Horror floods my veins as I scramble to push the weight away. It’s too much. The person is heavier than I am.
“Curse you, Malachites,” I scream. “May you all rot!” The words pour out of me in the ancient Bloodstone tongue I have never spoken before, yet I understand everything.
Pain tears through my serpent mark as the weight convulses against me, then alters, shrinking. A horrifying stench invades my nose as I let out a strangled groan and shove against the weight. My hands squish into the mass, and I scream a blood-curdling cry that travels from the tips of my fingers to my toes. Over and over, I scream, but the stench remains. The horror remains. The panic remains.
“Sol!”
I yell at the hand against my shoulder, shaking me, trying to gain my attention.
It doesn’t help.
I shout with everything in me. All the fear. The grief. The pain.
A smack against my cheek steals my next scream.
“Stop it!”
Everly’s voice.
She smacked me?
“Hades!” Luc mutters. “Look at what the Kyanite did to them.”
Cenric’s laughter travels up the nape of my neck and settles in the corners of my darkness.
Everly places a firm hand against my arm and helps me stand.
“Please remove it.” I claw at the cloth, blinding my view. “Please,I need to see.”
“Do it,” Hector says, his voice too calm, too controlled. Something in me needs him to be as panicked as I am. “Before she kills us all.”
I inhale and exhale in quick, uneven gasps as Everly unties the blindfold and pulls it from my face. My eyes lock on the mass at my feet first. The Malachite is nothing more than a rotten corpse.
Bile rises in my throat as I gasp and stumble backward. Twenty more corpses mar the grass, each one barely recognizable as human. One of them stands out from the rest. His skin and flesh look like they were pulled from his bones.
These men were once Malachite warriors. Now, they’re dead. Rotten. Bones.
And I…
I…
No!
I jerk back another step, lean over, and throw up in the dirt.
“Great,” Cenric says dryly. “She killed twenty men, and her first reaction is to retch everywhere.”
“Leave her alone,” Praxis says as he cleans blood from his sword by wiping it in long blades of grass.
I flinch when Everly steps close and places her hand against my arm. “Let me help you, Sol.”
She helps me straighten and brushes the hair from my face. I blink, trying to erase the memory of those rotten men. The images refuse to fade.
Empathy glints in her blue eyes as she speaks in a gentle voice. “You need to wash. You’re covered in blood.”
My stare lowers to my blood-soaked clothes. Horror scrapes against my skin as I frantically wipe my bound hands against the material. It doesn’t help.
“We need a river and herbs,” Everly mutters.
