Chapter 31
The sky snuffs out the last rays of sunlight just as I reach the lake.
I splash across the shallow shore, then climb over the boulders that fell the day Bjorn was found dead. To think it was my uncle’s booming lament that fissured the mountain wall.
When my lids color with Lenora’s motionless form, with the bloodied strands of her long red hair fanned out around her moon-white face and peaked ears like lakeweed, I seal my eyes to wring out the image.
But it loiters, so I reel up my lashes and observe the inky vastness below, bidding the present to purge the past.
A shoal of trout swirls beneath the placid surface, their spotted, olive-brown scales refracting the faint moonlight.
How odd to find them massed like this. Unlike fry, adults are solitary.
Perhaps they stick together because they somehow intuit that the Vales are unhappy about the rationing. Are fish perceptive like that?
Three howls echo against the valley walls, marking the end of the day and the start of the game.
I pivot and resume my climb. Once I’ve reached the halved boulder at the summit, I shimmy into the slender crevasse adult Vales cannot fit into and settle in to wait.
Will Tyron find me like he threatened to? The only person who ever has is Saga, and even she doesn’t find me every time. This might be the reason I enjoy playing Crescent Quest in the first place…because I usually come out the victor.
Now, if Vales were allowed to shapeshift, I probably wouldn’t have a fighting chance, but shifting disqualifies the contestant and voids their “catches.”
A cloud drifts over the moon overhead, rendering the world full dark. Obscurity never frightened me as a child; it still doesn’t. Oddly enough, I find it soothing, like a burrow in which one can pitch away all that weighs on them.
I extend my hearing as far as my pointy ears will allow, netting the velvet scurry of rodents, the low hoot of snow owls, the intermittent thump of trout tails, and the…the rushing whomp of wings.
I frown, for I haven’t seen dragons fly over our charmed ramparts in a while. I thought they were keeping to the Wilds. Did they return for another round of negotiations, or are they searching for a crack to slip through to succor their imprisoned scout?
The stars burn brightly enough for me to spot the soaring beast in no time and discern the color of its underbelly. I’m relieved to note it isn’t Taeric’s onyx.
I’m not entirely sure why, though, seeing as the dragon overhead is full-grown with a belly the color of oxidized silver—a hematite. Second hardest to kill among their kind. Or rather, first, since rumor has it that no blade or magic can penetrate an onyx’s scales.
When the beast’s opalescent stare locks on me, I jerk, smacking the back of my skull on the rock with a grumbled, “Fuck.”
I wrangle my pulse down, praying the suspended beast won’t give away my location to the wolves hunting me, especially to Tyron.
Why would it, though? Just because Tyron had a connection to Kjell doesn’t mean he can communicate with—
The forest creaks.
My heart flutters behind my ribs.
Although I’m convinced it can’t be a shifter, since it would take them far longer than mere minutes to traverse the woods, I seal my lips to stifle the sound of my brisk breathing and plant my eyes on the world beyond my narrow hideout.
Down below, a spot of white emerges from the millennial firs—a wolf’s head. The harried rhythm clobbering my ribs begins to ease when the lupine body morphs, revealing not a beloved two-legged form, but a loathed one.
Tyron cranes his neck and scans the heaped boulders twice before zeroing in on my crevasse. Rock crunches and water sloshes as he trudges across the shore. When he begins his ascension, I palm my stinger, hovering my thumb over the clicker.
I’ve tested it out on a raw potato—the thorn sank through the hard flesh beautifully—but tonight will be my first trial on flesh.
Tyron’s head suddenly pokes over the ledge of the boulder. When my eyes lock on his gleaming dark-green ones, the air crystallizes in my lungs.
“Peekaboo.” Tyron slings me a smile that is so full of teeth it glows white.
As he hoists himself up, I scan the woods for another wolf, but no other body moves. “Where’s Leif?”
“Lost him in the woods.” He rubs his palms together as though to dislodge dirt, yet it’s satisfaction that drives the motion. He’s so damn pleased to have tracked me.
“Shifting disqualifies you,” I point out.
“Don’t care about your silly ribbon, Zas.”
I crane my neck to see if the Son of Odin lingers, but the hematite is gone.
“Want to know how I found you?” His voice redirects my stare.
“By cheating.”
“Like I said, I wasn’t playing the game. I found you because I homed in on your smell, which is rather distinct. I’d never realized just how distinct until I scented you in the Wilds—off pack land.”
My heart slams into its cage of bones. “That’s because I wash with soap. You should try it sometimes.”
Tyron emits a disturbing cackle that amplifies the scudding in my chest.
“What the Hel did the vampyr venom do to you?”
