Dream Reaper (Between Shade and Flame #2)

1. Ava

AVA

Ava Blodrhys had no doubt she was about to die. After all, she’d failed miserably at everything she attempted in life.

Why should staying alive prove any different?

The dark elf girl stumbled toward a skeletal tree shrouded in ghostly mist, her hands bound in front of her by brilliant blue bindings crafted by fire magic. This was powerful magic, not the flimsy sort of gift that she possessed.

She could barely sense her flame inside—a whimpering, simmering flicker that might snuff out of existence at any moment.

A rough hand shoved her from behind, and she quickened her pace, pursing her lips to keep from crying out for help. They had journeyed so far into the Shadewood Forest that no one would hear her cry.

No one would hear her screams.

“Move faster,” her kidnapper hissed in her ear, “or I will kill you and be done with it.”

She had recognized him the moment he snatched her out of the woods: Talos, the dark elf traitor who had tried to murder the prince of Gelaira.

His own cousin.

Ava blinked back bitter tears. “You’re probably going to kill me anyway, so what’s the point?”

She had known Talos for several years, bumping shoulders with him at the palace and avoiding him as much as she could, but she had never realized he was capable of this.

He snorted and prodded her again, more firmly, the jab against her shoulder blade sending a twinge of pain down her tense spine. “If I have to kill you now, I’ll take my time, and it will hurt.”

She didn’t really believe that. Judging by his insistence she keep walking faster, she suspected he still feared they were being pursued, but they’d been stumbling through the forest for hours.

Surely if anyone were coming to her rescue, they would have overtaken them long ago.

And yet Talos wouldn’t let her pace slacken, forcing her to stumble faster, always faster, and always deeper into the heart of the ancient forest. The trees towered on either side of their narrow trail, the bark slick with slime and reeking of mold and decay.

The deeper they went, the worse the stench grew.

Ava couldn’t shake the feeling they were headed toward something truly awful.

Did Talos even know where he was driving her?

She guessed he was as lost as she was by now.

She had been lost long before Talos snatched her from the clearing where the prince of Eroth had burst into horrifying blue flames.

She could still feel the painful lick of the dark elf prince’s fire as it flung her off her feet and drove her into the trees, the place where Talos had found her, half unconscious, her head wracked by a blistering pain, her limbs unresponsive.

It had been so easy for him to overcome her feeble resistance and drag her into the shadows of the forest.

Ava drew a shuddering breath as she dodged around the hangman’s tree, the mist parting to slip around her shivering body.

She’d been taken without a fight, without a whimpering cry for help. Her magic had done her no good when she needed it most, a fact that burrowed down to the marrow of her bones.

It would have been far preferable to die back in the glen, close to her friends, instead of all these miles away in the endless darkness of the Shadewood, where she was alone and friendless with only her magic to offer comfort—magic that could barely manage weak glamours and flickering flames to illuminate the darkness.

She would never be able to perform magic as strong as the fiery chains that bit into her delicate wrists.

“We’ll have to stop soon.” She gasped, a pain tightening in her side that forced her to hunch with a grimace. “We can’t keep…this up…forever.”

“Speak for yourself,” he said, but his own breathing held a ragged quality that resembled her own.

He was getting tired, too.

Her pulse quickened, but not from exertion. Maybe she would have an opportunity soon to make an escape. She hadn’t dared attempt anything yet, knowing he would overtake her without breaking a sweat. But if she waited until he was weary and off his guard…

The pain lanced through her side again.

No. She was worse off than he was and wouldn’t make it a dozen yards into the trees. She needed to bide her time, wait for exactly the right moment when he was distracted but she still had enough energy to escape.

What’s the point?

Her thoughts betrayed her before she’d even had a chance to imagine how she might make a break for it.

Those whisperings were right. After all, her entire life she had seemed doomed to fail at whatever she set her hand to.

She’d failed to harness her own magic; failed to heal the prince; failed to keep her little brother out of trouble…

Escaping Talos would probably turn into another disappointment in a long, dismal list of failures.

She stared down at her feet as she stumbled across the uneven ground.

Something stirred ahead of them in the forest. Ava snapped her head up and stared down the serpentine trail. The undergrowth grew tighter around them, ferns and ivy brushing against her on both sides as thorns and branches tore at her arms and unbound hair.

Had she imagined it?

She stumbled several more feet, straining to listen to the sounds of the forest, but it was difficult to hear anything over her own ragged breaths.

There. There it was again.

A haunting moan echoed between the trunks of the trees. She slowed her pace, looking frantically around her to discover the source of the sound.

Talos shoved her again. “You really have a death wish, witch.”

She forced her trembling legs to move again but kept her hearing focused on the forest around them. There was something out there, something behind the hissing of the wind through the creaking branches of the trees. Something low and nearly inaudible…

They weren’t alone.

“Something’s out there,” she rasped, stubbornly slowing her pace yet again. “Can’t you hear it?”

This time he stopped with her, one hand latching onto her elbow and squeezing hard enough that his fingers would leave bruises. But he said nothing, his breathing stilling as he too tried to listen to the whispers of the forest.

“I don’t hear anything but the wind.” He shook her arm so hard it yanked a moan from her compressed lips.

“No. Not the wind! Something else, something—”

A blade hissed out of a sheath and pressed against the small of her back. “Keep. Moving.”

