Chapter 19
Chapter
Nineteen
HAVEN
They let me sleep close to the fire—an unexpected kindness. Not that I could sleep. There was something in the air, the anticipation of violent death or brutal suffering. In the woods, a monster licked its chops, waiting for the right moment to attack. I felt its presence in my marrow.
I pictured the dagger from the gymnasium wall—the one with the flowered handle—and sighed softly when I felt its comforting weight in my hand.
The simple teleportation sent a wave of exhaustion through me.
My body was still recovering from the poison, still healing from the whip.
I couldn’t waste energy, but I couldn’t be defenseless either.
The dagger was worth the energy expended.
I turned my back to the fire, allowing my eyes to adjust to the darkness.
A few feet to my left, Flynn snored.
A few feet to my right, Teal leaned against a log and stared at the flames.
I didn’t know where Grayson or Pierce were.
But lifting my head to look for them would let Teal know I was awake, and he’d try to talk to me as if we were friends.
As if he weren’t partially responsible for the wounds on my back.
No, I didn’t want to talk to him. I remained still and listened to the sounds in the forest.
The leaves rustled, and a bird’s eerie cry echoed through trees whose thick branches blotted out any hope of moonlight.
A sharp crack had me opening my eyes wide. Whatever was out there was drawing closer. My heart thudded against the walls of my chest.
Teal stood, drew his sword, and whisper-yelled, “Flynn. Wake up.”
Flynn mumbled and drew his blanket tighter around his shoulders.
“Idiot.” Teal turned in a slow circle. “Grayson? Pierce?”
Neither man answered.
A second crack made my mouth go dry. I tightened my grip on the dagger and scrambled to my feet.
Teal glanced my way, gave a brief nod, then took a defensive stance. “Flynn, wake the fuck up.”
Flynn grumbled but didn’t budge.
“I can kick him.” It was a generous offer. One I’d be only too happy to make good on.
A small smile curled Teal’s lips, and then he gasped and retreated a step. “Run.”
Run? Where? Trees surrounded us in every direction, and sprinting blindly could mean running straight into danger. I slowly turned, scanning for escape routes, and then I saw it.
The thing standing behind me was nearly seven feet tall and covered in dark, matted hair.
Its arms, which ended in enormous paws tipped with vicious claws, were too long for its body.
Its head belonged to a wolf, but its eyes burned with intelligence.
And, gods, the smell—rotting meat and wet dog.
I stared, my mind struggling to process what I was seeing.
This wasn’t possible. I was caught in a nightmare.
The monster’s lips curled into a fearsome grin, as if it sensed the icy tendrils of fear chilling my blood.
“Run, Haven.”
Yeah, that wasn’t going to work. The monster in front of me would catch me in seconds.
It shifted its gaze to Flynn, and its wolfish grin broadened enough for the firelight to reflect off its impossibly long canines.
“What is it?” If I died, I wanted to know what killed me.
“A wolven.”
“Immune to magic?”
“No.”
“Your vines?”
“The earth here is … sick.” Teal’s brow furrowed as he tried and failed to call on his powers. “My magic can barely touch it without recoiling. Offensive magic is beyond me.”
“Defensive magic?” I asked.
“Don’t have any.”
So it was up to me. I’d not accessed my magic since entering the forest. Would I fare any better than Teal?
The wolven sniffed the air, then stiffened before leaping forward and grabbing Flynn’s ankles. It turned its back on us and dragged Flynn from his warm spot by the fire.
The man finally spluttered awake. “What the fuck? Teal! Why didn’t you wake me?” He struggled uselessly against the wolven’s iron hold. When twisting and struggling didn’t work, he formed a ball of fire and flung it at his captor’s back.
Flynn’s flames flared brightly when they met the wolven’s fur, but the beast didn’t seem to notice.
I held my breath, hoping fire would slow the monster. It didn’t. Instead, Flynn’s flames guttered and died.
The beast yanked him closer to the tree line.
Using my body to block Teal’s view, I lifted my free hand and called on Wolgen Smit’s death magic. The ugly red, purple, and black lights shot from my palm and hit the wolven square in the back.
The beast staggered before dropping Flynn’s ankles.
It had worked—Smit’s death magic had actually worked.
Then the wolven turned, and its lips pulled away from its teeth, and my brief triumph turned to terror.
It definitely wasn’t dead. Its claws grew longer.
And sharper. It snarled at us. At me. My attempt at murder had made it mad.
I raised my hand again, gathering currents of death magic and adding a sharp gust of Grayson’s wind, then I released the combined force toward the wolven.
