CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Talon’s hands were steady as he packed our meager belongings. Leather creaked softly beneath his fingers as he piled in a few daggers and some rope.
I sat cross-legged near the cavern wall and watched the muscles shift across his back, the black ink sliding over skin like something half-alive, half-watching.
As if he felt my gaze, he glanced over his shoulder and a crooked smirk tugged at his mouth.
I scoffed and looked away, heat crawling up my neck. When he turned back to me with the satchel in hand I snatched it and stood.
“Are you ready?”
“I am.”
I was not, but the waterfall was thundering outside, only amplifying the fear that sat in my chest at the thought of staying here.
We stepped through the vibrating curtain of the waterfall, the icy weight of the spray slamming into me with a brutal soaking that stole the air from my lungs and left me gasping against the piercing chill.
When we emerged on the other side, the world felt stripped bare of its former beauty, appearing gray and sharp-edged and utterly hostile under the weight of the encroaching storm.
Clouds bruised the horizon in shades of violet and charcoal, swallowing the sun whole. The air smelled of wet pine and iron, and oddly, it calmed me. It reminded me of the mornings I would spend foraging in foggy woods similar to these.
Talon moved ahead without a shadow of hesitation, his dark form cutting through the mist with an efficiency that made my own limbs feel clumsy as my boots slipped repeatedly on the wet stone.
Every step we took away from our sanctuary felt like a descent into a world that was actively sharpening its teeth for me.
As we waded into the thickets, the air turned heavy and stagnant, thick with the scent of wet stone and the rot-sweet odor of something decaying just out of sight.
My steps slowed without a conscious command from my mind, my skin tightening with alarm as the ground beneath us shifted in a way that moss and earth should never move.
The soft greenery was gone, replaced by a dense mat of violet, vine-like tendrils that glistened with an oily, unnatural sheen that made my stomach churn.
Their slow, almost imperceptible movement reminded me of a predator breathing just beneath the surface of a dark pool, and a cold awareness crept up my spine as the bond tightened within my chest, recognizing a threat before my eyes could truly comprehend it.
The forest had gone unnaturally quiet, stripped of the sounds of birds or insects until even the distant roar of the waterfall was dulled to a low, muffled throb.
Talon slowed instantly, his entire frame tensing.
“Stay close,” he warned.
The words had barely left his mouth when the ground screamed.
A vine lashed upward with the terrifying speed of a cobra, coiling around my ankle with a force so brutal it yanked me off balance and slammed me into the cold mud.
Before I could draw the breath required to scream, a thinner and barbed tendril spiraled around my wrist, its surface pulsing against my skin with a glow that synced perfectly to my panicked heartbeat.
I clawed at the rough surface, panic crashing through me in waves as the vine tightened further, biting into my skin until white-hot fire raced up my arm.
“Talon!” I gasped. “What are these?”
“Lurkers,” Talon growled, his voice a snarl. He was already fighting, his boots anchored into the earth as vines corded themselves around his massive thighs like pythons. “The High Court’s hounds.”
The forest floor writhed in a chaotic frenzy around us as dozens of thicker tendrils shot upward, slamming against Talon’s chest and arms until they had coiled relentlessly around his torso.
He roared and tore one free with a sickening sound like splitting sinew.
A foul-smelling, dark liquid sprayed across us as the vine snapped, a substance that mirrored the oily blood of the vines the witch had set upon me in the front yard of my family home mere days ago.
I thrashed against my restraints, my fingers clawing uselessly at the slick surface of the vines, but every tug only seemed to feed their hunger.
They were cowards, dark magic sent by men too afraid to draw their own swords or look their prey in the eye.
Another stem circled my waist, pulling me further into the shadows, and I cried out as a thick, pulsing stalk lurched toward my face. It weaved around the back of my head, its cold and wet surface pressing hard against my nose and mouth until I could no longer draw breath.
Talon’s head snapped toward me, his eyes burning with a sapphire light even as the vines coiled across his chest in a desperate attempt to pin him. “Hold on, little flame.”
The world began to tilt on its axis, black spots dancing across my vision as the lack of oxygen began to take its toll. Through the haze of my fading consciousness, I heard his voice. “I am coming for you, my love. Hold on.”
