Something held her in place. Not like the strong hands of the vagrants Thom had warned her about who sometimes wandered the Wilds, the ruffians who would beat her, rob her, and leave her for dead.
No, this was something softer, gentler. A coaxing caress of the mind, drawing her nearer.
“Look down,” the voice said.
The allure of the place was too powerful. Its mysteries too grand.
No one had ever ventured down into the Maw before. They had all been too scared. She could do it though; Kestrel could be the one to find out what was down below. After all, she was an excellent climber. Flawless, even. She could easily make the descent—if not for that blasted heat. It blew through the small tendrils of fiery hair that framed her face, wrappedaround her neck, and threatened to squeeze the life out of her if she dared to get any closer.
Part of her knew she wouldn’t survive going deeper than a few feet. Knew that her freckled, porcelain skin would crack and singe.
But another part of her…
Another part of her was overcome with wanderlust. A sense of fate tugging on her.
“If not you, then who?” the voice called out to her again, only this time it no longer sounded like Thom. It was as smooth and dark as molasses; a baritone beat that lulled her to succumb to its sweet promises. “You are right in your wonderings, lost daughter. There is a reason you have found your way here.”
If Kestrel had any amount of awareness left in her, she would have noticed the hairs on her arms rising, felt her spine becoming as rigid as a sword.
In her daze, she felt none of it. All Kestrel knew was that she was alone in the world. Alone and in need of a friend. And that was exactly what this decidedly male voice sounded like, a friend. Someone kind and inviting, and willing to soothe Kestrel’s doubts and fears.
“This is why you left your home: to find me. It is why you and—” he paused a moment, as if thinking, searching. “—why you and your Thom lived so close all those years. It was fate intervening. Setting you into motion to embark on your path, leading you here.”
Kestrel nodded. Yes, that would make sense. Why else would she and Thom have lived at the edge of the realm in such a barren place?
“I have waited a long time for you, lost daughter.”The saccharine voice purred, a sound that made Kestrel feel as if someone were stroking her head. “But now you are here, readyto uncover my secrets. Ready to unearth my truths. To be the hero the realm needs.”
He was right. Kestrel hadn’t known it before, but shewasready. All that time spent waiting in isolation. All those years with her life on hold, while she just sat in her tower reading. Now it was time for a new chapter in her life. Now she was about to be someone. To dosomething—to become a hero like in all the books she had read.
To be like Thom.
“All you have to do is come closer.”
Every bone in her body was moved to oblige.
Kestrel lifted her foot.
It dangled over the chasm, and she prepared to step into the nothingness.
Until something screeched. It was the same sound she had heard from her tower window. The same agonizing howl that had led her on her charge.
The grating cries were so harsh and jarring that they dissipated the fugue that had shrouded her. Kestrel blinked, awareness flooding back. And she suddenly realized what she’d been about to do, the dire fate she would’ve met if she had taken one more step…
Kestrel threw herself backward.
Not a moment too soon either, for at that exact moment, an oily tentacle slithered up from the darkness, reaching for the place where her ankle had been hovering.
Her eyes bulged in fear as she tried desperately to inch farther away. Something told her that she was already doomed. That those tendrils of inky demise could reach much farther than she would be able to run. But she feared moving too suddenly as well. Even now, the tentacle was still fixated on the last place it thought she had been, as if it hadn’t seen her move away yet, as if it had been relying on the sight of her, or perhaps the sound of her movements.
Kestrel continued inching away as slow as her shaking limbs would allow.
Once the black tentacle had coiled around where her foot had been, it squeezed with all its might. But it grasped nothing. And a shriek split the air like thunder.
Chapter 5
Cute & Nefarious
KESTREL
