28. Jerrid #2
It wasn’t the time to tell her that he hadn’t been laughing at her plan or her determination to help, but at the idea of her chasing through the Shadewood after the elf who had once kidnapped her.
It struck him as ironic. In a good way. She wasn’t the helpless lass he had once presumed her to be. She had hidden grit and strength he’d not seen in those early moments. And a heart big enough to risk it all for people she barely knew.
He had to respect that, no matter how much he hated it when she put herself in danger.
No, we can’t tell her why you hate it so much when she does that. Dragon snickered, flaring to life obnoxiously in Jerrid’s mind. It would be admitting that you actually have a heart and aren’t an eternally boring grouch…
Jerrid flinched and clenched his jaw in an attempt to hide his reaction to Dragon’s words. No, he definitely didn’t want to have this discussion with Ava, especially in the presence of all these witnesses who had no business eavesdropping on any conversations relating to his heart.
He cleared his throat and turned to study the dark elf prince. “This is the reason you came. To defeat the monster that escaped last time.”
“I know my duty,” Prince Haryk said, drawing himself up stiffly. “I am here to help. Talos will be dealt with later, I assure you.”
Ava breathed an audible sigh of relief. “We need to get back down to the cellars to make sure everyone is all right. We were trying to draw the shadow away to keep it busy until you got here.”
Jerrid shot her a frustrated look. “You used yourself as bait, you mean.”
“We made ourselves the last line of defense,” Brynja snapped, her tone surprisingly angry. “Nobody was bait.”
Was she coming to Ava’s defense? He let his gaze flicker between the two lasses as he wondered what had happened between them in the two days he’d been gone.
Ava smiled at Brynja, a genuine smile that brightened her dark, somber eyes.
“Yes, exactly,” she said.
Clearly, these two had come to some kind of understanding or truce.
The lasses were teaming up against him now, it seemed.
Don’t fuss so much. You like a strong lass, and we both know it. And before you ask how I know it…I can read your thoughts, remember? I know everything, Jerrid. Dragon laced that word with so much blatant insinuation that Jerrid couldn’t have missed it if he’d been half asleep or in horrible pain.
He could almost imagine Dragon waving a claw in the air to dramatize the “everything” he claimed to know.
“All right, all right,” he grumbled. “Let’s go down to the cellars. We need to find the shadow before it finds us. Where do you think it has gone?”
The others exchanged worried looks but did not answer.
They spun and made their way back to the hallway, to the curving stairwell, and then to the main corridor and the small entrance hall. It barely took them five minutes to jog down to the lower levels. Ahead of him, Brynja banged on a wooden door.
“Ylsi, it’s me!” she called in a hushed tone.
The door wrenched open, a pinched and pale face peeking through the crack between the door and the jamb. The girl’s eyes widened in relief as she swung the door wide to let them in.
“You need to hurry!” she hissed, yanking Brynja by the arm and tugging her through the doorway. “Something’s wrong.”
“What do you mean—” Ava cut off as she crowded into the room behind Brynja.
Jerrid and the others hurried in too, leaving Prince Haryk in the doorway. The women and children huddled along the walls on makeshift bedrolls. Some of them were awake, but others were lying prone on the ground, limbs jerking as if they were having fits.
Ava dropped to her knees beside Roar and his mother.
“What’s happening to them?” the mother cried.
Jerrid leaned over Ava’s shoulder, his stomach clenching. The boy’s eyes rolling back in his head as he jerked and writhed on the ground. Half a dozen of the younger girls were experiencing the same symptoms, unresponsive to the cries and attempts to wake them.
Jerrid stooped and pinched the boy firmly on the arm, but he didn’t respond, completely trapped in his spasmodic episode.
“It has to be the shadow,” Ava breathed, her voice cracking. “It’s attacking us any way it can. And it went for the children first.”
A quick look around the room confirmed her theory. No one over the age of fourteen or fifteen had been affected. The nightmare truly was targeting the children.
His mouth went dry, the horror of it robbing the breath from his lungs.
This can’t be allowed, Dragon snarled.
For once, Jerrid agreed with him. He surged to his feet before he realized what he was doing, striding back toward the door to tell Prince Haryk they needed to work together to bring this thing down, to stop it once and for all—
But the doorway was empty.
Jerrid froze in the hallway right outside the storage room, searching for signs of the dark elf prince.
But Prince Haryk had disappeared.