Chapter 7
‘Are you ready yet?’ Astin adjusts his pack and throws me a glare.
Apparently, I’m dawdling. So far, he’s taken offence at my packing speed (is it my fault one of my boots had rolled under the bed?), my determination to write a list of explicit instructions for my parents (excuse me for wanting to make sure Basil doesn’t trick anyone into overfeeding him), and now I’ve committed the ultimate faux pas of hovering on the doorstep, key in hand.
There’s something final about locking up. Grandma died a few days after I became hexed, and inheriting this place felt like serendipity. I finally had somewhere to hide.
‘If we haven’t left in the next thirty seconds, I’m going without you,’ Astin warns.
I twist the key.
‘Ready,’ I say, perfectly casual. Like I’m not terrified of what being on the open road might make me do. Basil brays loudly in the distance. ‘We should say goodbye.’
‘We are not wasting time with the donkey.’ Astin starts walking. In the opposite direction.
‘He’ll be alone for hours.’ We got lucky and managed to stop a traveller, but he was not the speediest walker. Who knows when my letter will reach my parents? ‘We should at least tell him –’
‘Basil is a donkey. There’s no point talking to him at all.’
‘But he understands me!’
‘I’m glad someone does,’ he mutters, stomping down the path and unlatching the gate. My last safety net before the great unknown.
I trot after him, struggling to lift my bag over my shoulder. Astin may have had a point when he berated me for bringing a nice dress for the evening (in my defence, we don’t know what kind of event we’re attending. The Emerald King mentioned a gathering, which to me means a party).
‘How many wolves do you think Wolf Forest has?’ I ask as we enter the woods. The path is wide enough for a cart, but the main reason we’re leaving Basil behind is because he can’t outrun what we might meet in there.
I’m not sure if I can outrun a wolf. Astin’s comforting reaction when I mentioned this was to tell me that wolves can’t climb trees, forgetting to ask whether I could. Just because he spends all his time around shrubbery doesn’t mean the rest of us do.
‘Enough that we should walk faster,’ he calls over his shoulder. ‘If we travel through the night, we should make it to Rerta by morning. It’ll give us time to scope out the ruins for traps.’
I’m less concerned about traps and more concerned about being in the woods at night.
Wolves may not be the only thing within.
What if a wild Souleater has made their home in a cave somewhere?
Nobody caught the one who attacked us. Maybe they’re on their way to Shiverholde for a repeat performance, and we’ll bump into them along the path and –
I jump as a twig snaps beneath Astin’s foot.
Focus, Daisy. I look around, trying to find something nice about this place. Moisture hangs in the air like cobwebs spun from fresh water. Branches block our way, forcing Astin to swipe them aside. But along the ground, red and gold leaves litter the path like bonfire sparks. They’re beautiful.
‘The woods are pretty, aren’t they?’ I say.
A grunt. Some leaves get trampled on harder.
‘This might be my favourite time of year,’ I go on. ‘Everything erupting into colour for one brief moment in time.’
‘Until they shrivel up and die.’ The next branch he comes across is swept away with such force I fear it may snap. ‘This isn’t beauty, it’s a death rattle.’
Well. How lovely.
We descend into silence once more, travelling deeper into the woods as the day drags on.
It’s hard to tell if the increased darkness is due to the hours passing, or the way the trees are clustered so tightly together that only thin slivers of light can pass through.
Every attempt I make at coaxing Astin into conversation earns me a one-word answer or a comment that I would trip a lot less if I concentrated more.
‘Did you always want to be a gardener?’ I try again.
‘What?’ He punches another branch, which I take to mean no. Or possibly shut up, Daisy.
Not to be deterred, I say, ‘Before . . . everything happened, and you came to live with me. Did you always want to be a gardener-slash-handyman-slash . . .’ Whatever you are to me.
