Chapter 17
They picked up the trail left by his patrol again and followed it through the early afternoon, stopping occasionally at Casrian’s insistence to rest the horses and so she could stretch her stiff leg and reapply liniment.
He took good care of his tools. There was the blade he cleaned every night with oil that smelled like cloves.
His horses. His guide. She’d become one of the things he felt responsible for.
It had been a very long time since anyone had looked out for her.
Not since Toby, she thought, and he’d gotten her into as much trouble as he’d gotten her out of.
At least he’d stopped pestering her about the future.
She found herself rubbing her leg, and when she looked up, Casrian was staring at her, a frown on his face. She stopped and looked ahead to the trail.
Damn it.
She turned Copper off the path, heading uphill where the trees felt cleaner. Maybe he wouldn’t notice. If she could just—
“The trail goes that way,” Casrian said, exasperation sharpening his voice.
She supposed she would be annoyed too if her guide wasn’t able to follow such a clear trail.
It wasn’t that she didn’t see it. His patrol had raced over this open ground, chasing something or being chased, she couldn’t tell.
Whatever had happened, they’d run straight into a patch of rot she wanted to avoid.
“I don’t like the look of the woods there. We should go around.”
“We’ll lose the trail,” Casrian said.
“I’ll find it again.”
He stared at her. It was a captain’s stare, waiting for compliance, wondering if she was going to make him force it. She half-wanted to make him try. But he would want a better explanation, and she had none to give him. None that he would accept anyway.
She looked ahead at the dense tangle of woods. It looked darker in there, like a tunnel. The shadows deep. The air heavier with every step. She really didn’t want to go in there.
She didn’t even need to consult the trees about it. It was pure animal instinct.
But what choice did she have? It was still daylight with hours left until dark. It wasn’t a big patch. They could make it through before sunset.
She took another look at Casrian’s set expression and gave in. “Fine.”
Who knew? Maybe Casrian’s patrol was in there, camped and waiting to be found.
For an extra two hundred cord, wasn’t it worth a look?
She turned Copper back to the path, rubbing an apologetic hand down his neck when he balked. Even the horse knew this was a bad idea.
She urged him forward. Silence closed around them almost instantly.
The temperature dropped. The trees were more dense here.
Their roots tangled beneath the cool, damp soil.
Their bare branches entwined overhead. The leaves had already fallen as if this spot were weeks ahead of the season.
The debris beneath the horse’s hooves was matted, wet, and thick.
It made it easy to follow the trail, though they saw no other signs of his men.
“At this point, they’d ridden hours from where they left you. Did the horses not tire? Why didn’t they camp?”
Her voice fell flat and loud in the silence. She glanced over at the witch hunter, who frowned at the path ahead.
“We were attacked near dawn,” he answered, gaze flicking briefly to her. “It shouldn’t have happened then. A witch’s familiars are strongest at night. They usually withdraw to the nest well before sunrise. We were careless. I was careless.”
He grimaced and shook his head.
“They were likely chasing the creature that attacked me. Protocol would have had Asher stay with me, but witches have a way of turning the mind. He might have thought someone else had dropped back, or that I still rode with them. Once they were caught up in the chase, it would be easy to get lost in it. They wouldn’t have realized how far they’d gone until it turned dark.
The horses were fresh. The riders experienced.
They traveled this far on the first day. ”
“No breaks?”
He shook his head. “It’s a sign they were ensnared. They hadn’t realized it yet.”
They fell silent for a time as they rode through the woods.
The trees here were dying. Vines as thick as her arm wound around trunks of insect-riddled gray bark.
There were thickets of brambles and dense patches of itch weed.
Poisonous mushrooms nestled among the roots that became more tangled as they travelled on, slowing the horses.
They skirted the edge of a brackish pond that smelled like death and then followed a creek for another hour before they finally found the place where Casrian’s men had made camp.
Casrian dismounted with enviable ease. She practically fell off her horse. Her legs buckled the moment her feet hit the ground, and she had to cling to Copper’s neck until she managed to stand on her own.
The witch hunter tethered the horses to keep them from drinking the fetid water and then moved around the camp, examining the ashes from the fire and the small circle of flattened earth where his men must have slept.
He moved out from that spot, pausing where she imagined they’d tied off the horses.
He bent and drew his fingers through some dust that looked like feed grain.
Smart. She wouldn’t let Copper eat anything in this part of the woods either.
When Casrian straightened, his expression was hard but not hopeless.
“No sign that anyone else was injured.”
He turned slowly, scanning the woods. They were surrounded on one side by a tangle of buckthorn and on the other by a thin, foul-smelling creek. The trees felt hostile all around them.
“We can’t linger here,” she told him. “I don’t know why they’d pick a place like this to camp.”
“It probably got dark.”
“The woods here wouldn’t be improved one bit by the dark.” She wanted to get to a clear patch before then. “There’s something wrong here. Can’t you feel it?”
“Of course there’s something wrong. We’re hunting a witch. The closer we get, the worse it’ll be.”
She rubbed her arms. “We could have gone around, picked up the trail on the other side.”
“There might not be another side.”
There was. She could feel it. To the west. Back toward the river.
“There’s another side. The woods aren’t like this all the way through. There are just patches, like islands. We just have to avoid them.”
His eyes narrowed. “How do you know that? You said you hadn’t been this way in years.”
“You hired me as a guide, didn’t you? You should trust me to guide you.”
