Chapter 11
ELEVEN
SIX HOURS. THAT WAS HOW MUCH LONGER DESS SAID THEY’D BE IN the forest. They would reach the Midlunds by nightfall, a dehydrated expanse of grass that encompassed the lands of House Griffon, House Heron, and what territory in between that had been overrun by n?gens.
Despite what awaited them, Thia was relieved; she was tired of traipsing around in the dim, especially now that Oskaren was there to incessantly remark on her lack of balance or her hand clutched in Dess’s.
When the trees began to thin, Dess gestured for them to stop. “We’ll camp here,” he said. “Get some sleep while you can, and we will leave when the moon is high.”
“At night?” Thia asked, not loving the possibility of facing n?gens in the dark.
Thran, to Thia’s left, surprised her by speaking. “The beasts cannot see well then.”
“That makes two of us,” she muttered, only to hold up a hand when Oskaren opened her mouth. “Don’t even start.”
Shockingly, the girl obeyed.
“Thran’s right,” Dess admitted, begrudgingly.
“Callista said the n?gens worship her as a goddess,” Thia recalled. “Maybe they can be reasoned with?”
Dess snorted. “She probably feeds them.”
“Well, can we feed them then? What do they eat?”
Oskaren answered, slinging an arm over Dess’s shoulders and ruffling his hair. She wiggled her brows at Thia. “People.”
Thia’s skin crawled, remembering the smear of green on a frozen n?gen’s snout, half-eaten brain hanging loose between its jagged teeth.
Dess growled, cheeks burning with irritation, and pushed Oskaren off. She let him go, laughing, a harsh sound with little humor.
He straightened his collar and pointedly turned his back so she was no longer in view. “Among other things,” he said to Thia. “But I wouldn’t risk it.”
“And they don’t enter the forest?”
He shrugged. “Rarely. They are creatures of the sun. There’s a river several leagues from here that marks the other end of their territory, and the border of House Griffon.
The trees will hide it tonight, but tomorrow we should finally see the Lightning Tower flash at dusk.
” He started unpacking his own roll, and Thia mirrored him.
“What is it? Magic?”
Dess paused. “No one knows for sure. It emanates from the top of the Lightning Tower. Some say the Tyrant is experimenting with dark spells. Others say his power is too great for one man to bear, so he must expel it or else go mad.”
Thran set his own pack down a few yards away, but he raised his head at this. “There is a cost to power,” he commented. “Perhaps one is the consequence of the other.”
“Wonderful,” Thia grumbled. “Can’t wait.”
Dess resumed his task, perhaps unwilling to philosophize now that Thran was involved. “At the very least it will prevent us from getting lost.”
They finished making camp, Dess and Thia taking up positions beside each other, Thran and Oskaren a small distance away, to Thia’s relief.
Perhaps the girl’s appetite for irritating her had subsided after an entire day of walking.
Lying back on her bedroll, Thia stretched her arms up over her head, tracing the cracks of gold in the green canopy above with longing.
She could just make out the silver outline of Mavrel where he roosted in a tree to her right.
“You’re missing the sky, aren’t you?”
Thia turned to find Dess watching her.
“There aren’t this many trees in Kansas.”
Dess shifted so that his head was propped up by his elbow.
“I miss it too sometimes, even though I’ve never really lived under it.
I was in the Tyrant’s prisons, then Haven.
And we rarely leave the forest these days.
” He rubbed a hand over his hair, adding to the wiry blond mess it already was.
“How can you miss something you’ve never had? ”
She rolled over to face him. “My parents died when I was a baby,” she told him. “I miss them, even though I never knew them.” And what she did know wasn’t even true. She absent-mindedly rubbed the bruise on her forearm.
“I’m sorry,” Dess said. “I understand.”
She knew he did.
“Who’d you live with back in Kansas?” he asked after a moment.
“My grandma,” Thia said.
“No siblings?”
“None. You?”
“Not that I know of.”
She expelled a breath. “Right. Sorry.”
“Don’t be,” he said. “You’ve given me a chance to find out the truth. And besides, if Oskaren is anything to go by, it’s probably better that way.”
Thia tucked her hand under her cheek. “Did you grow up together?”
Dess nodded. “She and Sorscha arrived in Haven shortly after I did. I had no one, so Sorscha took to raising me alongside her own.” He expelled a pained huff. “But that sister died with the curse.”
