Chapter Twenty-Five Samira
TWENTY-FIVE SAMIRA
I pulled my horse to a stop several yards away from the Shroud.
There was no trace of Netherridge, or evidence that a town had stood here at all.
The dark tentacles writhed against the clouds.
My body swayed toward it, the pommel of the saddle digging into my stomach. Only sheer willpower kept me seated.
“I thought you said the Shroud twists those who enter,” I squeaked.
Rade dismounted his horse beside me, and so did the Seven. “We’ll be fine as long as we’re only in there for an hour or so.”
“An hour?”
Rade placed a reassuring hand on my skittish horse’s neck, quieting the anxious animal, and gazed up at me. “We are awakening your magic, Amunet.”
I just shook my head, grateful when my horse danced a few inches away.
We all have darkness in us, Your Majesty. Some just have a greater propensity for it.
It didn’t matter that I had decided Velka’s explanation was wrong. I didn’t want to test it. The pull I felt toward the Shroud from the outside… What if, when it surrounded me, I didn’t want to leave?
Keir sauntered up on my other side and crossed his arms over his massive chest. “I’ll make it easy for you, Majesty,” he said. “Either you get down from that horse, or I’ll get you down.”
“Keir,” Velka hissed behind him.
He just shrugged.
Something about that unfeeling gesture, the dare in his eyes, made me face forward again and draw a deep breath. Queen Amunet was frightened of no one and nothing, so that was what I had to be, too.
I slid off the horse and pretended my legs weren’t shaking beneath me.
Rade gave me an encouraging nod. “We’re going with you.”
Velka appeared at my shoulder. “And we won’t let anything happen to you.”
Keir took up the spot behind me, and the rest of the Seven fell into rank around me. A wall of muscle. It should have been reassuring.
It wasn’t.
My heart clawed at the cage of my ribs as I stepped forward, roaring at me to stop. But I took another step. Then another.
And then I was engulfed by the darkness.
I stepped into a cloud. The black smoke of the Shroud grazed my skin like downy feathers. A gentle, warm breeze made my tunic flutter around my shins, so at odds with Kaldfold’s climate. I drew a deep breath, limbs inexplicably lighter.
Around me sprawled the night sky itself.
Glittering purple dust spun through the air like stars, blinking in and out as it drifted from tree corpse to tree corpse.
Branches stretched and twined with each other like broken fingers, unnatural and sharply bent, not a leaf in sight. Yet I found it… beautiful.
A small laugh huffed out of me. There was nothing to fear here. It was wonderful. Ethereal. A dream in the flesh.
“Majesty.” A hand clamped around my elbow.
I jerked to a halt. I hadn’t even realized I’d wandered forward until then.
Keir’s gaze was firm, those pretty eyes shining out of a luminescent face. I gasped, hand drifting up to his cheek. Rough from rising stubble and sticky with clay. “You’re glowing,” I murmured in awe.
His jaw worked beneath my fingers. For some reason, that made me giggle. His fingers curled around my wrist and gently pulled my hand away. “So are you, Majesty.”
“What?” I glanced down and startled. My skin was indeed glowing. Or at least the clay they had coated me in was.
Rade stepped up beside me, his skin lit up, too. When I glanced around, I realized we were all glowing. “Fire doesn’t burn here,” he explained. “So no torches. This is the only thing that works.”
“We’re like fireflies.” I laughed. No one else did. I didn’t mind.
Rade gave me a tight smile. “Stay close, okay? Keir—”
“I got her.” His hand settled on my back, urging me forward. I beamed up at him and sank into his side. Surprisingly cozy for a man made of such hard muscles. I snuggled into him as we walked and his hand smoothed around my waist. Pleasant shivers spread through me.
Even Keir was nicer here. I liked it. I would stay—
A sharp pain shot through me.
“Ow!” I turned to Keir with wide eyes, rubbing my side. “Did you just pinch me?”
“Pain breaks through the haze.”
Even as he spoke, I recognized the ache in my cheeks from smiling, the foreign giddiness in my stomach. I swallowed hard, feeling suddenly ill.
“It’s okay,” Keir assured me softly. “Just keep moving.” His hand flattened against my back again, and I let it anchor me as we pushed on. The urge to laugh bubbled up a couple of times, but I focused on the throbbing pain in my side instead.
The darkness rippled away, cringing from our light, creating a reluctant path. In the shadows, I heard shuffling, like something was following us. Tracking our path. In the distance, a crazed laugh sounded.
“How do we awaken my magic?” I whispered to distract myself. Feathers rustled above our heads as an unseen bird took flight.
“You must receive your runes from the Seer.” Rade gestured to the red tattoos—runes—on the side of his head. “They will center your power there, so the priestess will know where to pull it from when we are joined.”
“Will mine be red, too?”
“Probably.”
Velka offered, “Red runes signify a god’s blessing. Blue marks us as Shifters. Black means no magic.”
