbelief as my sword fell limp at my side.
I knew that face. Shayfer’s sharp inhale seemed to confirm my reaction.
“It’s not possible,” I muttered to the male I’d never met but recognized immediately—the resemblance was uncanny. Looking upon our would-be attacker was like looking at a replica of General Kade. “You’re dead…”
“No,” Ariel’s father replied as he raised his blade higher still, “but you soon will be.”