Chapter 16
WHAT WORDS DON’T SAY
ODELIA
Rune doubles the watch but no one can sleep, so we head out the next morning as the sun breaks the horizon.
The stout trees claw towards us, snagging on whatever they can reach.
When the game trail ends, the ground starts to squish under each step, and there’s no way forwards but through.
Elio and Rune take turns cutting away the underbrush, but progress is slow, and eventually we resort to simply pulling up what’s in the way.
“They barely have roots,” I say, tossing the long, thin foliage to the side.
Sweat has only just started to trail down Rune’s temple. We’ve both pulled our hair up high to avoid getting it caught, and the blue tendrils haven’t yet started to stick to his face. “All the better for us.”
We take turns eating while we walk. The anemic shade of the thin leaves is welcome when the sun rises high, but the heat brings an impossible humidity, one that stinks like fermenting earth.
Behind me, some cough, complaining that the sour burns their lungs.
I keep my own breaths shallow, but seem to escape the worst of it, suffering little beyond the stench.
This island doesn’t offer the same invitation as Serpent’s Tooth.
There’s no call to run, no familiar playfulness in the wave of leaves or dappled light. The soil is soaked. Suffocating.
Thankfully, the rot eases as the sun begins to sink and we search for a dryer place to camp for the night.
My legs ache as much as my shoulders, which have never had to carry a pack like this before.
After an hour searching with no luck, Elio starts to mutter, leaning his head to Rune.
“It’s like there’s a half inch of water over the entire island. ”
Rune presses a toe into the ground, watching as a puddle rises around it. “Maybe the edges are higher elevation, so the water pools towards the centre?”
Tavi’s voice feels muffled by the damp air. “Or there’s ocean caves below. They might leak to the top if the island slopes in, or if there’s enough pressure.”
My chest clenches tight, and I have to push down the dread that rises at the thought of dark, drowned caves.
The nervousness stays, clinging to my spine, ratcheting up with every snapped branch.
There’s a good chance we won’t find anywhere to camp tonight, and if we keep moving we’ll draw unwanted attention.
Rune is worried too. His brow pinches deeper the longer we walk, and I have the truly absurd urge to take his hand, as if it might ease the instinctual need to run that shoots through my legs with every step.
We’ve fallen into a rhythm, where the chain doesn’t clink as we walk, though I couldn't say when it started.
He half-turns to those behind us. “Any opposed to sleeping in the trees?”
A jarring scream plummets the forest into tense silence.
Everyone freezes, some inching their hands towards the hilt of their weapons. I swivel my head, trying and failing to see through the varying shades of shadow. Nothing moves; even the wind holds its breath.
When he speaks again, it’s a whisper. “Leave nothing on the ground. Try to—”
Another scream splits the air, this one coming from our other side. It’s quickly followed by a third behind us.
“It’s too late.” My left hand reaches through the ghost of my bola and I clench my fist tight.
I’d tried to take what makeshift weapons I could before we left the ship, but none of it will stand up to the kind of creature we saw last night.
“Rune. I need a weapon.” Rune turns, watching my face, and I shove down the panic, willing my eyes to soften, willing him to trust me. Just for this. “Rune. Please.”
Another scream. Close enough to rattle the ribs in my chest.
“Rune—”
He grabs my hand, pressing the hilt of his dagger into my palm before flicking the key through my side of the manacles. Slowly, he tucks it back in his shirt pocket, his gaze never leaving my lips.
“Don’t make me regret this,” he says, his voice soft, and I’m not sure if he means the weapon or the fragile trust that’s threading between us.
As soon as the chain’s weight falls away, my spirit lifts.
The manacle remains attached to his left hand, the unclasped end dangling.
The dagger’s hilt is smooth and steady beneath my fingers.
In an instant, the panic swirling inside me turns to anticipation.
Rune’s sword whispers as he pulls it from his sheath and turns to watch the trees.
I put my back to his, scanning the darkness on the other side.
“Pull in,” Rune commands. “Backs to centre.”
The others tighten their formation, facing outward. Elio is on the other side of Rune. Tavi situates herself on the far end, her dual blades nearly invisible in the dark.