I tripped over a root that seemed to appear out of nowhere. Black meant no magic? I was going to emerge from the Seer with black runes, and they’d discover me here, in this place stuck between our realm and the Underworld. Maybe they’d just leave me here to be twisted.
If I even got that far. Would the Seer need to bestow runes on me before she outed the truth?
Gods-Blessed and originally from Ashorah, Zarqa was as famous as any legend. The only Seer currently living, blessed by Ayeen, Goddess of the Moon, with powers of prophecy. It was rumored she’d left Ketopolis years ago, but I never imagined she’d exchanged it for… this.
“How can she live here without being twisted like everyone else?” I asked.
“Zarqa is under Ayeen’s protection,” Rade replied.
“The Seer is most powerful in the night, when her goddess rules the sky, so she has decided to live within the Shroud, a perpetual night, and the goddess’s shield allows her to move through it without suffering its effects or being in danger by others who have already succumbed. ”
As if on cue, a scream exploded out of the trees, and I whipped my head in its direction, the hair on the back of my neck standing on end. The Seven closed ranks around Rade and me, all of them baring their teeth in a growl, axes and blades at the ready.
Something moved. Two blue flashes in the dark—eyes.
And then four. Six. Ten. More and more eyes, all focused on us. Surrounding us.
One stepped forward.
A woman with nearly translucent skin, veins creating a purple labyrinth of lines, showing clear through her flesh.
Ethereal blue eyes beamed out of sunken sockets, and black hair fell in thick, matted cords around her face.
The creature was hunched over, her joints so badly twisted that she was incapable of standing upright.
She looked right at me and grinned.
Rade whispered, “Don’t move.”
My muscles locked up, rendering me motionless whether I liked it or not.
The creature walked right up to the Seven and tilted her head at Keir curiously. In the shadows of the Shroud, her companions snickered, the sound like rodents scurrying.
And then the creature stepped through Keir. As if he weren’t there at all. Even he couldn’t hold back a shudder.
The ghostly figure stopped in front of me next, blue eyes so bright they were nearly blinding.
The Seven didn’t turn to watch the creature, didn’t attack, but their muscles were tight, prepared to spring into action at any moment.
I clamped my lips shut against my frightened whimper as the creature stepped close enough for me to feel the intense cold leaking off her.
Colder than anything I’d ever felt before.
It wasn’t a physical cold. It was a cold that had seeped into this creature’s very being.
Leeched her of her soul. It was the cold of absence.
She leaned forward and sniffed me.
I struggled not to tremble.
“I was wondering when we’d meet you.” Her voice was like nails scraping against ice. Sharp, grating. It made my insides quake.
Then, faster than my mortal eyes could catch, Keir launched his blade into the Shroud. It glittered briefly as it spun away before disappearing into the dark. An animal’s cry bleated through the silence. He’d hit something.
The creature’s head snapped away from me. She let out a sharp keen, blasting my eardrums, the sound was picked up by the rest of her pack. Then she bolted into the dark.
“Run,” Keir instructed.
Rade grabbed my arm and yanked me into a sprint.
The sound of the creatures’ keens followed us for what seemed like miles.
A horribly sad, devastated sound that rattled my bones while also breaking my heart.
I couldn’t help but wonder if one of those sad cries belonged to Milena’s grandfather.
I shuddered that I had thought about staying here for even a second.
The screams ended with a last strangled shriek, the sound reverberating in the darkness and my eardrums. I finally drew to a panting halt and turned to Rade. “What were they?”
“Ghuls,” Rade answered, his breathing only slightly quicker from our mad run through the darkness. “Human souls trapped between our realm and Shaya’s.”
A shudder went down my spine.
“Come on,” said Rade. We kept moving.
“What did she mean when she said she’d been wondering when they’d meet me?” I asked.
“The creatures are mad,” Keir responded from behind me. “She probably wasn’t even seeing you. Her words were nonsense.”
Rade looked at him over his shoulder, a wealth of meaning illuminated by the glowing paint on his face. A look only they could decipher. But Rade faced forward just as a small hut materialized out of the darkness, and my concerns instantly shifted from the ghuls to the Seer.
Golden light shone in the windows. Someone was home.
Rade paused by the rotted wooden steps leading up to a door with chipping green paint. “You have to go in alone.”
“What?” My eyes darted to the house fearfully.
“Getting your runes—and the fortune they come with—is a very personal matter. The Seven have been instructed not to listen, but we will remain right here.” He took my hand and squeezed. “You will be all right.”
They’d all gotten runes. They’d all been to see the Seer, I told myself. All of them. And they were all standing here, completely fine. I would be, too.
Until I came out with black runes.
But if I refused to go inside, I would be just as damned. I didn’t have a choice.
Swallowing past the dryness in my throat, I stepped up to the door and knocked. No footsteps approached on the other side. All was silent. I raised my hand to knock again—
The door creaked open slowly.
No one was there.
I glanced back at Rade. He gave me an encouraging smile.
My gaze drifted behind him to Keir, who flicked his hand twice at me, waving me inside.
Fisting my hands at my sides, I stepped into the hut.