Chapter 33 #2
Cries rang out behind me and I ducked on instinct a beat before an arrow slammed into a tree right where my head had been, the branches shifting to shield me at my back.
Hendrix bellowed in fury, his roar sending birds racing from the canopy overhead as I sped away from him and the clash of swords sounded behind me, marking the fight he’d fallen into.
I cast a fearful look over my shoulder, but already the sight of the Fae was lost to me. Hendrix was a formidable warrior though. I had to believe he could look after himself.
The Raven had a good start on me, but the forest seemed to know what I was looking for, a pathway opening on my right, then twisting sharply left and spearing through the trees.
I was running so fast that the tips of the branches and their leaves skimmed my arms and face as they pulled aside for me.
A patch of silken darkness up ahead urged me on faster and faster, my own heart a pounding rhythm my boots fought to keep up with.
The Raven was the guardian of the night in the forest. It wouldn’t be wooed the way I had hoped to do so with the Stag, and it wouldn’t be tempted into action as the Fox had been with the fire.
Nor did it fear the day as the Wolf had done because the light was its twin in so many ways.
I had no plan in place to lure it to me, but I was still determined to capture it at last. I wouldn’t let it get away a second time.
Shouts and the crash of swords echoed behind me. I threw another glance over my shoulder, hoping Hendrix and the Fae would keep each other distracted long enough for me to do what I needed.
My boots splashed into a stream, water sloshing over the tops of them and chilling my ankles but I ignored it, hunting the treetops for a patch of darker shadow.
Birds swooped between the branches overhead, squirrels and other rodents racing back and forth too, the motion drawing my focus but only distracting me from my target.
“Come on,” I muttered, hunting the space between the greenery with growing desperation.
A cry came, pain haunting it as it spun through the trees at my back, and my heart leapt in panic before I recognised Hendrix’s bellow of challenge a moment later. He wasn’t the one in pain.
Then I spotted it. A patch of deepest midnight lurking near the top of a wide pine tree to my right.
I broke into a run, leaping for the lowest branch, my fingernails biting into the bark as I caught it and hauled myself skyward.
The Raven was watching me, I could feel the weight of its gaze on my movements as I climbed, and I began to fear it would take flight the moment I made it up to its perch.
“The world is hurting,” I said in a low and soothing voice. “The Great Elm is hurting. She needs us to bring you all back to her.”
In the depths of that midnight shadow, the Raven cocked its head, its metallic beak catching a shard of light and allowing me to make out the shape of its head. It could rip into my flesh with that beak all too easily, but it wasn’t animosity I read in its expression. The Raven was listening to me.
“That’s why I’m here. Maybe you’ve seen a girl with my face in these woods before?
Maybe she spoke to you as I am now, or maybe she got it all wrong and that’s why this curse is still spreading?
Either way, I’m here now. I want to help.
I want to return the forest to what it once was.
Can you remember the way it used to be? When you would guide the blanket of night over the trees and watch them in the darkness so that all here could slumber in peace? ”
The Raven released a low caw, the sound pierced with magic that struck a chord deep inside my chest and brought a tear to my eye.
I didn’t think the spirit could fully remember the days I was describing in its maddened state, but it grieved them, it held an emptiness in its soul which would only ever be fixed by the ending of this curse.
I heaved myself up onto the branch it had chosen for its perch, adrenaline coursing through my veins and a healthy dose of fear accompanying me into the treetops.
If it swooped at me, I could easily be knocked right out of the trees and break my neck on the forest floor so far below.
But I didn’t think it wanted to hurt me.
The Raven hopped closer, its weight making the branch bounce wildly, its size dwarfing mine where I crouched before it and my stomach swooping at the motion.
“That’s it,” I urged, reaching out with trembling fingers, my balance all too precarious. “I’ll do all I can to end this torment. I only need you to help me, to join me and-”
A rush of motion below us made me look down, the Raven cawing in alarm as Hendrix pursued the fair-haired Fae out into the stream with a furious cry.
My lips parted in horror as Hendrix hunted the male down and swung his sword for his neck with a brutal efficiency which saw blood flying in a great arc, death filling the space all around us as the Fae’s head fell into the stream a beat before his body followed.
My eyes met the wild rage in Hendrix’s expression, terror consuming me as I found myself looking right at the monster he had so often warned me he was. He’d chased that male down and executed him without hesitation. It was brutal and violent and horrifying and for what?
Hendrix heaved in great breaths as he stared up at me, a moment of full understanding passing between us as he was revealed at his very worst and I was forced to face it head on.
Then his eyes moved to the Raven at my side, my hand outstretched and so close to touching it that barely a breeze could slip through the divide.
He drew a dagger and hauled his arm back to throw it.
“No,” I gasped, lunging for the Raven, betrayal slicing through me even faster than the blade slit the air in two.
My hand pressed to the Raven’s metal beak and a pulse of magic struck me in the chest like a gong clanging to announce the hour of midnight.
Darkness enveloped me, and I would have screamed had there been any air in my lungs to do so. Instead I was lifted from the branch, my arms flying wide as silken wings draped around me, encompassing me and constricting tightly before bursting apart into a layer of night itself.
The midnight air enveloped me right down to the marrow of my bones and then slipped beneath the surface of my skin, a thump sounding as an amulet fell onto the branch before me.
I lurched for it as my vision returned, fingers knotting around the metal chain before I had even realised that those same fingers were now coated in runes so beautiful and haunting that I could have sobbed to look upon them.
I was so caught up staring at the new markings on the fingers of my right hand that I almost didn’t notice the dagger lodged in the trunk of the tree right where the Raven had been.
My gaze snapped back to Hendrix as I dropped the Raven’s amulet around my neck, and I hated how much that betrayal felt like a punch to the gut. He may as well have spat in my face as he looked at me with the burning intensity he now offered.
“You swore to me that you would not do that again,” I hissed, ire and treachery sour on my tongue, every moment I’d allowed myself to consider him something more than a self-serving brute coming to haunt and mock me as I stared into his endlessly green eyes.
“It was going to attack you,” he growled. “And I nearly lost you to those bastards a moment ago. You can’t seriously have expected me to just stand here and-”
“You lied to me,” I spat, refusing to let him ply me with excuses and bullshit.
“You broke any fragile trust I’d been building in you and for what?
Tell me why you think you deserve the boon so much more than I do.
Tell me what it is that you value so much more than the life which was stolen from my sister! ”
“It wasn’t about the boon or the spirits or the fucking amulet!” he yelled, but all I could see was the blood coating his hands, the body of the male he had hunted like a beast and cut down while he ran for his life.
“You told me you were a monster,” I said, reaching inside myself for the Dragon which always lurked just beyond my grasp, awaiting my call. “I should have listened before now.”
The Dragon answered me at once, spilling from the amulet and coiling around me so that I could leap from the branch onto its back.
“You will not leave me, Ferris Creed!” Hendrix roared as he realised what I was doing, but through the burn of my tears and the solid weight of his betrayal in my gut, I refused to listen to the desperation of his cry.
And without allowing myself so much as a single look back, I sped away from him on my Dragon and left him to rot in the grip of the trees.