We Become Darkness

Chapter 1

Chapter One

“There hasn’t been a new lead in six months. Not since you gutted that Vampyr in Cardin,” Reina whispered.

Thalia turned, peeling her eyes from the carnage. The shadows covering the captain’s dark face did little to hide her revulsion. Her armor glittered in the moonlight, although the muted gold seemed garish against the field of corpses.

“It’s him,” Thalia said. Her gaze roamed over the bodies peppering the land like lumps of coal—bodies that had been ripped apart and propped back together like some sort of macabre chessboard. The crops had been razed to the ground, destroyed as if some feral beast had been set loose upon them.

Reina made a face, scrubbing a hand over her short-cropped dark hair. “And you’re sure it’s him?”

Him.

It would have been better if it were some feral beast, not the Vampyr she sought.

Thalia clenched her jaw, ignoring the emotions rising hot in her gut. “This death reeks of him.”

Reina studied her a moment longer, brown eyes flashing. “We need to head back to Corithian.”

Thalia wiped the sweat from her brow. Even with night in full swing, the heat of summer worked its way down the back of her spine, itching like a pesky bug. “Why?”

“Your mother sent word.”

“I’m not done here. You’ve seen the fields—these townsfolk won’t last the next few months without their crops. They are as good as dead out here.”

Reina sighed, shifting slightly. “She’s the queen; her word is law even for her daughter. She’s changed her mind about you going off and doing this.”

“This?” Thalia’s voice dropped, although they were far enough away from the ramshackle town that no one would hear them.

Far enough away that no one would notice the Queen of Agripa’s inner circle was in their midst. “You mean doing my duty in ensuring the townsfolk of Agripa are safe? Ensuring that they are provided enough resources that they won’t starve come winter?

Ensuring that he doesn’t take any more innocent lives? ”

“Listen, Princess.” Reina added the last bit with enough bite that Thalia stiffened. “I do what I’m told. She said you’ve had your fun.”

Thalia snorted, toying with the end of her light-blonde braid, ignoring the stench of decaying flesh brushing against her nose.

“Fun? My duty is to the people of Agripa. I was assigned this role, and she gave me leave for this mission. To fix my mistake.” Her mistake of allowing him to still breathe.

Reina leaned closer, keeping her voice soft. “I know. And I know what it means for you to do this. But your mother wasn’t pleased about that stint in Cardin.”

Thalia had found one of those bloodsuckers about to set fire to a granary, and she’d shoved an iron stake through its skull. But it wasn’t the Vampyr she hunted. The one who kept leaving what the townsfolk were calling “the Scarecrows.”

Thalia pulled her attention back, hazel eyes narrowing. “Why? It’s the first lead I had since Darein. She should have been pleased I’m making headway.”

Until that led to a dead end. Then another, and another.

Every city and town Thalia had traveled to had sent her on a wild-goose chase. Never close to what—to whom—she sought.

But Thalia could practically feel it, something humming through her veins, a deep sense of urgency whispering in her ear.

She was close to it. So very close to him.

“The Vampyr you killed was supposedly an important leader from one of the courts, did you know that?” Reina cocked her head.

“How the hell would I have known that? It’s not as though the Vampyr courts have been in contact with us, not since—” Thalia choked, the image of unseeing eyes staring at hers flashing in her mind.

The phantom weight of blood coated her fingers as she tried to put her sister’s head back on her body after a Vampyr had ripped it off.

Maybe the Vampyr Thalia had killed belonged to the same monstrous family who’d taken her sister and father. If that was the case, important leader or not, a stake through its skull was a mercy compared to what she could have done to appease the ever-growing ache in her chest.

That thought sent the anger boiling in Thalia’s bloodstream into white-hot rage. “Good. I hope it’s burning in hell. I hope they all are.”

Something flashed in Reina’s eyes, but she quickly masked it. “Your mother needs you home.”

“Tell her I’m close. That I need more time.”

“To do what? You aren’t going to find him.”

Thalia’s teeth ground together, and she looked away, unable to face the hard truth in Reina’s eyes. “I will.”

Only so she could stab a stake through his traitorous heart.

Reina sighed, muttering to the gods to save her.

“What he did was shit.” Thalia stiffened.

Shit was the understatement of the millennium.

What he’d done was unforgivable—inhuman.

But she supposed he wasn’t human anymore.