The beast stumbled backward, lifting its head toward the sky and howling.
A fresh round of shivers raced down my back. Was it calling its pack? What magic could stop this thing?
On the ground, Flynn scrambled backward before climbing to his feet.
The giant beast bent its back legs and then launched itself at him.
Fighting pain and exhaustion, I shaped an ice spear between my hands and, using the last of my energy, hurled it straight at the beast’s chest. The spear struck low, splitting the monster’s skin. Its shaft embedded deeply in the wolven’s belly.
The injured wolven twisted its terrifying head my way and roared.
Flynn, who was halfway to standing, tripped on his bedroll and fell to the ground. “Fuck!”
The wolven shifted its focus back to Flynn.
As Flynn struggled on the ground, I kept my eyes on the wolven. I formed another ice spear and threw it. Weakly.
The spear landed too high—in the beast’s neck.
Its answering roar was loud enough to shake the trees surrounding the clearing.
I formed a third spear. I’d missed low, and I’d missed high. Maybe this time I could hit the wolven’s damned heart.
My gaze flicked to Flynn, who was desperately digging in his blankets.
Idiot.
I returned my focus to the wolven. It lurched toward me, close enough that I could smell its rancid breath.
I tightened my grip on the spear, but before I could throw, the idiot on the ground managed to find his sword in the mess of blankets, lunge forward, and bury his blade deep in the monster’s back.
The beast fell to the earth, and the light faded from its eyes.
I stood frozen, staring at the massive beast I’d helped kill.
Killed with magic I’d stolen from a dead man and borrowed from my traveling companions.
My hands shook as I let the spear dissipate, hopefully without Flynn or Teal noticing.
Then I drew air deep into my lungs. “Are you all right?”
Flynn stared at the dead wolven, then at me, then back at the corpse. His mouth worked soundlessly for several seconds. “That’s not—shields don’t—” He shook his head. “Where the hell did the ice spear come from? You just—” He gestured helplessly at the dead wolven. “Where did the spear go?”
“Are you hurt?” I repeated. “That thing dragged you across the clearing. Are you hurt?” Not that I cared. I didn’t. Not even a little bit. I wasn’t even sure why I’d bothered to ask.
He kept gaping at me. Perhaps he had a head injury—his chin was tilted at an odd angle. “How did you do that?”
“Do what?” He’d have to be more specific, and even then, I might not answer.
He pressed the heels of his palms against his eyes. “The spears. Where did they come from?”
Before I could formulate a lie, dark fog invaded the clearing. It carried the scent of cold rot. “What’s that?” I pointed at the encroaching fog.
“Wraiths.” Teal sounded shaken, and I turned to look at him.
“Deadly?”
The color drained from his face.
“How deadly?”
“They drain everything—life, soul, consciousness, memories—until there’s nothing left but an empty husk.”
That was a hard pass for me. “How do we fight them?”
“They’re not corporeal.”
This was their shortcut? Through a forest filled with bloody nightmares? Men were idiots. I clenched my fists and thought. Hard. There had to be a way to protect ourselves. Using Grayson’s wind, I blew the fog back into the woods.
A growl, low and deep and utterly spine-chilling, rumbled through the trees. Then the fog approached from a different direction.
Again, I used the wind to blow it away from us. “Guys …”
Flynn turned in a circle, gripping his sword as if its blade could somehow slay moist air.
“I’m not the best with wind. If the fog comes from more than one direction, we’re screwed.”
Teal’s eyes narrowed. “I have an idea.” He yanked Flynn’s arm, pulling him close.
I sent another gust of wind at the encroaching fog. “Your idea?”
Teal’s gaze searched the dark woods, looking for the next attack. “A vortex. Make the wind spin around us.”
I lifted my hands, sensing the different magics—fire that wanted to burn everything in its path, water (could I drown a wraith?), earth (weak and sickly in this fucking clearing), and wind that wanted to shred the trees that caged us.
Keeping the elements separate took effort.
What would happen if I let them touch? I wasn’t sure I wanted to know the answer.
Ignoring the rest, I made the wind circle around us.
As it swirled, it gathered leaves and twigs and—I narrowed my eyes—small shards of bone and bits of bloody cloth.
My stomach lurched. Those weren’t animal bones.
The fabric still held traces of color—a child’s blue tunic, a woman’s green scarf.
This clearing was a trap, one designed to lure weary travelers to their deaths.
And we weren’t the first to fall into the snare.
Teal’s jaw tightened as he spotted a guard’s insignia among the debris. “Some of these are ours,” he said grimly. “Our people died here.”