58. THE ELDERWOOD #2
It was not often that I got a sinking feeling in my gut. I knew what this encounter meant. Something did not, or would not, fare well for Auren or me, and judging by the way the cù-sìth had honed in on me, it was probably the latter.
An internal, foreboding itch worked its way through me, one that set my teeth on edge and had my mind spiraling. With all that had happened in the past few weeks, and all that was looming on the horizon, this bad omen was the last thing either of us needed.
“What do we do?” Auren murmured.
“Shhh . . . Let it pass.”
The cù-sìth held its ground, letting out a spine-chilling growl as it watched me.
When its glowing, green eyes shifted from me to Auren, my arm tightened against her.
The creature noted it, its ears twitching as if it heard the very fibers of my muscles stiffen, or it was sifting through my thoughts.
I wouldn’t know if it was. Legend said it was a painless and unsuspecting occurrence, but the creature would sense your fear, feed off your adrenaline, and relay your thoughts to the god of death.
Seconds felt like minutes, and all the while I kept my breath shallow, my heartbeat slow, though it wouldn’t change the fact that the creature had crossed our path. Perhaps I did it for my own sanity, out of the belief that if I remained calm, whatever impending misfortune wouldn’t hit as hard.
Regardless, the cù-sìth lingered long enough to make the message stick, and just when I thought it might very well decide to descend from its perch and turn an unfortunate, distant encounter into a physical threat, it turned its head and slunk back into the forest.
Auren’s hands clutched onto my arm, pulling me around to face her. “Niall—”
“It’s all right,” I said, letting my breathing catch back up to the adrenaline that was surging through me.
“No, it’s not all right. I know what those creatures symbolize. Remic told me what they—” She stopped herself short, eyes flitting back and forth between mine. “Do you think this has something to do with the coming war?”
I shook my head, truly unable to provide an answer. “I don’t know.” The only thing I could do was suppress the uneasy whine that was unfurling inside me, and attempt to reassure her that everything would be okay. “Don’t worry. Not all omens are as dreadful as you think.”
She looked at me like she didn’t believe me. It wasn’t that convincing of a statement, so I couldn’t blame her for being skeptical. “Come on, let’s keep moving. We’re nearly there.” I took her hand, bringing it to my lips to plant a kiss against it.
We walked quietly, intersecting a thin trail that had been formed by some small animal, and following it until the world around us began to dim.
The shadows that overcame the forest were not from the weather or the disappearance of the sun.
It was from the trees. They began to change as we entered the sacred section of the forest. Elms and pines and birch that were once lively and ripe with green foliage shifted into a form that no other trees in this realm took on.
Their bark had been stripped away, and what was left behind was smooth and white as bone, so glossy and unblemished, they made the unaffected birch trees seem like a sad mockery.
But what was truly special about the trees in this part of The Elderwood, was their leaves.
Above us, the reason for the dim light, were leaves as black as the night sky.
White, glass-like branches lifted a canopy of pitch that cast an ominous gloom upon everything beneath it.
Sunlight didn’t even bleed through the leaves or illuminate their veins.
Each bract was opaque, as if dipped in ink, shimmering like Calledan stone.
Auren was stunned into silence. Her grip tightened on mine as we stepped further into the forest’s blemish.
There were dozens of tarnished trees, all forming a circle around a clearing where nothing grew from the ground.
It was as if something akin to death had reached down and laid a hand upon this section of The Elderwood.
Although it may not have been death that caused this malformation, it was certainly a force greater than any that dwelled in these lands.
This was where Torin fell, where she entered our world, and where Karios descended to meet her.
We came to stop in the center of the smear of black and white, and Auren brought her other hand to her mouth. “This place . . .” Her voice shook. “I . . . I’ve been here before . . .”
I tilted my head, brows pinching in confusion. “What do you mean?”
“In the human realm. The trees in the forest behind my house were exactly like this. I used to go there when I—”
“When you needed to clear your head . . .” I finished. It all started to make sense. She had told me about this when we were at The Lookout. The night I’d fallen—truly fallen—in love with her. “Are you sure the trees looked the same? They weren’t just burned or scalped for their bark?”