Died? That was harsh, when Oskaren was right there. “Dess—” she started. The girl was difficult, yes. Cursed, definitely. But Sorscha loved her still. And Dess seemed like a generally amiable boy. Had something happened between them, more than just the girl’s typical brand of annoyance?
But he tugged his blanket over his ears and turned his back to her.
Message received.
“I always wanted a sibling,” Thia commented instead.
“Oh?”
“Someone to just…get it. I don’t know. Maybe that’s silly.”
It took a moment, but he finally rolled again, onto his back this time so he was peering up at the sky too. “Were you lonely?”
That wasn’t it, not exactly. She felt hollow, emptied out.
She’d spent her entire life bolstered by the knowledge that, even though her parents were gone, her mother at least lived on in her.
When she finally got home, what the hell was she supposed to do with that?
Medical school, Harvard—they felt like the pursuit of a version of herself that also could no longer exist. Had those ideas even come from her?
She couldn’t remember a time she wanted to be a doctor that wasn’t in some way linked to that desperate yearning for connection to her roots.
A yearning her grammy had fostered, even knowing it was based on a lie.
“Are you alright?” Dess asked. A lump formed in her throat. He waited a breath, then reached out and squeezed her wrist. “Maybe we can be alone together.” His usually merry gaze was earnest and a little sad.
Maybe she was lonely, in a way—a stranger to the only family she still had. And he was evidently so as well. She thought of their earlier conversation.
Are you going to kill him?
Maybe. I don’t know.
The vulnerability in his young face tugged her heart. She hoped he didn’t lose it on her account.
She smiled at him. “I’d like that.”
It was about an hour to the forest’s edge from their camp.
They set off under the light of a moon that continued to brighten as the trees thinned.
Dess led the way, halting when the grasslands beyond became visible.
He signaled for their group to wait and slunk forward on his own, and the fact that Oskaren reserved comment made Thia more nervous for what might lie beyond.
But after a few moments, he waved them forward.
After nothing but dense woodland, out on the plains, the moon glowed brighter than the memory of the sun to Thia’s unconditioned sight.
The terrain was a tangle of long grass, dirt, and stones seemingly destined to give her a sprained ankle.
She trod as carefully as she could, grateful for the clear sky and the light it provided.
They walked for some time, mostly in silence, until a large circle of boulders disrupted the horizon. Dess suggested they use it as a vantage point to try to make out the river, and when no one disagreed, they changed course toward it.
When they were a mere twenty feet away, he paused abruptly, gesturing for the others to do the same.
Slower to register the sign than the others, Thia bumped into Oskaren as she halted in front of her.
The girl shot her an amused look that was vaguely reminiscent of a cat playing with a bug it had just killed, and she resisted the urge to flip the girl off.
Movement flickered in her periphery. To her right, Thran was visibly shaking. She knew Dess had called him a coward, but seeing a grown man display that much fear chilled her.
Dess scanned the boulders, squinting in the dark. “I thought I saw….”
Screeches split the night. A horde of n?gens tore around the boulders, scuttling toward them.
While the memory of their pale scaly bodies and rusty fangs was burned into Thia’s mind, the creatures seemed bigger at night, their red eyes eerily bright.
She was a statue, unable to move, to think above the pounding of her blood, as they closed the distance faster than their stocky legs should have allowed.
Something yanked on her arm.
Dess.
“Run, Thia!” he hollered, dragging her into motion.
She tore after him, drawing her dagger, though she was more likely to skewer herself than one of the creatures after seventeen years of being told not to run with scissors.
She couldn’t see Oskaren and Thran, but assumed they were somewhere in front.
She urged her legs to pump faster as the cold night air burned her lungs.
It was no use. The n?gens were gaining, and Thia had never been an athlete.
With her attention on the ground, she felt rather than saw the teeth tear into her arm.
A warm maw gripped her wrist, and she instinctively slashed with her knife.
There was a yelp of pain, and the thing released her, but in the chaos of the moment she dropped it.
She bent, scanning the long grass, and another beast barreled into her shoulder.
Thia stumbled sideways, managing to catch herself before she fell, but that only gave her full view of the teeth that careened for her throat.
She yelled, throwing up her arm. A blade flashed.
Silver blood spurted, spattering her face, and then the thing dropped to her feet before its bite could land.
Oskaren stood in its place, eyes glittering dangerously. “That’s twice I’ve saved you.”