Chapter 49 #2
And wasn’t that all I’d wanted when I’d come to this place? Hadn’t I achieved everything I’d ever dreamed of in releasing her from its grasp? I should have been overwhelmed with joy, not heartache and a creeping fear that nothing was as it had seemed.
I should have been glad to turn my back on all I’d done here, I should have been furious to find the Great Elm was working to bind me into another task, another impossible undertaking.
But as I looked back to Bane, I only felt the sting of remorse and the greatest sense that I was missing something vital.
My eyes remained locked on Bane’s, a thousand pointless words reaching the tip of my tongue and falling away again. I’d told him how sorry I was. But sorry didn’t change this fate.
I gave up on any hope of reasoning with him as I took in the feral hatred that blazed in his green eyes and I knew what I had to do.
“Don’t,” he warned, seeing the decision in my expression.
But I did.
In a surge of desperation, I turned and ran, diving back into the labyrinth with Rissa at my side, my sister’s hand clasped firmly in mine.
Bane’s terrible power took chase as we fled, death and ruin dogging our footsteps as we ran as fast as we could, from what I’d done, from what I was, from him.
Echoes and haunting screams chased us into the darkness of the passages as the Lost Children ran after us too, keeping pace and filling my gut with dread.
They seemed no less lost than they’d been before I’d freed them from their ties to this place.
Something was wrong. I could feel it in the tightness of Rissa’s grip on my hand and the bright gleam of her eyes in the dark.
But still I ran because I didn’t want to admit to my doubts, didn’t want to notice any of the things I was beginning to see.
“Ferris!” Bane roared, sending a flood of cold fear rolling down my spine.
Rissa yanked on my arm to force me faster and I allowed myself to think of nothing but the warmth of her skin against mine because I had dreamed so long of this moment and I refused to let it go without a fight.
I only stayed on my feet by mere luck, the path somehow guiding us true and leading us straight back out into the forest without meeting any dead ends.
But it wasn’t a path to salvation, or freedom, or home which awaited us there.
It was an army.
An army of Hollows whose souls were as empty as the brute who had chained them to this macabre pantomime of the lives they’d once known. And as they surged forward to take hold of us, meaning to make me a prisoner of Bane Crownthief once more, not one of them took notice of my screams.
“You see?” Rissa snarled as the Lost Children flooded from the labyrinth around us and fled among the Hollows for the trees, somehow darting between the arms of the army of the dead and clambering up into the branches where the Hollows couldn’t chase them.
The Hollows were distracted by the Lost Children as they surged around them and my heart pounded in fear at how close they got to those monstrous creatures before darting aside and evading them time and again.
“He allies himself with the mistress of Death because it is she who gains the most while the other spirits are weakened,” Rissa insisted urgently, drawing my focus back to her.
“She lends him her ear and allows him this sacrilege while Providence is lost and the usurpers of power twist the other spirits to their will. Don’t you see it, sister? Don’t you see what we must do?”
I shook my head, trying to back away but Rissa grasped my arm, her fingers digging into my flesh and drawing a cry from my lips as a burn raked across my bicep and the runes there began to twist and writhe.
I yanked on my arm but she held me tighter, a frown drawing her brows together as she moved so close to me our foreheads were almost touching.
“You don’t perceive it yet, but you will,” she breathed, her words lost to the searing pain in my arm. I cried out as I tried to wrench free of her grip again but she only tightened her grasp, her fingernails biting into my flesh, blood oozing from the small wounds.
I looked down at my arm, sucking in a sharp breath as I realised a set of coiled runes were crawling across my flesh and onto hers, my connection to one of the spirits pulling so tight I feared it would snap.
I reached out to that magical tether, calling for the spirit, begging for its help along the chord which connected us but all I heard in reply was a low hiss and the grinding of stone.
“Rissa, you’re hurting me,” I gasped, shoving her back and finally she relented, stumbling away from me with a deep frown on her face.
Something snapped like a branch in the heart of a silent forest and I doubled over as that sound echoed through my body with resounding force, my connection to the Serpent shattering, its departure carving a bloody wound into my soul.
A ragged sob escaped me as I fell to my knees, clutching at my arm as the pain fell away and I was left with a patch of bare skin where the Serpent’s coiling mark had been.
I peered up between tangled strands of my silver hair, panting through the pain, my heart throbbing at the betrayal of what Rissa had done to me as I stared at those same runes which now stained the curve of her bicep instead of mine.
