Chapter 24
CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR
“Have you changed your mind?” Ferris asked, a touch of disappointment in her voice.
“No,” I grunted.
I’d fallen quiet, lost to thoughts of the past as I tried to piece it into a story I could tell her without unveiling the whole truth.
But I didn’t want to lie either. No one had asked this story of me in all these years.
She wanted to hear it to understand me better and I found I wanted to share it.
At least enough so that she could see the root of my malice.
“As I’ve told you, my time among the Coterie led me to truths I’d never intended to discover. Truths of their evildoings. And the fact is, things escalated to a point where I killed one of them for their misdeeds. It was a bloody fight, a wicked death, the type that stains the soul red.”
Ferris remained silent but she didn’t tense or pull away from me, choosing to remain in the cage of my arms despite how many times I’d warned her of the dangers that came attached to me.
“I ran from the carnage I’d reaped but I didn’t make it far. I was caught with blood on my hands and placed in a cold cell for a long winter night while my fate was decided. Our kind deliver punishments equal to the sinners’ crimes, and I had no doubt that death awaited me at dawn.”
Ferris drew in a sharp breath, her fingers tightening on my arm. “How did you escape?”
I swallowed the hardening lump in my throat, knowing I would have to evade the details but wanting to give her what I could.
“When sunrise came, I was taken to the stone courtyard in the heart of Mithelnore. All executions are carried out there in front of any civilian who wishes to come watch. My name was a curse on their lips as I was tethered to a wooden pole at the heart of the square and branded with the mark of an outcast – a statement that I was not welcome among our people even in the afterworld. I can so easily recall the way my knees pressed to the unforgiving stone, how the wind was blowing in from the north, carrying the scent of ice from the frozen sea. I can relive that day any time I close my eyes as if it’s branded there for me to suffer through time and again. ”
“What did they do to you?” she breathed, sensing the weight in my voice at what was to come.
“Not to me,” I said darkly. “They could have stripped the flesh from my bones and I would have gladly offered the payment. But it wasn’t me that bore the price in the end.”
“Then who?”
“My family. My mother, father, my younger brother and sister. They dragged them out like rabid dogs, hands fisted around the backs of their necks as they shoved them down in front of me. They didn’t cry or beg.
They were strong, my kin. They were warriors with hearts forged of iron, and the only pain I found in them was when they looked at me. ”
“Hendrix, tell me they didn’t hurt them,” Ferris breathed, her nails digging into my arm.
“I cannot, lightwing.” I took a weighted breath.
“They killed my father first. They beat and battered him while my mother yelled his name. She was next, a swift slice to her throat that quieted her and caused a riot of agony among the last of us. They took Amelda slower.” I squeezed my eyes shut, the horror of losing my little sister scoring a passage of pain through my chest. “My brother Kashton was the last, hauled in front of me, eye to eye, his words the crush of an anvil against my heart. ‘I’ll see you wherever our love guides us in the afterworld, brother.’”
I stopped talking, my throat clogged with the pain of those goodbyes.
Ferris rolled over in the cage of my arms, her fingers finding my cheek in the dark. “I’m so sorry.”
I grunted in acknowledgment, unable to force out more as she curled into me, embracing me, her face settling against my neck. I pulled her tight to my chest, allowing my heart to split open and bleed with her there. As it had never done with anyone else.
“How did you escape?” she asked against my skin, and heat rippled through me at the touch of her lips to my collarbone.
“I lost myself to the rage of my grief, broke free of my bonds. I fought, I killed, I ran. It is a blur of death and savagery. Somehow, I made it out of Rivenspire.” I knew precisely how.
It was so much more than these words painted it out to be.
And she might question how I could have done any such thing alone.
But she nodded instead, perhaps keeping more questions to herself, or believing I might just be capable of such an escape given what she knew of my strength.
I didn’t offer any more information either way.
“We should sleep now,” I muttered, drawing her nearer, my fingers gliding down the length of her spine. Her closeness helped to banish my demons again, and I was grateful when she nestled against me instead of rolling to face away from me once more.
“It must have broken you,” she exhaled, her fingers skimming down my arm. “I know what that’s like.”
“Then we are alike for reasons I would rather we weren’t.”