Biting back a curse, she forced one foot to move forward, then the other. She didn’t want to continue down this path, toward that…whatever that was lying in wait for her up ahead.

Every fiber of her being screamed for her to go back, her senses overwhelmed and too highly tuned. The stench of mold began to smell like the decay of a corpse. The hiss of the wind became a ghostly voice warning her away. The thorns tearing at her exposed arms became claws and teeth…

She was going to die. Whatever lay ahead of them might be worse than the dark elf driving her from behind. And what was she?

Nothing. I’m a healer who couldn’t even ply my own trade.

She’d failed at saving her prince and would fail at saving herself.

Worthless. She was worthless…

The trail cut abruptly to the west, the ground dropping away into a ravine too deep for her to see the bottom.

Ava didn’t hesitate or even think about what she was doing. She plunged off the trail and skidded down into the darkness of the ravine. She didn’t care if Talos killed her. She would not follow that trail blindly to her fate, like a lamb led to slaughter.

She’d rather die on the run.

So, she ran, arms held in front of her face as she slid down the ravine, dodging narrow tree trunks that angled toward the sky at awkward angles.

Behind her, Talos bellowed a vile curse. As soon as her feet hit the dank water at the base of the ravine, she changed direction and cut to the south, following the curve of the ravine. The glow from her bonds lit the forest in a sickly blue hue, lighting the way in front of her.

But it also acted as a beacon to Talos.

He would see her unless she found some place to hide, some place so deep and dark it could smother the glow of her magical chains. She didn’t care what direction she went, as long as it led her away from Talos, away from that hissing whisper in the trees.

The pain in her side had become unbearable, and yet onward she ran. She couldn’t stop. If she did, Talos would capture her and slice a blade across her throat.

Or perhaps he’d stab it into her back, breaking through the bones of her spine, or driving hard into the base of her neck where it met her shoulders…

The ravine opened and spat her out into a small clearing illuminated by moonlight.

She darted across, her boots crunching against dead, brittle, long grass. Without a thought for direction, she plunged out of the moonlight and back into the darkness of the trees.

Any minute she would feel the cutting stab of the blade in her back. Perhaps he’d grab her by her hair and jerk her head back—

She never saw the ground disappear ahead of her.

One minute she pounded between two crooked trees, and the next she pitched forward in a free fall.

Screaming, she tumbled, the drop so sharp she feared she had walked off the edge of a cliff. But the frequent jarring of her body against the ground suggested she rolled down a steep incline. Every thump sent jarring pain into her bones and muscles.

There was so much pain, she didn’t know what hurt and what didn’t.

Over and over, she rolled until even the screams were stolen from her lungs. At last, she skidded to a halt in a tangle of undergrowth. She heaved, half retching as she stared up at the claw-like tree branches above her. The branches and the sky and the moon spun in sickening circles.

Breathe, she told herself. Just breathe…

She inhaled sharply, then gagged and sobbed. Every bone in her body hurt—had she broken everything?

Slowly, Ava tested first her fingers, then her arms and shoulders. She rolled first one, then the other. So far so good. With a groan, she pushed herself up onto her elbows and lifted her left leg, then her right. Her body screamed in agony.

But both legs lifted and settled at her command.

No broken bones, then.

She didn’t know if she could walk, let alone run anymore, but Talos’s curses echoed through the forest above her on the ledge, where she had tumbled into her freefall. Biting down on her lower lip, she pushed herself up onto her feet and leaned against the tree until the world stopped spinning.

Then she plunged into the undergrowth once more, her steps a drunken stagger.

Above her, Talos bellowed her name around foul curses. “When I catch up with you, I’m going to cut your fingers off one by one—”

She blocked him out, focusing on her breathing, on the crunch of dead leaves beneath her feet, and on the glow of her enchanted bindings held in front of her face to keep whip-like branches from slapping her and gouging out her eyes.

She stumbled onward, deeper into the forest. It didn’t matter where she went, as long as she got away from Talos.

Falling down the ravine may have been a blessing in disguise, for it would take him longer to slide down and catch up to her, unless he wanted to risk a headlong tumble as wild as her own had been.

She hoped his overwhelming sense of self-preservation would make him more cautious than that and give her a big enough head start.

Something burst from the darkness between two trees and slammed into her.

A scream died in the back of her throat as she skidded sideways and crashed into a thick pile of leaves and ferns. A heavy weight pressed down on her, crushing the breath from her lungs. Tree branches swayed above her, and the moon hung coldly above her and offered no support or hint of escape.

How had he caught up to her so quickly?

She opened her mouth to scream, but a hand covered her face. A finger smashed against her nose, partially blocking her nostrils.

She bucked her hips and thrashed, but her kidnapper held her more firmly.

Then, the branches, trees, and mocking moon disappeared from view as something warm and leathery slipped over her face.

It brushed against her forehead as it slithered over the back of her head, as if it meant to swallow her down into the damp soil against her back.

This wasn’t Talos. This was some unearthly thing that had climbed out of the bowels of the Shadewood.

Oh, flames, it was going to smother her! It was going to— Was it going to eat her?

She tried to bite the hand smashed against her mouth, blocking her nose. She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t breathe, couldn’t…

The hand against her mouth only pressed more firmly.

“If you want to live, lass,” a deep voice rasped into her ear, the threatening tenor freezing her in place, “then lie still and— Skadi’s frost, stop biting me!”