“What the Promised have done before me is none of your concern, nor is it any of my own business,” she hissed. “And as for who I choose to share a bed with—”
“Let me guess,” he interjected. “Not my business either?”
“It is the very last thing you should ever concern yourself with.”
The silence of the wood consumed them as they walked back to the Venari home. She ignored the heat of his body behind hers and tried to listen for any creatures around them. The Ulfram pack had not followed, and neither had the others that had stayed with her earlier. It surprised her how at ease she felt surrounded by the darkness. Stark darkness. She couldn’t see anything. The Venari could see enough in the dark that they were able to move without the use of the firelight, but she was blinded by the black of the night.
A chill suddenly ran down Aydra’s spine. She couldn’t hear a voice. But what she felt drove a shudder to her core. She suddenly felt empty. As though her insides had been ripped clean from her body. Her stomach lurched into her throat.
“There’s something around us,” she managed, her hand gripping Draven’s thigh to steady herself.
“What?”
“Something—” her body wavered on the horse, and she gripped the horn of the saddle in her other hand as her breaths shortened. An emptiness began to fill her mind. She shook her head and blinked profusely, trying to shake the feeling.
“You don’t feel it?” she breathed. “It feels as though an emptiness is crawling in my mind.”
The wind brushed through the forest. Draven’s body tensed behind her. He reached around and grabbed the reigns, pulling back on his horse.
“Off the horses,” Draven managed. “Into the canopy.”
Draven dismounted in one swift movement, boots colliding with the earth. She was startled by the sudden feeling of his hands pulling her from the saddle. “Get on my back.”
She tried to take a deep breath, and then she shook her head. “I’m not—”
“I don’t have time for your protests,” he growled. “If you wish to live and have your broken filly be spared, you’ll obey my orders. Now.”
The cold shudder latched onto her again, and she felt him turn his back to her. She leaned down and grasped her arms around his neck, hooking her legs around his waist. They walked a short distance to what she assumed was a tree.
“Hang on tight,” he told her. “We’re going up.”
Her horse screamed out for her.
Quiet, she told her. Do not make a sound. All of you.
“What was that?” Draven asked her as he pulled them up the branches.
“Nothing. Just relishing being so near you, Venari,” she said sarcastically.
“You can relish it another day. For now, you’ll not utter another word.”
He pulled them up into the tree canopy quickly, and he took one of his men’s hand to make it up to the final branch.
Aydra closed her eyes as they reached a large steady branch. She couldn’t see the creature. But she could feel it moving in the darkness. Four legs. Stalking the ground as a whisper. The shudder of darkness bled through her muscles. She’d never felt such a darkness. As though black were as bright of a color as the sun.
She tried to shake the feeling of it consuming her. Her stomach turned. The creature’s purr vibrated her core, and her eyes rolled into the back of her head.
“Aydra—”
The noise of his voice was a distant echo. She hardly felt him squeeze her hand as she felt her grip slipping. Darkness spun around her.
This was an abyss she felt herself falling into. Her grip on Draven’s back slipped.
She fell.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
WET DIRT MET her body. She winced at the pain of the root hitting her hip. But she didn’t have time to register any more than that.
Vomit evacuated from her insides. Her head began to spin. She rose to her hands and knees and clenched her eyes closed.
And then the ground froze beneath her.
She felt a fog moisture surround her body, the tiny droplets pressing into her skin. Her heart pounded loudly in her chest. Something of a primordial purr vibrated her bones. It wasn’t a fear that rippled her body, it was an unfamiliarity. She pulled for the noise of the creature’s voice, attempting to connect with its core.
But she felt no core.
Only an empty void.
It pulled her in. She was a moth in its flame of obscurity.
A huff of a breath hit her face. Her hair blew back off her shoulders. She tried to shake the dizzy swim in her head as it clawed its way inside her mind, filling her own core with its shadows of death and necrosis.
I… I see you… she managed to cry out into the void. I am not your enemy.
I know no enemies.
The noise of its deafeningly low growl made her feel as though she was being pulled inside out. Her stomach lurched into her throat, and she puked nothingness. She gripped the dirt beneath her fingernails and shook her head again.
I know nothing but the dark.
The overwhelming growl of its voice leeched into her consciousness. A jagged breath left her lungs. Her eyes rolled, but she pushed it out and pressed herself to her knees.
The dark is your home.
Vomit left her again. A searing pain tore through her abdomen, as though the chasm of its being were consuming her. Her jaw clenched and she shook it out of her.
Come home… Aydra Ravenspeak.
Fire.
Feet hit the dirt behind her.
The beast’s face illuminated in the orange glow.
A skeleton head of a horse with wide horns stared at her. Its head was as large as her own steed was tall. No eyes. Teeth of fangs where nothing should have been in its mouth. She knew this creature.
This was the Spy.
A creature born to live in the shadows of darkness.