The moment we still, the first creature punches through. It snaps branches as it flies, airborne till it lands on top of a man whose chest cracks under its weight.
Then chaos.
A body slams to the ground next to me—a woman that twists, scrambling back on her hands and knees until a— a tongue—wraps around her leg and yanks her flat.
The air rushes from her lungs in a whoosh and I don’t think before slicing the blade through the appendage.
It springs back, painting her with bloody green, but she doesn’t rise.
Instead, she screams, clutching her leg where the fabric of her pants comes away in slimy sections streaked with red.
The tongue spasms and falls to the ground, leaving behind a mess of dissolving flesh.
She wails again, jerking her hands back as the saliva seeps into them too.
“Odi!”
I spin to find a sword tip retracting from the chest of a mottled-green creature poised to strike me, its many eyes wide and terrifyingly emotionless.
With a sweep of my blade, its bulbous neck opens under its impossibly wide mouth, spilling gore with a stomach-turning gurgle.
Its long arms drop, claws dragging the ground, and the frog-like upper half buckles over its thick legs.
“Their spit is acid!” I shout to Rune as the creature between us falls away.
“Then keep your wits about you!” he snips back as he pulls his sword from its body, like my surprise is a distraction. He’s not wrong. He bounds away, and I don’t turn back to the woman before racing after him.
We charge for the shadowy silhouette of a second creature, whose far-reaching talons shred a man’s thigh before we reach him.
With a grunt, the man swings hard, embedding his axe into its shoulder, but the thing doesn’t flinch, just slaps him down into an unconscious heap on the soggy ground.
Rune engages a step before I do, parrying its first swing and ducking beneath the second, lunging forwards enough to drive his sword backward into its leg.
The move is more dexterous-thief than massive-fighter but he pulls around flawlessly, his feet faster than I’d expect from an ocean-born siren.
I can’t help the rush of admiration, nor the fierce, twisted glee.
It’s Nisse, not Odelia, that gives him a blood-splattered grin, then leaps in.
I catch it as it stumbles forwards, avoiding the claws threatening to scramble my insides.
When I slash a shallow gash over its shoulder, its many eyes wink closed, but only the two largest open again, trained on me.
Then the air shifts, kissing my cheeks as I narrowly avoid first, one, then two furious swings of those long claws.
My body moves on instinct, years of muscle memory taking over and narrowing my world to heartbeats and half-seconds. I’m able to sink the blade just over its hip and deal a glancing blow to one of its forearms before a fallen log does its best to tangle my footing.
A fierce burning rips through my thigh, but Rune is there, slicing at its back, green dripping off the white of his blade.
I step back again, wincing at the way blood streams from the slice and down the side of my leg.
It follows, its dead eyes locked on me like it knows I’ve lived my entire life in the body of a prey animal.
It brays in surprise when I lunge, using the scant momentum and every ounce of strength in my legs to barrel into its waist. Its thick knees buckle, and the log is there to send us both into the wet, rotting earth.
I shudder at the sticky-slick sensation of its skin, then roll, trying to put myself far out of reach before it can lash out.
Tavi and Rune each land killing blows—Rune to the neck and Tavi to the arteries of its inner thighs, which bleed it before it can rise to attack again.
“The last one is down, and so is Elio,” she says, her voice betraying no emotion.
Rune curses, breaking into a sprint the moment Tavi gestures towards where Elio lays against a rock not far away.
The gash on his head still leaks blood. His face contorts with pain even in unconsciousness, likely from a trio of long, parallel slashes over his chest. The tooth on the chain around his neck is vibrant red.
“They’re shallow,” Rune says, ripping the man’s torn shirt away and pouring the entirety of his waterskin over the wounds.
Elio groans, but sits up, wavering as Rune uses a hand to steady him. Tavi graces him with a glob of the foul smelling ointment, her mouth ticking up as he objects.
Rune crosses his arms, watching as if to ensure Elio is really awake. “You guys get him wrapped. I’ll go check everyone else.”
An hour later, we’ve tended the worst of the wounds and counted the dead. The woman with the acid-burned leg walks with a limp. Her hands are a scalded, but she nods to me at one point, offering a relieved smile as if I hadn’t turned my back while she was down.