“When you come to your senses, seek me out,” Rissa said sadly, the look she gave me one of pity and disappointment.
“Wait,” I gasped as she started to back away, the realisation that she was leaving me sinking to the pit of my gut like a rock to the bed of a lake.
I scrambled to my feet but was forced back as a Hollow made it around the Lost Children and ran at me.
The Serpent burst from the trees, aiming straight for us, its enormous body carving a path through the Hollows whether they ran for it or not.
But it didn’t come for me. It surged toward my sister while I was left to sprint away into the forest, the Hollow racing after me, its rotting teeth bared in desperate want.
I sprinted between the trees, my battered heart too bruised for me to be able to do more than call out to the spirits which were still tied to me, pleading for their help.
Those glimmering chords which bound them to me began to hum within my soul, the trampling of feet and beat of wings racing after me as they answered my call.
But it wasn’t a spirit I crashed into in the darkness between the trees, nor a monster risen from death to destroy me. Yet it was a beast all the same.
Bane caught my chin in his grasp and forced my gaze up to meet with his, a darkness in his eyes which made me remember how much I didn’t know about him, how much shadow stained his past.
“There is no escaping this, Ferris,” he breathed, his hand slipping from my jaw and capturing my hand in its place. “If there is one thing my cursed life has taught me then it’s that. Fate has a cruel sense of humour.”
Movement in the trees behind me had me twisting around, my pulse a riot in my chest, my veins alive with adrenaline as panic threatened to overwhelm me.
Everything I’d come here for had fallen to ruin. Rissa wasn’t the girl I’d lost all those years ago, she didn’t want rescuing and now I feared what motivations she did cling to.
I hunted the trees, expecting to find Bane’s Hollows there, the one who had been chasing me had been so close after all. But it wasn’t the dead who lingered at my back but a figure cloaked in heavy shadow whose silhouette was enough to strike terror coursing through my bones.
I screamed as my gaze fell upon the falcon’s head which peered out at me from beneath her cowl, the weight of her dense power coiling around me so tightly that it threatened to choke the life from me with a single inhale.
Death stood watching us with eyes bright and intent unknown. But as I tried to run from her, Bane tightened his grip on my hand and yanked me back again.
“Come, lightwing,” he growled, all tenderness gone from that name he’d given me, scorn and mocking in its place now. “It seems destiny has a mind to toy with us a little longer. And I so wish to disappoint her.”
He reached out towards that great and haunting spirit as though he had nothing at all to fear from Death. And I supposed that was true enough for the Necromancer.
My spirits were almost with me, I could feel them closing in, hear the Dragon’s roar on the wind, but Bane acted before they could make it to me, clasping Death’s cloak between calloused fingers.
We were ripped away into the fabric of the night before I could so much as scream.
Death enveloped us in the folds of her cloak, the screams of lost souls and stench of festering flesh suffocating me as it pressed so close I choked on it.
I was released as abruptly as I’d been captured. I slammed down onto my feet in a cold and barren place, a road of black stone hard beneath my boots, Bane’s body solid as I stumbled into him.
Before us stood a castle carved out of nightmares, its twisting towers and oppressive walls darker than the night’s sky at its back.
A cold wind whipped my silver hair across my face and I shivered at the sting of it against my cheeks. There wasn’t a tree to be seen. The Taking Trees were far behind us, my spirits along with them, my sister lost too.
Bane released my hand and stalked toward the iron gates which blocked the road ahead of us, leading to that castle and whatever horrors it housed.
“Welcome home, lightwing,” he growled, his voice raw with bitterness as he sneered at me. “It’s time you met the ones you just betrayed. And don’t expect a warm welcome; there’ll be no mercy between these walls.”
He left me trembling in his wake, the beady eyes of Death surveying me with intrigue. I cowered beneath her scrutiny, fear wrapping me in a tight embrace as the only living soul for miles around stalked away from me, his body rigid with a potent fury which wrapped me in the arms of despair.
I glanced down the barren road at my back but there was nothing to be seen in the endless planes which swept away behind me before being stolen by the blanket of night.
A cry went up in the dark, one which speared me with a fear so piercing I hardly dared to draw breath.
My only choice was to follow the Fae who delivered me to this monstrous place, despite no part of me wanting to take a single step within the walls of his cursed castle.
With the knowledge that I was certain to regret this, I found myself hurrying after him, the horror ahead preferable to those at my back. Because Necromancer or not, Bane Crownthief was my only chance of escaping this place and our destinies had been cast as one.