Chapter 23 Into the Darkness
Into the Darkness
I pulled my clothes up my body, trying to dress myself and make sense of everything at the same time. My skin was still hot and tingly, my heart still beating too quickly, but I had to admit that the strange dead thing on the bed had killed the mood somewhat.
“Does that mean Laitha knows we’re here?” I asked, trying not to look at the growing blue stain on the blanket.
“Possibly.” Radven, now fully clothed, used his knife to push the oozing, iridescent corpse onto his empty dinner plate.
“Zhespers share a mind-link with each other, and Laitha is powerful enough to tap into it. She’s trained them to be her eyes and ears.
It’s quite possible she saw us through its eyes before I killed it.
At the very least, the fact that it was here means she’s looking for us.
She has hundreds of zhespers at her command, they’re probably spread out across the countryside. ”
He bowed his head over the body, uttering a few words over the dead creature that sounded oddly like a prayer.
And then he bent over and slashed the side of the mattress, creating an opening as long as his forearm.
Carefully, he pushed the dead zhesper inside, then pulled a small needle and thread out of the little pouch on his belt.
In the time it took me to get my breasts back into the bodice of the dress, he’d sown up the mattress again.
“Why did you do that?” I asked, smoothing my hands over my dress. My nerve endings were still sensitive, not ready to admit that the moment for pleasure had passed.
“Some people believe the mind-link still exists even after a zhesper has died.” Radven wiped his knife off on his pants then returned it to the sheath. “I don’t know if that’s true—I’m not powerful enough to link to them—but I’m not taking any chances.”
My next question was one I knew had to be on his mind, too. “If Laitha is sending these zhespers after us, then does that mean Octavian and Alastor—”
“All we know is that Laitha is alive.” His voice had that edge to it again. “We won’t make any assumptions about anything else.”
We didn’t linger long after that. In a matter of minutes, Radven had led the way back down to the common room.
There was someone clattering dishes in the back, but otherwise this level of the inn was quiet. A large man was slumped on a bench next to the dying fire, drunkenly dozing, but aside from him the room was empty.
The street outside was empty, too. A small handful of windows revealed the dim, golden light of lamps, but otherwise Far Meadow was still and silent.
I glanced up at the sky, half-expecting to see a small army of zhespers hovering in the air above us. I saw no movement, though, and no dark shapes against the black sky.
But the stars. I’d never seen so many in all my life—but then again, I’d never lived somewhere where there wasn’t tons of light pollution.
There were so many stars above me that it would have taken a lifetime to count them all, and if any familiar constellations lay among them, I wasn’t sure I’d ever find them.
There were moons, though—yes, moons. Three, that I could see—one full, one in its first quarter, and the final one a tiny crescent hovering just over the surrounding hills.
“Come on,” Radven said, his voice low and urgent. “We need to move quickly.”
“I’m sorry.” I hurried after him, embarrassed that I’d forgotten the pressing danger. “It’s just so beautiful. You never told me Therador has three moons.”
“It wasn’t something I’d thought to mention.” He answered without missing a step. “It isn’t something I’ve thought about for years.” He paused then, lingering between one step and the next, looking up as if transfixed.
But his distraction only lasted a second. Suddenly he moved again, grabbing me by the wrist and pulling me into a shadowy doorway.
His body pressed against mine, his arms coming around me in an unexpected embrace. And to someone passing by, that’s exactly how we would have looked—like two lovers, tucked away in a dark doorway to steal a few illicit kisses.
Considering what we’d been doing only moments before, it was no surprise that my body reacted, my skin going all flushed and hot and my breath quickening in my chest.
Radven noticed.
“Believe me, butterfly, I’d much rather be continuing what we started.” His voice was that low, melodic purr, but his eyes were looking up, watching the sky.
And that’s when I felt it—the same subtle, shivery pulse I’d noticed just before Radven had killed the zhesper in the inn.
I twisted my head, trying to spot the small creature against the dark sky. That tiny motion brought me even closer to Radven, right up against that sandalwood-and-smoke scent, which was mildly distracting.
“There,” Radven whispered, his breath stirring my hair. “By the chimney across the street.”