He frowned, looking like he meant to argue, but before he could press further, she walked off, calling over her shoulder that she needed a moment of privacy.
She stomped into the brush, hoping the noise would scare anything off.
She actually did need to relieve herself, but more than that, she needed a moment to think.
He was only going to get more suspicious as they moved through the woods. He wasn’t an idiot.
Once she was out of sight, she found a little patch of ground clear of thorns and itch weed to pull down her breeches.
The chill air raised goosebumps on her skin.
The sun had disappeared behind the clouds sometime past midday and already the shadows deepened in the hollows of the ground and beneath the thick trunks of the trees here.
If she judged things rightly, they’d have just enough time to find safe ground before the sun touched the mountain peaks and they would be forced to bed down for the night.
She didn’t have time to argue with the witch hunter. He’d just have to trust her.
She was retying her laces when she noticed the shadows thickening beneath a fallen oak a few paces away. The darkness was too deep where the base of the tree angled up from the ground. Like the mouth of a cave. Something moved within it, slow and heavy.
She stepped back, bracing a hand against a tree to steady herself. She jerked it away as a thread of malevolent power raced up her arm.
“Casrian?” she called out, her voice thin to her own ears.
There was no answer.
She tried again. “Casrian!”
Surely he heard that. She reached for her knife as the shadow swelled, spilling out from beneath the tree. She backed toward the campsite.
“Witch hunter, damn you!”
Tendrils of darkness stretched toward her, slowly taking shape, gathering into the form of a woman. Dark hair. A pale face. Her body cloaked in shadows.
For a heartbeat, Rowan’s mind rejected what she was seeing. This wasn’t happening. It couldn’t be happening.
Malevolence seeped into the air like the fragrance of a rotting corpse. The Church talked about evil, but she’d always thought it was a metaphor. A way to describe an idea, not a thing with a body and a face.
“Daughter of the wood,” the witch said, a strange echo in her low voice. “I’m so glad you’ve come.”
Rowan stepped back.
Where the hell was Casrian?
The witch drifted forward, more fog than substance.
“You used magic in my woods. I felt it last night through the trees. I can feel even the ones that don’t belong to me yet. I smell your sweet blood on the wind.”
“That’s disgusting,” she choked out.
The witch chuckled, a sound that was surprisingly light. “Not as disgusting as the scent on the one with you. Iron and holy water. Leave him behind. Come to me. I’ll open the way for you.”
“No thanks.”
Black tendrils slid from beneath her cloak, snaking across the forest floor. Rowan scrambled away from them.
“All that sweet fae blood,” the witch murmured. “All that power. Do you really think I’ll let you go now that I’ve found you?”
Rowan gathered herself to run. Casrian wasn’t coming.
The witch was in front of her, hand reaching for her throat. “My Rowan—”
She threw herself back, dodging the claw-tipped fingers. Then, she bolted, hurtling through the forest, blind with fear, heart shuddering, breath seized in her lungs.
It knew her name.
That fucking thing knew her name.
She slammed into something solid. Her vision went black, and her jaw snapped closed. Hard hands closed on her arms, keeping her from falling. She batted them away. She didn’t have her knife. Where was her knife?
“Rowan!”
Casrian’s face came into focus above her, pale and alarmed. He was yelling at her, but she couldn’t make sense of it until he cursed and shoved her behind him. Drawing his sword, he stalked forward.
“No!” she shouted, grabbing the back of his jacket. “No. You can’t. Don’t. She’ll kill you.”
He froze. “Who?”
She was shaking, her shirt damp with sweat. But all around her was quiet. There were no moving shadows. No witch. The horses stood, looking only mildly concerned at the raised voices. The campsite was just as she’d left it.
Casrian turned to face her. “What did you see?”
“I don’t… I don’t know.”
If she told him she’d seen the witch. If she told him the witch had called her by name, what would he do?
“There were… There were shadows. I thought I heard something.” She pressed a hand to her forehead. “I don’t know what happened.”
Casrian frowned, but he was as calm as he’d been when they faced the bear. Did nothing upset him?
“Why didn’t you come when I called you?”
He shook his head slowly. “I didn’t hear you. You’ve only been gone seconds.”
“I was shouting.”
“No,” he said quietly. “You weren’t.”
She stared at him. “But…”
He gripped her arm, steadying her. “Tell me what you saw.”
“I’ll show you.”
She pushed past him with a confidence she didn’t feel, retracing her steps to the fallen oak. Her knife lay half-buried in the leaves. She could clearly see where her own feet had passed. There were no other tracks.
Casrian came up beside her. “The witch can make you see things. It’s why it’s so easy to get lost in the woods. I’ve seen people fall off cliffs thinking they were running to safety. If you see something strange, something that shouldn’t be there, stay where you are. I’ll find you.”
Was that what it had been? An illusion?
She picked up her knife and stood there, staring into the shadows beneath the oak. It looked normal now. A tremor ran through her. Casrian placed a hand on her shoulder, the same way she’d seen him calm a spooked horse.
“What did you see?”
There was no witch. Nothing but the silent woods. The shadows lengthening as the sun began to set. And the lingering smell of rot. It reminded her of the smell of the dungeon in the old fort.
Was that an illusion too?
Somehow she couldn’t quite make herself believe it.
“We should go.”
“Rowan…”
“We’re wasting time.” She stepped away. “We need to get out of here before dark.”
There was no way she was sleeping here tonight.