“Whittled my senses. Anyway, let’s go.”
“You’re mad if you think I’m going anywhere with you.”
“Oh, you are. Otherwise, I’ll alert the Council that you’ve been having indecent relations with your cousin. How”—the bridge of his nose wrinkles—“positively foul.”
“He’s not my cousin. And nothing untoward—”
“Please. You reek of him.” He taps the side of his nose. “Keener sense of smell, remember?” His irises glow as eerily as a dragon’s. “Don’t make me manhandle you, Zas.”
“Where is it you want to take me?” I ask, thumb warming the clicker.
He nods to the sky. “Vaelen—Kjell’s brother—is waiting for you by the ledge.”
I suck in air. He must’ve been the one flying on the hematite. “Since when did you pick vampyrs over your people?”
“I didn’t. I am choosing my people. Vaelen said that if I delivered you to him, Skarnir would pull out of the Wilds.”
“Without retrieving the brother?” I ask.
He shrugs. “Don’t know. Don’t fucking care. As long as they leave…”
I slide my lips. “You realize what Taeric means to do to me?”
“Not my problem. Let’s go.”
Yeah. Never. “A hand? I’m wedged in pretty tight.”
The fool slots his arm inside the crevasse. I reach out and eject my silver thorn into the meat of his thumb.
When a bestial snarl leaps from his no-longer-curved mouth, mine curls. Out of all the weapons I’ve ever forged, I’m proudest of this one.
“Touch me again, Ty, and my next strike will be with a blade,” I bluff, thumbing open the box in my pocket to nab a new thorn, which I slide into place.
“Vaelen warned me you’d put up a fight.” Forehead dotted with perspiration, Tyron pinches out my diminutive dart and flicks it into the lake. If only it could have penetrated deeper.
“Did you think I’d clasp your hand and skip up the mountain wall like Tessja’s goats?”
He slants me a lethal look. One that makes my skin crawl. I yell Saga’s name, then Nordin’s. I scream as loudly as my lungs will allow.
Tyron snickers as he pivots and walks away.
I think he’s understood his chances of snaring me are nil when he turns and jumps. His boots catch on the side of the boulder, which he scales with the ease of a fox.
Instinctively, my knees bend, but the space is so narrow it keeps me from crouching. Right as he snakes his arm through the gap, I clasp my stinger tight and burst out of the crevasse.
I don’t even contemplate racing down the tumbled rocks. I plunge feetfirst into the frigid lake. The brittle ice gives way with a crack that snatches my breath, but so much adrenaline floods my veins that it drags me back to motion.
My dress tugs like an anchor, but I kick and windmill my arms, carving through the icy slush. I barely grab a gulp of air before my head’s wrenched back by the hair.
I whirl, my fist skimming the water, ready to punch the stinger against Tyron’s neck and fire a thorn so deep that he’ll need to slice open his flesh and root through the gore to dig it out.
He cuffs my wrist and propels it away from his body. “I don’t want to hurt you, Zas, but I will if you don’t cooperate. What’ll it be? Cooperation, or lights-out?”
I swing my knee up. Even though the water slows my momentum, it doesn’t prevent me from landing my shot.
His teeth gnash. “Fine. Don’t cooperate.” His fingers bear down on my wrist until the bone splinters.
The pain startles my fingers open, and my stinger slips…sinks. “I will scalp you, Tyron Gustafson!” I shriek, kneeing him again.
He shoves me under the surface. I gulp down a mouthful of water before I can kick my legs and snatch a lungful of air. I scream, which earns me another hard yank on the hair. He twirls me until my back is to his front, then crushes his palm against my mouth.
I try to bite his fingers, but he tents his palm and drills my cheek with his ragged nails. And then his other hand trades my tresses for my neck and squeezes so hard my opal pendant bites into my skin, pressing fire into my windpipe.
I grip his arm, but he’s stronger than I am. So much stronger.
Genuine fear finally stings my chest when the world loses its solid edges.
I release his arm, reaching blindly around me for something to grip.
Something with which to murder the fucking asshole.
But we’re in the middle of the lake, not close enough to any shore to scoop a rock between my feet.
I try to headbutt him, but all my scalp hits is water.
Somehow, though, the movement unscrews his hand, allowing oxygen to streak down my throat.
I gasp. First in surprise, then in survival. I draw in so much air that I gag, while the world echoes with a preternatural snarl.
Did Tyron manage to shift? Shouldn’t the silver wound I inflicted on his hand neutralize his magic a while longer?
Before he can clutch me anew, I kick away. And then I finally turn.
The sound did rise from a wolf, but not one with vicious green eyes.
My throat tightens. Nordin did come.