Thalia shoved down the bile rising in her throat as Reina continued, “But your mother needs you back. There’s been a new development. Something to do with the ore.”

“What about it?” Thalia’s interest piqued.

She’d passed the fields leached of color on her way into this town.

The soil that refused to be tilled and the grain that shriveled like husks, not to mention the sickness that followed in its wake.

When the ore was spread across the fields, it allowed the land to become fertile—thriving.

When burned, it fueled homes and mills. They needed that ore to survive, especially with the ongoing war between the humans and Vampyrs.

In recent years, the human reserves had rapidly dwindled.

Reina shook her head. “I don’t know. But you’re needed at the castle, immediately. Now, we can either go back to the palace the easy way, or …” She trailed off with a smirk.

Thalia didn’t take her threat seriously.

Not that Reina wouldn’t tie her to a horse and carry her all the way to Corithian, Agripa’s capital city, if she refused.

And Thalia knew she had no hope of taking her in a fight if it came to that.

Reina was a good head taller than her, not to mention she knew every single one of her moves; she had taught them to Thalia herself.

Thalia forced her hands to unclench, to let go of the urgency racing through her veins. The sooner she got back to the castle, the sooner she could leave and ensure that no more townsfolk suffered because of her mistake. She’d finish her mission—for good. “Fine.”

She stalked away from the field, Reina at her heels. Their horses waited on an empty dirt road, their hides gleaming in the moonlight, the summer air thick and muggy.

“We’re already late,” Reina said, swinging into her saddle. “I received the letter this morning; you were expected a day ago. We need to move quickly, or your mother will not be pleased.”

She never was.

Thalia swung herself up onto her horse, and Reina dug her heels into her beast’s side, taking off to pass through the nearly empty town.

Thalia turned to follow but froze.

Even from a distance, the Scarecrows stood out like a raised scar among the graying field. They swayed slightly in the summer breeze. Once morning came, the corpses would cook in the sun, the heat turning the remaining bits of hanging flesh into strips of leather.

Someone should take them down.

Someone needed to take them down.

But Thalia remained frozen, transfixed, as one particular corpse swayed harder than the others, almost as though it were curling a finger toward her in a promise.

Then a dark shadow stepped out from behind the Scarecrow.

Eyes the color of the mountain lakes stared back.

Thalia’s whole body locked up, her breath coming in deep pants.

He … he was—

“Thalia!”

Her horse shifted and Thalia jolted, glancing over her shoulder to find Reina waiting in the distance near some old trenches dug during the start of the war.

Thalia whipped back, heart pounding in her throat. But nothing was there. No glowing eyes. No dark presence. Even the Scarecrows were gone, toppled over by that fell wind.

Thalia shook her head, forcing down the dread rising in her stomach as she spurred her horse after Reina.

She tried to push aside the image of the Scarecrows. Tried to push past the smell of decaying flesh still clinging to her nostrils, and the eyes that had seared themselves into her brain—into her heart.

But as they rode hard through the night across Agripa’s dying land, she couldn’t quite shake the feeling that something watched her from the shadows.

Waiting to sink their teeth in.

“You’re late, Thalia.”

Thalia stiffened as she glanced up at her mother’s imposing figure sitting on her gilded throne.

Queen Helena Cesiaran of Agripa looked her daughter over, her features an immovable mask of marble.

Her emerald eyes scanned Thalia from head to toe.

Thalia was grateful she’d had time to bathe and change.

Her mother was already displeased; tracking mud across the red-carpeted tile would have only served to irk her more.

“Apologies, my horse threw a shoe.” The lie rolled smoothly off her tongue as she rose, her seafoam silk gown falling off her frame like water.

Thalia hadn’t questioned it when her handmaiden, Katrina, wrangled her into it.

The gold press of her knife against her thigh echoed the coldness of her mother’s face.

The queen’s brows narrowed noting the lie. “You were expected days ago.”

Thalia ignored the stares of her mother’s scheming court. They tittered behind lace fans, their forked tongues whispering to each other, no doubt about her absence at court. “I was checking on the towns further north. They’ve been hit harder than most with the Scarecrows.”

“I see.” The queen’s delicate nostrils flared as Thalia took a spot next to her. “You reek of death.”

Thalia was glad her back was ramrod straight, only because it kept her from falling over. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”