“We’re going to the Morgorthian Mountains,” I choke out.
The man’s weight shifts as though he considers whether I tell the truth. “This is a ruse. You’re here for the king. He’s no king of mine.”
“We’re not here on behalf of the king. We’re here because he’s destroyed—” I start.
“We know what he’s done,” says the older of the two men.
“As do I,” I answer.
A woman with dark brown hair that matches the man’s heavy coat appears. She lays a hand on his shoulder. He hesitantly gets to his feet and tosses my blade on the ground.
I scramble for my coat, blade, and bow. My chest heaves, and I can hardly catch my breath; the battle rage still pulses through me.
“Be gone,” the man says, striding away with what must be his wife and son. “Don’t come through here again.”
Kiki says, “We wish to bring the people of Raven’s Landing together.”
“To overthrow the king?” the son asks, his voice only slightly less gravely than his father’s.
I nod.
They both appraise me, easily their size and just as fierce.
“If you’d just let us explain before attacking you’d have known that and saved us all the trouble,” Kiki says, annoyed. Mud and blood streak her face.
The older guy growls.
She snarls.
I stiffen as realization dawns on me. “Are you bearmen?” I ask.
He grunts.
“My father was Torsuld’s battle arm. A bearman by blood. Did you leave Raven’s Landing when Leith took power?” I ask.
“Many people fled. We chose not to fight on behalf of a corrupt ruler.”
I smile, cracking open a sliver of a cut on my lip, and tasting blood. “Then we are more alike than you realize.”
“We live in peace now,” the woman says. “Please leave us to it. We don’t want ill tidings brought through here.” She eyes the moorland warily as though the king’s retinue is close at our heels. They may very well be.
“We’ll be on our way.” Kiki doesn’t lower her blade but wipes the threads of blood and sweat from her brow.
We remain there until the husband and wife disappear over the nearby ridge. Their son lumbers behind them and with a glance at us over his shoulder, I get the sense that the bear blood is strong in him, and he’s not yet ready for a quiet life of peace.
“You okay?” I ask.
She smiles and her eyes spark like part of her enjoyed the fight.
We walk until Inverness forest looms darkly ahead of us and nurse our wounds.
“What are bearmen?” Kiki asks.
“They’re shifters. Men who can become bears. I’d only seen my father change a few times. Fiercest fighters around in both forms but especially human. Believe it or not, they’re more peaceful as bears generally but still deadly. In either form, they can summon battle rage. In fact, they thrive off it.”
“Your father was a bearman?”
I nod, knowing what’s coming. I shake my head. “I’ve never shifted.” But sometimes I feel the urge—sharp in my bones and the depths of my being.
“So there are fox shifters, bear shifters...”
“Wolves, dragons, and ravens.”
At the edge of the forest, birds perform a cacophonous symphony of unnerving rattles, trills, deep rasps, and nasal clucking. The golden raven streaks across the sky and disappears. The window in my thoughts opens again about the king’s ravens, the shifters. Hope rustles in my chest just as the wind rustles the browning leaves, and the scent of damp, rotting earth would be suffocating if I weren’t so tired after the long day of walking and fighting.
The next morning the ground is covered in frost. I pluck a lonely, lacy white starflower from its stem and give it to Kiki. She rewards me with a smile, bringing the bloom close to her face, inhaling deeply, but then she frowns and drops it. The petals come loose and drift to the ground like snow.
I bend over, tilting my head with confusion and examine them. Bits of ice cover the fallen petals.
“My hand felt cold and then the flower—” She breathes a puff of icy air from her lips and shivers. She wraps her arms around her chest. “It’s freezing out here.”
We keep moving until the edge of the forest breaks sharply atop a knoll that spills into the ravine containing the ghost town, Nine Days. The golden road of the royals leads directly there. Now that we’re beyond the I’s, it should be safe to follow its path without risk of encountering the patrol. If they’re following us, which I doubt, we’re probably a day ahead of them.
“If it’s a choice between sleeping here by the forest or down there, I say let’s stop in between,” I suggest.
“But there are houses, shelter.” She points.
“It’s a ghost town, remember?” I say only now allowing myself to acknowledge it.
She laughs.
“Actual ghosts.”
Her face pales.
I’m cautious, my senses alert as we near the dusty, deserted town.
A figure wearing a green mage’s robe appears in a doorway, eyes dark and hollow, suspicious. He’s blue-gray, almost vaporous.
Kiki stiffens but bravely moves forward.
We continue and another figure joins the first, walking alongside us. The pair doubles and then triples. I slow my pace, my fingers ready to draw my bow—not that it would do much good. The men’s knuckles are white and ruthless; the women’s mouths pinched and merciless.
Kiki keeps her eyes trained forward, not looking back or around or showing any sign of slowing down, but she says, almost dream-like, “I’ve seen this place before.”
The hairs on the back of my neck lift.
“I said I saw the town, but I mean that I
