CHAPTER FORTY-TWO #2
Our line slowly comes to a halt as we all take a few sips. “Are you okay?” I ask her.
She hesitates but nods. “Yeah, I’m just really anxious. We’ve been at this for what, six or seven hours? I thought we should stop before we get there.”
Talyn overhears her. “I was planning to stop us anyway. I don’t want anyone too tired if we need to fight when we get there, but I also don’t want to be caught in these woods after dark.”
“Neither do I,” Killian adds. “I saw basilisk and goblin tracks about an hour back. I’d rather get there, grab the stone and blink back.”
“Ugh, remind me again why we can’t blink there?” Mel asks before she chugs back some more water.
“We can only blink to places we’ve been before. It’s kind of hard to adequately visualize a place otherwise,” I tell her.
“We should get moving,” Talyn states as his gaze roams the foliage around us.
I place my water container back in the pouch around my waist and we are off again.
The later it gets, the more noises we hear in the distance.
Some of the sounds are raising the hair along my skin.
It’s not until we hear something that sounds like a bunch of foliage breaking heading right toward us that everyone flies into action.
“Weapons out!” Killian bellows, staying at my back. Ever since that night we spent cuddled together in the library, something between us has shifted. Now he’s always with me in my waking hours, always within eyesight.
He places his hand on my shoulder and peers down at me. “Stay by my side, Little Warrior,” he grumbles, not looking away until I nod my promise.
The next thing I know, tiny boil-covered beings rush out at us. Goblins. Their fingers are long and sharp as knives, and their teeth are just as razor-sharp. Mel curses as their stench finally reaches us.
Ember’s magick pulses around us, so similar to Killian’s, as she wields her blades, cutting through them with ease.
I reach for my magick, using the vines to trip or string them up out of the way so I can cut them down.
There’s easily fifty of them and it’s pure chaos.
Tiny monsters of terror and bloodshed. From what I remember learning about them at Phixmery, they have no empathy.
Destruction is all they know and they’re very defensive of their territory, which we must have walked into.
Which means that Lord Craven’s safe house is right in the center of goblin grounds.
Suddenly a screech rends through the air and I’m overcome with a terror I’ve only felt once in my life.
Shadow wraiths.
“Talyn! Shadow flame, now!” Killian yells as I replace my short blades with my dragonstone longsword.
We all hold our blades together and with the single use of the device, devastatingly purple light blares to life just as five wraiths phase through the brush, not ruffling a single leaf or branch.
It all happens far too fast; goblins fade to ash as they get caught between the wraiths and us.
I run towards my friends as they barrel towards us for safety, but the wraiths move like smoke, swift and unpredictable.
A scream lodges in my throat as Melissandre shoves Lennox out of the way; he tumbles, rolling towards me as I jump over him.
Mel’s hand reaches towards me, her eyes wide with a terror so strong I can feel it in my bones.
I scream, wrapping my shadows around me to blink between them.
Someone calls my name but all I’m focused on is Mel—my friend who’s become my family, the female who makes me laugh, who keeps Ember and I from being too serious.
A soul more kind and pure than anyone else’s.
“Mel!” I cry as I swing my blade towards the wraith’s head, a trail of purple flames arching with it. But just as I make contact with it, its grip is around Mel’s neck. Her face grows slack and the light leaves her eyes as her body greys.
I scream.
I scream so loud that my voice turns to nothing but a scratchy whisper as I drive the blade home. The wraith’s body hisses, going up in smoke, and I fall to my knees, cradling Mel.
“Mel, Mel, Mel,” I cry, checking for a pulse I know is no longer there. “No, no. NO!”
“Melissandre!” I hear Lennox yell from behind me, mixed with whispered words I can’t comprehend.
Someone lifts me off the ground and I fight against them. “Rav, Ravina. Stop. Maeven!” Talyn’s voice pulls me back as he cradles me. “We have to go. We will come back for her body I promise. But if we don’t leave now we will be surrounded and we will all die.”
Killian catches up to us, holding an unconscious Lennox. “I had to knock him out,” he states gruffly. His voice is full of emotion.
I feel numb. I failed them. I failed Mel, Lennox, Ember—
Talyn forces me to look at him. Concern and agony darken his gaze as he tries to get me to focus.
“Knock it off, Ravina. You need to pull it together. Put all those feelings into a box and deal with it when we get out of here. We need to get the stone. And we need to go. If the wraiths are here then we must be close.”
I’m not sure how long we run for, but we come across a small cabin. It looks nearly abandoned except for the tracks of flattened grass leading to and from the door.
Talyn places me down and all I feel is numb. Numb and angry. Numb and sad. Whoever said you can’t feel numb and emotional at the same time lied. You definitely can, but I do my best to push it to the back of my mind. Get the stone. Get… Mel… and leave.
“Keep your eyes peeled,” Talyn snaps, holding his blade which is still bathed in purple flames.
I look around. Where did my sword go? Did I leave it?
Jesper is suddenly in front of me and I stagger back. He holds out my blade still coated in flames. “Here you go, Little Beastie. We will get through this together, but I need you to be strong.”
Killian places Lennox, still out cold, against the cabin. “I will stand guard and make sure nothing follows you in.”
My head begins shaking. “I don’t want us separated.”
Ember’s teary eyes meet mine. “I will stay with him. Lennox is going to need us when he wakes up and remembers…” She chokes back a sob.
“I will stay out here too,” Roz adds. “Get that stone so we can pay back the fucker who took her from us,” he states with such steel, and I already see the cracks beginning to form in our friend group.
I nod, squeezing Jesper’s hand before giving them each a brief but quick hug and then following Talyn inside.
Aemon and Jesper follow behind me, and when we enter the cabin it looks like a simple home for a small family. Dishes have been left scattered across the table and dust layers everything.
“Start searching. There has to be something here,” Talyn says gruffly.
I move around the space, determined to find anything—a sign that Mel didn’t die for nothing, that this trip wasn’t a waste of time. Sobs get lodged in my throat as I search around, opening cupboards and boxes.
“Over here,” Jesper calls.
I nearly trip over myself to get to him and that’s when I see what he sees.
In front of one of the walls the floor is lacking dust, as if someone has opened it, leaving behind a clue on where to go.
Jesper and I search the wall, looking for any kind of latch when Nero’s wing knocks a hanging picture with his wing and a click sounds through the room.
I swallow thickly as the musky scent of underground fills my nose. Aemon grabs the hidden door and heaves it open, revealing a long staircase going underground.
“Of course it’s underground,” Nero mutters. The first thing he’s said since… No. No thoughts of anything but the mission right now.
But even as I say that, it doesn’t stop the massive hole that’s been punched through my heart.
“I’ll go down first,” Talyn says as he brings flames to his hands. It’s brighter than the purple flame, I realize suddenly. “Jesper and Killian, you follow, then Rav and then Aemon. I want to go home sooner rather than later.”
No one questions him. I know at the back of my mind that without his domineering attitude we would have fallen apart. So with one step at a time, we follow him underground.
The further we go, the more familiar it looks—the more my skin crawls, and some warning I can’t remember rings in the back of my mind. It’s like something from my dreams.
Somehow I know where we’re going, and something is at the end of the hall that’s telling me to run, to leave, but I can’t because something I need is in that room.
Talyn pushes the door open and a soft candlelight illuminates the space.
In the bed lies an emaciated female who looks so familiar that my vision begins to tunnel and my body feels faint, but not before the male sitting next to the bed, holding a red stone dripping in blood says, “Hello son. The Queen and I have been waiting for you to bring me her daughter, just like I told you to do. And look, you’ve brought friends. ”