Chapter 22
I hit the ground with a sickening crack, and there’s no time to run. Those saberwolf fangs are in my face a half second later, ready to rip me apart, rancid breath hot against my mouth, drool sputtering everywhere.
My mind is still spinning from the drop. I can’t think. But I don’t need to. The movement is instinct. I force my blade up, an echo of the memory of Raker’s training.
Right through the wolf’s neck.
Then the other wolves are on me. Shredding, ripping, feasting. Blood spraying, puddling, staining the woods. The smell of it pierces even the mists.
But it’s not mine. They are eating their own, even as it’s still taking its last breaths. Right atop me.
Are they that hungry? That quick to turn on one another when given the opportunity?
Arms shaking, face covered in blood, it takes everything in me to rip my sword from the saberwolf’s throat and roll from beneath its corpse, before it crushes me.
I keep rolling. Keep crawling. My leg is wholly numb.
I desperately drag it along. And hope to all the gods that the wolves are too distracted with their current meal to follow.
The sound of those massive fangs tearing through flesh echoes through the forest, and my skin prickles with fear, anticipating the weight on my spine as they push me to the ground, as they gut me just like they did their pack member.
Blood roaring in my ears, dirt under my nails, I make it far enough away that their snarls of satisfaction are muted, and then I get to my feet and run.
It’s more of a stumble. To make up for my leg, I push the rest of my body forward with all my might. I don’t look back. I just keep staggering, hoping to find the end of this mist, hoping I get lucky and just fall out of it—
Silence. The sounds of thrashing teeth fade away completely. But I’m not that far, no. They’re just done.
But not with me.
Those heavy steps are at my back in seconds. Shit.
I force my numb leg forward, gasping, clawing at the trees, using them to fling me ahead, but it’s no use. I know that. Still, I can’t just give up.
My limbs burn as I force myself forward. My neck prickles with awareness. A feral growl rumbles behind me.
I turn my head—and am met with razor-sharp teeth, nearly at my height. They’re on my heels. A couple more strides, and they’ll be on me. This is it. I stumble with a final push of desperation.
They leap.
The woods slope beneath my boots, the world spins, and I’m suddenly tumbling down a hill, gasping as my arms hit stumps of bone, as my vision turns to flashes of mist and soil, before I finally hit a tree with crushing force and stop.
I can’t take a full breath. Everything hurts.
Cheek against the bone roots, I can’t summon the strength to get up, even when those wolves crest the hill I just fell down. Even when their eyes lock on me. One of them snaps its powerful jaw, head falling back, emitting a satisfied howl.
It sits back on its haunches, preparing to bound down the hill in one massive jump. But before it can, it turns its head. Snarls. Lunges forward.
Toward nothing short of a swarm of winged, leathery bats the size of people. There are dozens flying in a wall. They open their mouths and emit high-pitched screams.
The two packs crash together, and it is carnage. Blood spurts. Flesh and fur paint the white bone forest, pieces getting stuck in its branches. Their shrieks and growls echo.
And it’s like a call, awakening every monster in the mists. I can feel the forest rousing, almost rippling, like a stone being thrown into a lake, casting waves.
The fog goes still.
A sky-splitting screech has it scattering. What can shift even these mists? I have a sinking feeling I’m about to find out. For even though this pack and swarm are battling, more are joining in and they will all eventually turn their attention to me.
I cling to the trunk for purchase and push myself up, inch by inch. Stumble through the forest as more creatures barrel toward this stretch of woods, cries and screams and hisses turning the mists into a nightmare symphony.
Shredding. The unmistakable sound of ripping flesh fills the forest—something with rows and rows of teeth has joined the fight, and razed countless creatures.
I need to get out of here. My breathing is too loud, my steps are too clumsy.
My arm is hanging at an odd angle, and that’s when I realize I must have dislocated my shoulder in the fall down the hill. Fuck. It’s my sword-wielding arm.
I should give up. I’m lost, and defenseless, and in a hungry beast-riddled mist. It’s useless to fight this hard, with so much stacked against me. And maybe that’s what makes me a fool—refusing to stay down, even when the world tries to keep me there. Fighting, even when fighting seems useless.
Always rising, just like Stellan taught me.
