Chapter 8
eight
Three men slunk out from between the trees, each with shaved heads and faces painted in earthy shades of brown and green.
Each wore a single piece of clothing covering their entire body up to their necks, and the fabric changed colors as they crept closer, blending in with their immediate surroundings.
The bows and arrows they had pointed at her and Vade were nearly impossible to pick out against the forest backdrop.
Orelia stilled as the men fanned out, surrounding her and Vade. She searched their painted faces, finding their ears round.
Witches, humans, and druids were the only races with round ears. Witches could only be female, and none of the men possessed the bright yellow-green color of a druid’s eyes.
These men were human.
One of them stopped twenty paces away, keeping his arrow pointed at Vade, who had yet to draw a weapon. “What is your purpose here, travelers? You are far from The Wooded Road.”
Orelia couldn’t place the dialect, but she was more focused on the strange purple light that had begun swirling around the tip of the speaker’s arrowhead. The other two muttered something indistinct, and their arrowheads caught, glowing the same color.
She tucked herself into Vade’s side.
“My wife and I were just coming to the river to fill our waterskins before we headed back to the Road,” Vade said coolly.
She recoiled at the word ‘wife’ and the man questioning them didn’t miss her reaction. His eyes flicked to hers, and he cocked his head ever so slightly. “There are no signs of fresh tracks on the Road, so I know that not to be true.”
The men flanking them each took a step closer, bows taut. Orelia was careful not to even breathe wrong, lest she find out what the purple magic would do to her.
“This part of the woods is off limits, and travelers must stay on the path,” the speaker remarked. Another cock of his head, eyeing them both. “Everyone knows that. So, I’ll ask you again, what is your purpose here?”
She didn’t know there were places you could and couldn’t go out in the open. Her eyes bounced between the three painted faces, landing on the man to her right.
The whites of his eyes were unsettlingly stark against his face paint, and his eyes were so sunken under thick brows that he looked less human than the others. But it was his unsettling smile that was too wide for his face that frightened her most.
Vade stepped closer, shielding Orelia from the disturbing man’s view. She leaned into him, fingers clasping his shirt.
He tensed under her touch. “And I will tell you again, we were coming to get water,” the fae said with an edge to his voice.
The speaker’s blue eyes narrowed. “Where are you from?”
“Minro.” Vade’s arms remained loose at his sides, as if the arrows pointed at his chest posed no threat.
“Minro, lads. You hear that?”
The other two laughed. “Oi. Minro,” one said, making the other laugh harder.
The speaker gestured at Orelia with his arrow. “She may be, but you definitely are not.” The glare he gave Vade said he wasn’t buying their story. “Show me your travel papers.”
“I cannot,” Vade said.
“And why is that?”
“Because we don’t have any.” Vade had the nerve to smirk.
He was going to get them both killed.
“Off The Wooded Road and with no travel papers.” The man tsked. “Then you are aware of what we must do?”
When Orelia latched onto Vade’s bicep, his whole body went taut. He cleared his throat, then said, “You must arrest us. I am aware.”
She looked to Vade for an explanation, but his face remained impassive.
The men stepped forward, and Orelia was too frozen in fear to move.
“By the authority of King Aradonis, we, the Arbors, Watchers of the Wood, order you and your—”
“And you should be aware, gentlemen,” Vade interrupted with an eerie calm. Her hand slid away from his bicep as he lifted both arms so they were parallel with the ground. “That we have no plans to go quietly.”
The man to the left spit in their direction. “Useless words from a cocky bastard. These arrows will stick in that leathered armor of yours and start melting your skin before you can free one of your blades.”
Maybe they didn’t see Vade’s pointed ears slightly obscured by his hair to tell them he was no human, or perhaps their weapons were enough to take down any race, but the strength of humans was thin compared to fae.
Orelia could feel the anticipatory violence permeating the air, radiating from the powerful being at her side.
“Perhaps,” Vade drawled, wiggling his fingers as if for dramatic effect. “But I do not need a blade.”
Shadows shot from his fingers, wrapping around the men’s throats. They dropped their weapons, choking and gasping for air as they tried to pull the shadows free.
Vade casually stepped forward, freeing his wicked dagger. His shadows had ceased their escape, wrapping the rest of their lengths around the men’s necks. Two fell to the ground, but the blue-eyed man remained standing, his eyes bulging.
