She bolted upright once more, and the fog on the ground filled her vision.
There was a violet hue across the landscape as the sun threatened to rise. Aydra cracked her neck and stood from the ground. The wet grass curled beneath her toes, and she inhaled the scent of the dirt she so rarely got to enjoy.
Dorian and Lex appeared to still be asleep around her.
What time is it? she asked the raven as it landed on the top of one of the boulders.
Hour to sunrise, it told her.
She curled her cloak around her arms and stepped around the boulder to the other side. A sudden chill ran over her body, and nauseating spell pulsed through her core. She blinked and looked around. It had felt as though she’d stepped through some invisible gateway, as though she’d stepped into a world not of her own.
“Interesting,” came Draven’s sudden voice.
Aydra nearly jumped at the noise of him, and she looked down to find him sitting against the rock just to her right, opposite of where she’d herself curled up for the night.
“What is with you and sneaking up on people?” she managed.
He looked as though he would laugh. “You live in darkness long enough, you learn to become one with it,” he replied cryptically.
Her jaw tightened, and she pulled her cloak tighter as she gave him a once over, noticing his whittling something with his knife in his hand, a new long pipe it looked like. “What is interesting?” she asked, referring to what he’d said.
“The shiver you felt upon entering my realm,” he answered without looking up. “Not everyone feels it.”
“Perhaps it is a warning from your giver for me to stay out.”
“Possibly.” He blew on the end of the pipe, blowing away any stray shavings that were left.
Her eyes narrowed at the construction in his hands. “Other pipe not working very well?”
“Not really your concern,” he said as he turned it over to inspect it. “Tell me, Sun Queen, are you ready to dispose of your beast or should I let you sing to the hills this morning?” he asked, finally making eye contact with her.
She felt her arms tighten across her chest. “Just show me how to get rid of it, Venari.”
She woke Dorian and Lex soon after their exchange. Draven pulled the body of the Infi off the horse and unfurled it from the blanket, letting its rotting corpse roll onto the grass at the bottom of the Bedrani hill. Aydra pulled the heart from her bag and tossed it to Draven’s open palms.
The moment he took the knife from it, it began to beat once more.
“The Chronicles do not speak of this part of the curse,” Aydra muttered.
“The Chronicles are lies,” Draven replied.
He shoved the heart back into the open wound of the creature’s chest, and stood back over it. Its chest rose off the ground, and its bones began to crack. Aydra took a step back and put a hand across Dorian’s chest. Draven went back to the horses, and a moment later he shoved Aydra’s bow and an arrow into her chest.
“Try not to miss this time,” Draven warned.
Aydra glared at him as he and the others took steps back from the creature.
Bones continued to crack, and the creature started to lift off the ground, as though it were putting itself back together. Slowly, she felt its empty core return, and it hovered between creature and being for a moment, before it found itself doubled over on its hands and knees on the ground.
Not a creature, but a man looked up at her from its mangled hands.
One yellow eye. One blue eye. Nose crooked, but slowly straightening as the flesh twisted on its face, morphing from burned and disfigured to smooth and handsome. Its wide eyes pleaded with her from the ground.
“My Queen,” she heard it say. “My Queen, please. I mean you no harm.”
Aydra stared down her nose at it, weary of the begging it was doing before her. The memory of it running at her across the beach reminded her of what it truly was.
A monster manipulator.
It reached up towards the bow in her hands. “Please, I—”
The double-take it did behind her then caught her off guard. It must have seen Draven, for suddenly its face flashed of the obscene creature once more, and it hissed in Draven’s direction.
The creature bolted to its feet and took off running in the opposite direction.
Aydra pulled the arrow through her bow, aiming for the neck, and—
The arrow landed with a thud in its throat. Its feet dragged midair on the grass, and then it fell flat on its face to the dirt.
“Look at that,” Draven muttered behind her. “The Queen does know how to use a weapon not made of her body.”
She glared back at him. “Shut up,” she smarted. “What now?”
“Just wait,” he told her.
“For what? For it to get back up and run away again?”
Draven wrapped his arms over his chest and his jaw tightened beneath his beard. She glared back at him, and he raised a brow and gave an upwards nod back at the body once more.
The ground began to tremble.
The earth snapped.
She could see a gaping crack in the earth moving fast towards them. Fissures opened up around the Infi’s body. A violent tremor shook her to the point that she nearly lost her balance. Lex grabbed her arm as she too almost fell.
The wind wrapped around them. Aydra looked bewildered back at Draven and started to speak, but he was collectively watching the Infi, completely unphased by what was happening around them.
Tree roots shot up from beneath the fissures. Her eyes widened back at the scene as the roots finger-like ends paused above the Infi as though it