‘Why did you come to the inn? Was it because you liked the look of my backyard? You thought to yourself, I know a great place to bury a body or two –’
He stops mid-stride and I nearly bump into him. He pinches the bridge of his nose, inhaling deeply as though my questions have suffocated him in some way. ‘Are you going to talk the whole trip?’
‘No. If you talked back, I’d temporarily be quiet.’
It’s hard to tell if the huff that escapes his lips is a laugh or a sigh of deep, deep irritation, but I am choosing to believe it’s the former. Shaking his head, he says, ‘Nobody gets the things they want. It’s pointless asking.’
‘Well, that’s not –’
A hoarse cry in the distance interrupts my protest.
Astin’s head swivels in the direction of the sound. ‘Did you hear that?’
I nod, slowly. Whoever – whatever – made that noise, sounded pained, almost struggling with the effort of calling out at all. My pulse speeds. If they’re hurt, what if whatever’s hurt them is still there?
Perhaps now is the time to confess I cannot climb trees.
‘Keep close,’ Astin says, striding off the path before I can suggest heading towards a potential predator is exactly the kind of thing we shouldn’t be doing.
But the cry sounds again, and I’m rushing alongside him, because if there’s one thing stronger than my cowardice, it’s my need to prove I can be good. If I can help this person, I will.
My hands are scratched to pieces by the time we reach a section of woods where the trees are sparser, allowing smaller bushes with pink roses to thrive. I pick a few as we pass, stuffing them in my pockets.
The cries for help are closer now, low in pitch, more of a moan than anything. Astin, oblivious to my dilly-dallying with flowers, is further ahead, his neck craning left to right, waiting for another indication of where the person is located.
I hurry to catch up, but my cloak snags on brambles. Cursing, I pull myself free, stumbling as the fabric comes loose, my boots landing in something wet and sticky and –
I slip.
My ankle twists, the pain immediate and sharp, and I shriek as my legs fly out from under me, my arms flailing through the air as I fall, colliding with Astin – he must have dashed to catch me, but failed miserably – and the impact makes him fall too.
Astin lets out several expletives when his head thumps against the ground. Something in his pack crunches as I land on top of him, freshly picked roses spilling from my pockets and scattering around us like confetti.
My heart hammers a heavy rhythm as I lie there, too startled to move, my ankle throbbing in a way that suggests standing will be unpleasant.
I take a deep breath, and all I can smell is the scent of those roses, like the wind has placed their petals directly beneath my nostrils.
Astin’s hand finds my waist, the gesture so slight it should be imperceptible, but of course this is Astin, so I notice everything, from the way his palm is wide enough to splay across my entire hip, to the way his whole body is tense beneath mine, like he’s doing everything in his power not to throw me off, right here, right now.
‘Could you watch where you’re walking from now on?’
‘Sorry,’ I squeak. ‘I should get you off – I mean, get off you.’
I push myself up, but stop when I catch sight of strange track marks near Astin’s head.
We were so busy looking for an actual person, we’d missed them.
Two deep lines are etched into the dirt and, further along, a handprint is splatted in the mud right where the lines disappear behind a thick patch of undergrowth.
‘Look.’ I stand, but the moment I put weight on my foot, a blinding pain shoots through me, flooding my vision white. I bite my lip to stop from screaming. Sweat slides down my neck as I try to breathe through the agony. Hexes, if I can’t walk, how am I going to reach the cure?
Astin climbs to his feet, eyes assessing me, and I do my best to appear as though I’m favouring one side out of choice, not necessity. I can’t let him send me home.
‘You’re hurt,’ he says. ‘I –’
He cuts off at the sound of another moan.
Closer again. We follow – or Astin follows, while I do my best to hop behind him – those strange lines, dread curdling deep in my belly as they get deeper into the dirt, like someone dug their fingers into every inch of mud available in order to drag themselves along.
Until that wasn’t enough.
I gasp as Astin pushes aside another branch to reveal a body collapsed on the ground, face first in the dirt.
Astin drops to his knees, rolling the body over to reveal a man dressed in loose-fitting brown clothing.