Orelia covered her mouth with both hands, whimpering at the sight of the veins in the men’s heads that were near bursting. Blood began leaking from their eyes and spittle flew out of their mouths in stringy lines.
Vade loomed over his prey, his singular focus on the Arbor who finally fell to one knee. “I may not need a blade, but they are so much more fun.”
Before the Arbor could get to his feet, Vade slit his throat with a brutal swipe of his dagger.
She gasped.
The man flopped on his back, crimson spurting from a clean line across his throat. Blood shot into the air in choked gasps, spraying the trees in the human’s life source.
Orelia wanted to look away, but she couldn’t. The healer inside had the witch’s feet moving before she could stop them. She dropped to her knees and tried to steady the human, but he was thrashing too violently.
She couldn’t stop watching the man claw at his open throat. Blood vessels popped in his eyes, and he cried crimson tears. She’d seen various types of weapon-inflicted wounds in the brothel—lacerations on the arms, knife wounds to the thigh—but nothing like this.
“Just hold on,” Orelia said, more out of instinct than in belief she could actually help. She reached for his neck, but Vade grabbed her wrist and pulled her off the ground.
“What do you think you’re doing?” he seethed.
“I have to help him!” She looked back at the Arbor writhing in a pool of his own blood. Orelia tried to go to him, but Vade yanked her back.
“I didn’t slit his throat so you could save him, witch. Leave him be.” He held her easily with one hand like her struggle was that of a fly caught in a spider’s web.
She tried to stomp on his foot to get him to let go, but Vade anticipated her movement. He hooked his leg around hers and brought her to the ground, putting a knee in her back.
“Get off of me, you asshole!” Orelia clawed at the ground, sharp nails scraping the dirt. By the time she stopped trying to get up, the Arbor had gone still.
From her spot on the ground, she could see the others had done the same.
Crimson soaked the forest floor, and the coppery scent of blood permeated the air.
The only sounds for a moment were her ragged breaths and blood dripping from the trees and splashing onto the brush.
The knee disappeared from her back, and Orelia sucked in a breath.
Vade whistled a jovial tune as he strolled over to the man who’d called him a cocky bastard. He crouched and wiped his dagger clean on the Arbor’s shoulder.
She couldn’t speak. Could hardly breathe. When her stomach tightened, she turned and retched chunks of eggs. After she’d left a pile of vomit on the rocks, Orelia wiped her mouth, and shaky fingers fumbled to get her waterskin free.
“First time seeing death up close?” Vade asked.
She took a long sip, willing her stomach not to heave again with a press of her palm to her abdomen. “I can’t believe you did that.”
There wasn’t an ounce of remorse on his face. Nothing that said he may have been too hasty in his response.
Monster.
“You’ll get used to it,” Vade said with more dispassion than the men he’d murdered deserved.
Orelia swished the water around her mouth and spit it out, face bunching in disgust at the taste of lingering eggs. “Don’t you have papers if you’re working for the king?”
“Of course I do.”
“So why didn’t you show them?”
Vade picked through the men’s pockets and helped himself to their coin purses. He patted their sides, feeling for anything else he could salvage. “Because I felt like killing them.”
She was going to vomit again. Orelia braced against a tree. “You . . .you are the most stone-hearted person I have ever met. Those men could have had families. Friends. Lovers. And you took that away from them all because you felt like it!”
Her feverish words did nothing to the fae’s cool demeanor as he sifted through a few coins. “I don’t give a fuck about their lives.”
When he’d taken all he wanted, Vade walked up to her, and she wanted to run.
Wanted to be anywhere but stuck in the middle of the woods with a ruthless cutthroat.
He held out the dagger he’d used to slit the blue-eyed man’s throat, hilt first. “Now that you’re intimately acquainted with death, here’s a weapon so you can take it yourself. ”
The white glow around the serrated steel made her step back from the cursed weapon. “I don’t want another one. Especially not a seidr blade. I don’t want anything your murderous hands have touched!”
He grabbed her hand and placed the hilt in her palm, closing her fingers around the braided leather with his. “You’re going to have to get over that part about me. It’s who I am. It’s what I do.”
She glowered.