Those roars are growing louder. Closer. As if the battle has spilled down that slope. As if it’s coming right in my direction.
I turn to look back—
And a growl sounds right in front of me. I barely get my head back around, but I’m still rushing toward the monster, not able to stop myself before I crash right into it.
My scream is smothered.
By a hand.
I look up, eyes wide, heart battering my ribs, only to see a familiar hood.
A whimper of relief spills from my lips, and I don’t even try to hold back the tears that streak through the blood and dirt.
“What are you doing here?” I try to say, but his hand only tightens over my mouth, choking the words.
It’s no use. They’ve found me. I hear them, tearing through the forest. The swarms, the packs, whatever ancient creature made the mists shudder. All coming right toward us. Raker hears them too.
“Fuck, Aris,” Raker growls, and I can feel the rage coming off him in waves. I deserve it. But if he’s here …
He came through the mist to find me.
It’s for the map. I’m sure of it. But the fact … the fact that he is here, means I will not die alone. I feel just the slightest bit of regret that I’ve dragged Raker into sure death with me.
Because the beasts are here now. The mist has scattered, as if even it is afraid. There’s no time to run. No trees near enough to climb. None of it would make any difference anyway.
I reach back for the hilt of my sword with my non-wielding arm, still not willing to die without a fight. My shoulder is out of its socket. My leg is numb. I really don’t stand a chance.
Raker seems to know that, because as I try to scramble from his grip, to face the beasts, he curls his arm around my waist and pins me to his chest. “You’ll only get in the way,” he spits down into my face, as that same world-shattering scream sounds right behind my spine, sending all the hairs on my neck rising.
As those trees tremble with the force of the creatures about to crash through them.
He curses me again. Then, with me still pinned against him, his other hand reaches back for his sword—
And he lunges forward.
I can’t see anything, pressed to his front like this.
But I am nearly deafened by the roar of shrieks and howls behind me, louder than anything I’ve heard in my life, a wave of death crashing into us both.
I manage to squirm enough to turn my head, cheek pressed against his chest, and all I see from this angle is his blade swinging as he fights the entire throng of beasts with just one arm.
He moves so quickly, so expertly, it makes my mouth go dry.
Then I only see blood. Sheets of dark blood all around us as Raker cuts through the horde, his strength never wavering. The creatures never even getting close.
No marks on his armor.
If the rumors are true, then being pressed right against Raker’s chest is the safest place for me to be.
I pray his reputation isn’t just rumor, and that he doesn’t just have dozens of breastplates that he switches out, given that I am currently crushed against his.
I cling to him, lifting my legs, wrapping around him like a tree, so that I don’t get in his way.
His arm remains unyielding as stone across my back.
I tremble against his body, with cold, and relief, and pain, and fear.
One claw gets through him, and I’ll be gutted. One bite from those massive fangs, or those shredding teeth, and my spine will be ripped from my body. I’ll just be tatters strewn across this forest.
But absolutely nothing gets past Raker’s sword. He keeps slashing and steadily moving forward, not yielding any ground. He advances like a warrior on the front line of battle. His blade sings as it hits its mark again and again. As Raker wields it with an arm that never seems to tire.
Until the woods go quiet.
I’m panting against his chest. My arms are wrapped around his neck as I cling to him, my ankles locked behind his back.
Then Raker unceremoniously shoves me off him. I manage to land on one leg, but the other gives, and I fall right on my ass.
I look up, baring my teeth—but the words die in my throat.
Raker is dripping blood. It rains from his hood. From his sword. Down every inch of armor. The only part of him that is clean is his front, where he held me, and now that I’m not frozen in terror, I can feel the thick layer of gore on the back of my body.
I can’t see his face, but by his posture … by the way he grips his sword so tightly still, like he’s considering plunging it through my chest and traveling alone—
“You’re angry.”
His growl in response has me swallowing.
I scuttle back on my hands and feet. “The warriors at the inn. They—they followed me, I didn’t—”
“I know,” he says, his tattooed knuckles whiter than usual as he grips his blade tighter.
Right. Of course. He must have seen them. My voice is just a ragged whisper. “You … you went in after me.”
“I went through the mist for that sword,” he snarls. My sword, he means. The one on my back, its blade still covered in saberwolf blood.