His shock of red hair is in stark contrast to the paleness of his skin, almost grey in colour.
Chapped lips mumble words I don’t understand.
‘What happened to him?’ I hobble closer, searching for signs he’s been torn apart by a wolf, or broken his leg during a fall. There’s nothing. Just grey, grey skin that I’m sure I recognise from somewhere.
Astin rolls his wrist over, and I barely feel the fresh flare of pain in my ankle as I take an immediate step back.
He’s hexed.
The hexmark’s not a perfect x like ours. The black lines have stretched all the way up his forearm, new lines branching out, and I realise where I’ve seen his colouring before. On Astin’s sister, as she withered and died in his arms.
At least for her it happened quickly. This man’s stuck in some kind of in-between stage, not quite withered, not quite . . .
‘Can he survive this?’ I ask.
‘I don’t know.’ Astin’s voice is low, cold. Deadly. He shakes the man, forcing his attention. ‘Who did this to you? Are they in the woods?’
‘No . . . I . . . It was unlocked, so I ran. I ran for such a long time. But I couldn’t .
. . I can’t . . .’ The man cries out, spasming, and, if it’s possible, more colour seeps from his skin.
His eyes roll to the back of his head and then his focus sharpens.
He grips Astin’s shoulder. ‘Whatever she does, he’s worse. ’
His head drops to the ground. Utterly lifeless.
Every inch of me trembles. Tears threaten to fall. Anger is etched over Astin’s face: from the lock of his jaw, still with that purple bruise from yesterday, to the ticking in his cheek like a pendulum swinging too fast, to the swirling storm of blue in his eyes.
‘I’m sorry,’ I whisper, not sure what I’m apologising for. Suggesting this trip. Falling over. Making him witness someone die the same way his sister did.
‘I need to get you out of here.’ He sounds calm and controlled as he stands, but his hands shake as he brushes dirt from his trousers. ‘He might think he ran far, but it doesn’t mean they didn’t chase him. The Souleater could be in these woods. More than one, it sounded like.’
‘What about the body? We can’t leave him here.’
‘There’s nothing we can do for him.’ Astin rubs his face. ‘This was a bad idea. For all we know, he was running from these ruins you’re dragging me to.’
Oh no. He is not using this as an excuse to go home. The inn is riding on this. My cure is riding on this. I’m not turning back when there’s a chance my dreams could come true. Besides, I haven’t dragged him anywhere. He volunteered for this trip.
I fold my arms. ‘That theory’s unlikely, since the invite says we don’t need to be there until tomorrow.’
‘Or maybe Souleaters are picking people off in advance.’
‘Then it’s a good job I have a big, bad Souleater murderer at my side.’ I smile sweetly. ‘I am going to those ruins. If you want to stop me, you’ll have to carry me home, kicking and screaming.’
His gaze drops to my ankle. ‘I might be carrying you either way.’
‘I can walk,’ I tell him. I make an attempt at proving my point, but my ankle immediately buckles and I lurch straight into his arms.
‘Fuck’s sake, Daisy. You’re impossible, you know that?
’ He releases me once I’m safely upright, before sliding my pack from my shoulders and tossing it over his own.
A pity he didn’t do that several hours ago.
For all his complaining I brought too much, he makes it look like my wardrobe consists of feathers.
‘We can make a detour to the Duck in the Dark. See if you can sleep it off. I brought my savings for emergencies –’ He pauses, as though recalculating whether a sprained ankle counts as an emergency. I’m tempted to tell him it’s not, because ducks are the last thing I need.
I can’t get the words out in time, because another glance at the sweat beading across my face and he nods.
‘It means we won’t make it to the ruins with much time to spare before this .
. . gathering. I won’t be able to do any reconnaissance.
’ A dark cloud crosses his face. ‘So we’d better hope you’re right, and whoever killed him –’ he points at the dead body – ‘isn’t there waiting for us. ’