I squinted into the dark, and then, in the pale light of the moons, I saw it—a small, moving bit of darkness against the darkness. If I didn’t breathe, I could hear it, too—its wings made a soft whirring as it zipped back and forth like some sort of deranged insect.
“Can it spot us from there?” I asked, keeping my voice as low as his.
“Most likely not.” He’d tilted his head down slightly, and his breath tickled my ear.
“They don’t see very well in the dark, but I don’t want to take any chances.
Especially if Laitha’s looking through its eyes.
” He added, “We’ll probably need to travel by night until we’re certain we’re clear of them. ”
“How far will we have to go?”
“As far as it takes.”
Ah, so clearly we were back to the vague non-answers.
Across the street, the zhesper zipped in a circle around the chimney and then whirred down the street, back toward the inn.
“As soon as it’s out of sight, we run for the end of the street,” he said, indicating the direction opposite where the zhesper had gone.
A moment later, he was tugging me out of the shadows and sprinting down the road, pulling me along behind him.
Even now, when I wasn’t bound and confused, I couldn’t match his speed—especially not in a too-long dress that threatened to trip me with every step.
But somehow, we made it down the street and into the shadows against the wall of the last building.
Panting, I leaned against the wall, regretting all those times I’d skipped my workouts in favor of curling up with a murder documentary or the latest racy episode of Esmer’s Fae Queens fanfic.
Radven, on the other hand, hadn’t even broken a sweat. He was watching the sky again, fully alert, and throwing regular glances back down the street.
“It looks like we might be in the clear for the moment,” he said.
“Could more of them be…hiding?” I asked. “Waiting for us to come out?”
“Unlikely. They’re too stupid to strategize or plot. And even Laitha can’t force them to do something so far outside their intelligence.”
He stepped close to me again and pointed past the scattering of sheds and outbuildings between us and the rest of the valley.
“You can’t see it from here,” he told me, “but that way, if we continue due north, there should be a hunting path that leads up through the hills. That’s where we’re headed.”
I peered into the darkness but saw nothing. “Is there any cover between here and there?”
“No. It’s fields and pastures all the way to the base of the hills.” He looked down at me. “Think you can manage that?”
Most definitely not. But I didn’t like the implication that I couldn’t.
“I need to do something about this dress,” I said. “It’s about six inches too long for easy sprinting.”
“I can help with that.” Moonlight glinted off metal as he whipped out one of his many knives. The next thing I knew, he was crouched down by my feet, his blade slicing off the bottom few inches of my dress.
In spite of everything, I caught myself smiling.
“When was the last time you found yourself kneeling in front of a woman?” I asked, pleased to be in a position to tease him for once.
My remark clearly caught him by surprise, but he recovered quickly. “Are you enjoying yourself, butterfly?”
“It’s just fun to see you on your knees.
You strike me as the kind of guy who’s used to having it the other way.
” The words shocked me even as they came out of my mouth, and I actually clapped my hand over my lips in surprise.
Where had that come from? Was Esmer finally rubbing off on me after all this time?
Radven, no surprise, appeared to be absolutely delighted by my loss of filter.
“Looks like the virgin has a dirty mind after all,” he said in that honey-smooth voice of his. “Though I should have known, given the way you threw yourself at me back at the inn.”
“I didn’t throw myself at you,” I insisted. “You were the one who was hitting on me all night!”
“And you were the one who begged me to touch you in the end.” His wicked smile shone up through the shadows, and though he finished slicing the fabric off my dress, he didn’t rise.
Instead, his fingers moved beneath the new, rough edge of my skirt, finding my ankle once again. This time, though, they didn’t stay there. They moved slowly but deliberately up my leg, skimming lightly across my skin.
And my body, so recently and abruptly denied the pleasure it craved, responded immediately, my nerves flaring back to life with a force that had me leaning back against the building for support.
Radven, still grinning, used his other hand to lift my skirt even higher and duck his head beneath.
Oh, sweet lord…
When his lips first brushed against my inner calf, my knees nearly buckled. And as they moved higher, up to my knee, then my inner thigh…
“Wait,” I said suddenly, grabbing his hair through the fabric of my skirt. “Do you hear that?”
I felt it more than heard it—that now-familiar little pulse that meant one of those zhespers was near. And when I held my breath, temporarily silencing my rapid breathing, I could make out the whir of its wings as well.