Chapter 18 #2
A pickaxe flying past my shoulder answered my question.
The king flung out his free hand, magic flicking the pickaxe away. It crashed through a cottage window.
“The only two people we came across our way seemed to be in a haze.” Breathless, Sophie ran alongside me. “They couldn’t tell us their names, or what they did for a living.”
An arrow whizzed past us.
Crying out in alarm, Sophie shoved me aside, widening the gap between us.
Darkness lashed backward in a violent arc, shadows tearing across the lane like living smoke. I caught the king’s gaze for a moment as he summoned his magic.
Three pursuers were hurled into a stone wall hard enough to crack timber beside them, while two more were snared at the ankles and dragged screaming into the snow. It should have slowed them.
It did not.
More people kept coming.
Gregory couldn’t mask his bewilderment. “What in the fresh tide’s name is going on?”
“They are like ghosts,” the king declared.
“Ghosts,” I echoed.
Souls whose hearts had been stolen by the Red Queen. They wandered across the land, in their own villages, sallow and stripped of feelings, moving through their day-to-day. A mindless mob of terrorized spirits, eager to drag everyone else down to join them in the wretched underworld.
I’d thought they had all been laid to rest once the Red Queen met her demise.
I had only encountered ghosts in Wünder once.
At the Hatter’s house.
“The Hatter,” I mumbled, my brain insisting I connect the dots despite the din of our harried escape.
We ran downhill through twisting paths barely wide enough for two abreast, boots slipping on ice and packed slush, shoulders striking fences and walls as we fought for speed.
My chest was burning. My legs shook. We had to keep going.
The king cast again, sending a wave of force through the lane that shattered a cart and blocked half the road behind us with splintered wood.
An arrow answered his attack, striking through his upper arm with a sickening thud.
He staggered, jaw tightening, but did not release me. Blood spread dark across his sleeve as he ripped the shaft free without slowing, tossing it aside into the snow.
His grip on my hand tightened. “This is part of what I have been finding in my investigation. These people have been afflicted with some type of…malady. Similar to what’s infected a percentage of Wünder on the other side of the river. Surely, you must have noticed. You interrogated many of them.”
I couldn’t breathe. “Are you saying this is the reason you’ve been decimating villages and kingdoms these past moons?”
Before he could reply, Sophie asked, her eyes wide in alarm, “Is it contagious?”
The king shook his head. “The villages will need to be cleansed, or the affliction will only spread. Until we know what’s actually causing it, we may all be at risk.”
This is all her doing, suddenly popped into my mind.
My mind raced. All those infected villages and people.
Did this have something to do with me? Could it be that this was what those men were saying I was at fault for?
I wanted to tear my hair out in helpless frustration.
What did I do? What had I done? I still couldn’t remember anything about my past.
Gregory’s face was white with anger. “You’re lying! You probably caused the malady. You would use any excuse to terrorize the kingdom, to murder entire villages. You can’t convince me otherwise.”
The king scoffed. “Lucky for me, I don’t care what you think.”
Sophie shrieked a moment later as another arrow skimmed her shoulder, slicing cloth and skin in a bright line of red.
“Sophie!” Gregory pulled her tighter to his side, shielding her with his body.
I tried to blink against the furious, frigid wind battering us. Out of the corner of my eye, Sophie’s healing magic glowed.
The king’s magic continuously burst into bright sparks all around us. He swore under his breath—so sharp, my gaze flicked toward him.
My heart almost stopped. The fatigue was clear in his eyes. His forehead creased in frustration. We couldn’t keep this chase up for much longer.
The mountain trail steepened.
Houses thinned into scattered cottages and store sheds clinging to the slope, while the road narrowed into switchbacks carved into ice and stone.
Behind us, the villagers were still coming.
The king stopped so suddenly that I nearly fell. He turned, face pale with strain, and thrust both hands toward the ridge above the lane.
Power tore outward.
The mountainside answered.
A thunderous crack split the air as the upper drift sheared loose, and for one suspended heartbeat the world held still. Then the snow moved.
Gregory’s shout was colored with aggravated disbelief. “An avalanche? Really?”
“Run faster!” Sophie cried out.
The track vanished beneath our feet as we hurled ourselves downward, half running, half sliding, snow already rushing after us in a roaring white wall that swallowed cottages, fences, and screaming villagers alike. The sound was monstrous, louder than battle, louder than thought itself.
I risked one glance back.
The village was disappearing.
Roofs splintered. Chimneys snapped. Entire paths vanished beneath churning white as if they had never existed.
The avalanche gained on us with terrifying ease.
We leapt the last drop off the trail just as the mountain overtook us.