“I’m sure.” She let go of my hand to walk to the nearest tree. Her fingertips grazed the glossy trunk before she flattened her palm against it and peered up. “They’re the same. But how?”
“I don’t know.” For the second time, I didn’t have an answer, and that was really starting to bother me. “This is the place where Torin landed many millennia ago. Legend says that her arrival is what turned these trees into what they are now. Karios descended after.”
She turned to look back at me. “Wait—what did you just say?”
“Karios descended after.” I could see the links forming in her mind as she lingered on the words I’d repeated.
“Karios.” She said his name like he was the answer to it all.
“What about him?”
“He came to the human realm to form my bloodline. The trees near my home . . . That’s where he landed. They must have been made that way by him.”
“So you think it was Karios’s arrival that caused this, not Torin’s?”
“He’s the common factor in both cases.”
Well, shit. She had a point.
“Strange that my home would be built so close to where he descended so long ago.”
“Fate,” I said, drawing her attention back to me. “I think it was all by design. Karios has never been far from you, Auren.”
She didn’t respond this time. She was processing.
I took a lap around the clearing, trying to imagine how the scene would have played out, when Torin plummeted into this world, and came face to face with a foreign god-king. What had been done to these trees was a sure sign that the gods operated on a scale we could not fathom.
A calm quiet had fallen over the charred clearing, stirred only by the gentle rustling of the black, leathery leaves.
“Auren,” I finally said, breaking the silence. “There’s a reason I brought you here. There are some things I haven’t told you, things that I’ve been figuring out on my own. And with everything that’s been going on—”
“I know,” she said as she made her way over to me again.
“You do?”
“I knew you were dealing with things, and that you’d tell me when you were ready.” She slid her hands into mine.
“I was always going to tell you. I just . . . I needed time. What Ramil did to me . . . it . . . stirred something up.” I swallowed, hard, as thoughts of Auren’s tortured body crept into my mind.
That inky darkness, swarming, taking her under, drowning her .
. . Stranger’s hands groping her body against her will .
. . The images sent my teeth grinding and my power itching beneath my skin.
My shadows bled free, twisting down my arms until they caressed Auren’s, checking to make sure she was unharmed. They didn’t like my thoughts any more than I did.
Auren watched them, releasing my hand to let a thin wisp thread itself between her fingers. “What happened in that cell, it had to do with me, didn’t it? That’s what Ramil used against you?”
I nodded, unable to confirm it out loud.
She’s here. She’s all right. That was what I had to tell myself now, more often than I liked to admit. Especially at night, when I would wake, sweating, searching the bed to make sure she hadn’t been taken while I slept.
“What Ramil made me see . . . it snapped something inside me. I’ve been fighting my power ever since. And after everything the wraith said, I sought out Eathril for answers.”
A look of confusion crossed her face. “Why Eathril?”
“Because there were too many coincidences. But I was able to get answers, which is part of the reason why we’re here.
” I lifted my head toward the canopy, to the darkness beneath the daylight.
“Powers beyond this realm’s capacity did this to the trees, so it only makes sense that a power so foreign to this world would do the same to the being with whom it resides.
” When I met her soft, brown eyes again, the words didn’t feel so foreign to me.
In fact, they flowed easier this time. “My power truly comes from Erebus, the god of darkness.”
Her gaze remained steady. No fear, no uncertainty, not even surprise flickered there. There was only love, and understanding, and a curiosity that I fully anticipated. “So, everything the wraith and Nivelle suspected, was right? How is Eathril so sure?”
“Because Eathril was Skadi’s general.”
This time, her eyes widened. “What?”
“He killed Erebus, and fled with Torin. But she wasn’t aware of who, exactly, she harbored.”
“Does he know how the power came to be in you?”
“Unfortunately, that’s the one thing he didn’t know. But it doesn’t change anything. I know enough, now, to make sense of everything.”
“So, what’s worrying you so much?”
I found myself fiddling with her fingers, not entirely sure how to say the rest of what I’d come to believe, because I knew that, in the end, it posed multiple threats. And with the cù-sìth’s untimely appearance . . .
“Do you remember the verse ‘stars and ash bring forth the storm’ in the prophecy?”
“Yes . . .”