She glanced up at me from the crook of my neck, her eyes bright with emotion as her pain surfaced to meet mine. I tucked a lock of silver behind her ear and drank in that grief, knowing it all too well.
“Is that why you’re here? To try and bring them back from death?” Ferris asked, a tightness to her throat.
“No,” I said truthfully, my voice dripping in darkness.
“Then why?”
“Goodnight, lightwing,” I said firmly, and her eyes shuttered as she withdrew from me, her lips tightening at the edges.
“Goodnight, Hendrix.” She rolled away but let me keep her against my body, not knowing that she was wrapped in the arms of not just a killer, but the most wicked monster on Rathian.
“We have to move on from this quarry,” I growled, folding my arms as Ferris marched up and down the boggy area of forest where the diary had guided us to the potential location of the Boar. “It’s not here.”
Ferris sighed, turning to me with pursed lips. “We don’t know that.”
“We are wasting time. We’ve been searching for days and there has been neither hide nor hair of it. It has likely been caught already.”
Ferris’s throat bobbed, her eyes roaming the trees around us once more as if she might find the spirit if she looked hard enough. I walked up to her and took her arm, her eyes lifting to meet mine and a ripple of tension passing between us.
“Ferris,” I urged in a low voice. “We cannot waste any more time.”
She sighed, conceding. “Fine. Then where next?” She drew her pack from her shoulder, taking out the diary and flicking through it.
I left her to decide, knowing she had likely already planned three different options, listed them out, weighed the odds, methods and madness in her schemes, and wouldn’t be swayed in the slightest by my opinion on the choice she came to.
Not to mention the fact that I’d come to the realisation that acting against her plans was nothing short of foolish.
My pretty little human had a mind for this forest, a knack for it too, seeming to understand it far better than I could ever hope to.
I moved to a nearby stream and crouched down to cup water and take a drink. As I did so, the thump of boots and crack of twigs made my head snap up.
I listened, counting five sets footfalls, moving fast, at a run.
I whirled around, sprinting back to Ferris and whipping her off her feet, clapping my hand to her mouth in the same movement to silence her gasp of surprise.
Then I pelted straight for a large mass of ferns and slipped between them, dropping down and laying Ferris beneath me as we hid in the mass of foliage, allowing myself time to assess the threat coming our way.
I released my hand from Ferris’s mouth as we shifted to lie next to each other, pressing a finger to my lips, and she nodded seriously, peering out beyond the ferns.
Two humans raced into the clearing, sweat beading on their brows, one sporting a bloody gash on his arm and the other with an arrow sticking through her shoulder.
The woman had a pinched sort of face and her slender body was lined with muscle, while the man was strong-looking with dark eyebrows that contrasted with his fair hair.
The two of them raced through the stream and the woman screamed as another arrow whistled through the air and caught her in the back.
She landed heavily on the ground and Ferris shifted beside me as if planning some reckless move to help them.
I clamped my hand down on her shoulder, giving her a firm look that told her in no uncertain terms that I would not be allowing that.
“I know them. That’s Esther and Brian. They entered the forest with me,” she hissed, shoving my hand off of her and scrambling to get up, but I caught hold of her wrist, tugging her back down sharply and wrestling her beneath me.
Ferris cursed me, aiming a knee between my thighs which I only stopped by pressing my weight down onto her and slapping a hand over her mouth.
I raised my head again in time to see the man trying to help the woman to her feet, but he gave up when three Fae broke through the forest behind them.
My muscles tensed, pure hatred seeping into my blood at the sight of the ringleader.
Islasees Bellatorn wore a cape of darkest blue, his red hair swept smoothly back over the crown of his head and the sharp lines of his face as ruthless as they were handsome.
He held no weapon in hand, but the two Fae either side of him did, the male holding a bow aloft and the female wielding a double-headed axe.
I knew them both well; Benson Rawk with his jet-black curls and Jadina Calehive with her aquamarine eyes and short blonde locks.
They were two of Islasees favoured warriors, fit for the dirtiest kind of work.
They had been the ones to walk me to the stone courtyard upon the morning of my family’s execution, they had taken part in their deaths, and they had somehow escaped the carnage I’d reaped that day.