Chapter 23 #3
She might have been pretty once. Now, her face was gaunt, as if her flesh had started disappearing beneath her skin, which was stretched over pure bones.
Her eyes were huge in her face, sunken hollows beneath them, her cheekbones pointed.
Her lips, once probably full and warm, were now bloodless and cracked, stretched in a smile that revealed blackened teeth.
The stench that wafted through the air with every step she took was suffocating—not just decay but corruption. The smell of dreams burnt to ash and hope curdled into despair.
Hufen.
“Lord Griffin.” She approached him first, and I held my breath as her fingertips stretched toward him, stopping just short of his chest. “So strong. So silent. You were kind to me. But you were never who I wanted.” Turning as if she floated, she circled around Finn.
Finn tensed, knowing he was trapped. “Lord Finnegan. So charming, so suave. But you never noticed little, quiet Fiadh. Never knew how she longed for you. I always had such a fascination of you.” Her hand now extended to Finn’s chest but also stopped just out of reach.
“But now I see you were destined for another. Such a shame that the heart is given away.”
“Fiadh, what happened to you?” Finn’s voice was soft.
“He came to me. Ah, the dreams he showed me. Images that proved there was more to this life than my pitiful existence.” She drew her fingertips downward, as though she was stroking Finn’s chest, but still didn’t make contact.
“Instead of weak, I could be strong. Instead of alone, I could be by his side, one of his greatest.”
“I bet he says that to all the girls,” Finn commented.
She glared at him. Maybe something partially human still existed inside her, enough that she wanted to make the boy she once loved jealous.
“He will make me one of his generals if I serve him faithfully. He knew you’d come to me, Orlaith.
” It was her first acknowledgment that I was present.
The full weight of those warped eyes bored into me, the swirling shadows seeing more than possible.
“I will deliver you to him. And he will reward me beyond my wildest dreams.”
“Oh, Fiadh,” Finn said sadly, “didn’t you know better?”
She cackled. “Know better? This is the most free I’ve been in my entire life.
No longer living in fear, afraid of the shadows.
I am shadows.” She drew herself up, and darkness poured out of her, slithering across the walls and floors.
Outside, the light snow thickened, turning into blizzard conditions.
We could feel the wind buffeting the house, shifting the walls back and forth.
A high-pitched keening began outside the house.
Finn’s eyes went unfocused. “More approach.”
“How many?” Griff growled.
“I think seven, maybe eight. Their minds are swirling with darkness. It’s hard to count them.”
Shit. And here I thought we were just having a pleasant day in the mountains today.
Griff approached her, hefting Taladhar in his hands.
She cackled again. “Cut me down, Lord Griffin, and more will rise in my place. Already, they come for her. For your princess. To take her to him.”
“Fiadh, I’m so sorry.” Griff’s words were to the friend inside the monster.
Before she could react, Griff’s sword flashed reflexively, effortlessly decapitating her.
The darkness burst forth from her in a column of living night, obliterating the house around us.
I threw up a shield, attempting to draw on the earth itself to protect us from the shrapnel, but the earth beneath our feet was already withering, dying, after being exposed to infection for so long.
With the darkness hammering away at my shield, I tunneled deeper and deeper, finding the new life below, sending it streaming upward in a beam of light to support the shield.
I called upon my fire channel, directing it to the outside of my shield, burning everything I could find.
It swept through, consuming everything in its path that wasn’t beneath my shield.
The debris of Fiadh’s quiet cabin became a glowing red and orange bonfire in the blizzard.
The three of us slowly backed away from it, watching the remains of the roof cave in.
“We need to leave!” Finn shouted over the storm.
I dissolved the shield so that we could teleport as Griff yelled, “No shit.”
He went to grab me, but narrowly missed as the shadows blasted us apart. And then they were on us once more.
I drew my sword, grateful for the length of it as I swerved and danced out of the hufen’s reach.
Black veins spiderwebbed across every inch of skin I could see.
Dressed in clothes that were barely more than rags, it didn’t appear to feel the chill.
Its shirt shifted as it lunged toward me, and I could see a massive cluster of dark veins over its heart.
Luckily, these were the mindless soldiers Griff had told me about, puppets set forth for one duty—kill.
But who was the puppet master holding the strings?
I didn’t have time to consider these questions, as several more appeared out of the snow, heading straight toward me.
I pulled fire into my blade, the flames roaring to life and hissing with the moisture of the snow.
The hufen paused momentarily, instincts telling them to be wary, before continuing their march forward.
Griff became death incarnate, his twin blades carved through the storm in perfect harmony.
His first strike took the head clean off a hufen.
The second blade followed, gutting another that tried to flank him.
Tar-like blood stained the frosted ground around him as he moved on to a third and then fourth opponent.
He fought like a force of nature, unstoppable, his every movement calculated to dismantle anything that dared threaten what was his.
I didn’t have time to see how Finn fared, although the whistle of steel through the air told me he was holding his own, as a hufen broke through the path Griff was cutting through its companions.
I met it with my flaming steel, slicing through its head.
But even as it fell, two more took its place.
They moved differently than Griff’s opponents, as though they wanted to capture rather than kill me.
I realized I had been separated from the twins in the attack, almost by design.
It was still fully winter on this mountain, but this blizzard was unnatural.
Trees dotted around my position, further obscuring my view.
A gust of wind caught me in my mid-section like a blow, throwing me backward against a rocky ledge, as if the storm itself was trying to keep me segregated from my companions.
I landed hard and knocked my head against rock, stunned for a moment and blinded by the falling snow, when I heard a growling.
Looking up, all I could see through the snow were orange eyes.