His eyes glowed with a terrifying heat that started to shimmer around him in waves, and the air thickened until it became a hot and suffocating cage.
The spirits that resided within his ink tore free, bursting from the black patterns on his skin with a piercing squeal that echoed through the trees.
They swarmed around us in a furious, silver cyclone, cutting through the forest darkness.
Talon’s guttural roar ripped through the air, and as the sound left him, the spirits screamed in harmony. Their shrieks layered into a frequency so sharp it made my ears ring.
With a sweep of his hand, the thick coils binding his body split open, bursting into clouds of black dust that disintegrated into the air. The remaining tendrils thrashed wildly, recoiling in a panicked retreat as the storm of spirits pressed closer to their source.
The vines around me convulsed, their grip loosening for a heartbeat before tightening again.
I fought uselessly, my vision fading at the edges until Talon moved through the writhing mass like a god of ruin fashioned from shadow and light.
His head tilted to the side, and the spirits followed the motion like the descent of a silver blade.
The tendrils binding my wrist and ankle snapped instantly, their severed ends curling back into the undergrowth
The long stem wrapped around my face fell limp into my lap, allowing me to suck in a deep, ragged breath that burned my lungs with its coldness.
The clearing fell into an eerie stillness, save for the faint shimmer of the spirits circling Talon’s frame as they slowly began to return to his skin.
My chest heaved as I drew in sharp breaths, looking up at him as he stood at the center of the wreckage.
His body was slick with sweat, the silver storm still raging in his eyes.
My head dropped forward in exhaustion.
Talon was at my side in an instant, his hands hovering over the welts on my wrists before traveling upwards and pressing softly at my swollen lips.
“I have you,” he murmured. “I have you, little flame.”
The heavy heat of his palms slotted beneath my underarms, hauling me upward until I stood on legs that felt as though they had been forged from liquid silver.
I forced my spine straight with an effort that made my ribs protest, leaning unconsciously into the steady weight of Talon’s hand braced against the small of my back. His palm was warm and grounding, guiding me forward with quiet insistence as we left the ruined clearing behind us.
The forest still smoked in our wake.
Shredded coils of the Lurker’s vines lay scattered across the earth, their severed bodies twitching faintly where they had fallen.
A sour, scorched smell clung to the air, thick enough to sting the back of my throat as we stepped over the pulsing remains and into the shadowed rise of the mountainside.
The terrain changed quickly beneath our feet.
Soft moss gave way to jagged stone, the ground lifting in uneven swells that forced us to climb rather than walk. Damp mist drifted between the trees the higher we went, clinging to my hair and skin until the world felt muffled and strangely distant.
Then the forest ended.
Ahead of us, the mountainside split open.
A jagged vertical scar carved deep into the black rock yawned between two towering slabs of stone, its edges raw and uneven, as though the mountain itself had once been torn apart and never fully healed.
A faint vibration hummed from somewhere within the fissure, so low and constant it barely registered as sound at all.
Instead it seemed to settle into my bones, a strange, thrumming pressure that prickled along my spine.
I slowed without meaning to.
Standing before that dark opening made my stomach tighten with a dread so thick it coated my tongue with the taste of copper. It was not merely a cave mouth or a hollow in the rock.
It felt alive.
The fissure loomed above us like the gaping maw of some ancient leviathan waiting patiently to swallow us whole.
Talon stopped at the threshold.
The mountain wind whipped fiercely across the cliff-side, but his broad frame absorbed the worst of it, his body shielding me from the biting gusts until a small pocket of warmth formed in his shadow.
Talon turned and his fingers slid between mine, lacing our hands together.
“Are you ready, little flame?”
I swallowed against the dryness in my throat.
Every terrifying bedtime story about the Umbral—the monsters, the darkness, the death—clawed at my mind.
I was a creature of the sun, of soil and blooming things.
Every instinct screamed that I did not belong in the crushing deep of the earth.
But the High Court’s thorns were at my back, and there was only one way forward.
“Yes,” I said at last.
We descended where the walls closed in, the fissure sloping sharply downward into a throat of polished obsidian that seemed to devour every stray spark of light.