“Ever,” Micah warns.
“I’ll be fine.” I’m just walking up to pet a half-decaying, half-dead fairy tale monster that’s likely going to eat me, but what else am I going to do? Stars, I’m going to die.
The Jarkoreth stays still as if sensing my unease as I take a step towards it. My breathing is shaky and makes it hard for me to stop the trembling, but I move forward again, shoving all myfear down to the bottom of the well of darkness, for that’s what my control feels like now: darkness.
My eyes don’t look at the mouth full of razor teeth. Its gaze stays locked on me with the one working eye, and as soon as I’m three paces closer, I raise my right arm, the hand that I’ve often held the brooch in—the one it might be sensing.
“Closer. Closer.” It beckons, but fear singes every nerve and muscle, making it harder and harder for my body to obey my mind.
The image of me bleeding in the snow, with Ten standing over me, pierces my memory, jolting me. However, with it comes a strange sense of confidence because I’ve seen how I die, and it’s not by being eaten by this beast.
It won’t kill me.
Three more steps with my arm outstretched.
“Ahh, yes. Kalan. Kalan, I know. You have his mark.”
“His mark? What does that mean? The brooch?” Kalan is Lyle’s friend. Capella made it sound like the brooches were only for Naturals. And if he gave his to me, what did that mean? Why did he give me something so precious?
“I can’t signal to my brothers. Only whenshereigns do we wake and protect. They won’t hesitate like I have. You won’t have time to reason and explain your intentions. They will come.”
What? What did it mean?“Guys?” They don’t answer, so I direct my voice back at the creature. “I’m sorry for waking you. I didn’t know. Tell me how to send you back. To let you rest.”
“You must kill me, Fifth. Kill me and let me sleep.” His voice doesn’t possess the same ill will that I heard before.
“I can’t kill you, I don’t?—”
“You have all, Fifth. You do not need a made weapon. For you are a weapon yourself.”
Yes, yes, you can…That voice on the wind is not helping.
The Jarkoreth’s head rises, the short tendons of its neck exposed, half knitted together with cinereal flesh. The offering couldn’t be mistaken for anything but a surrender. I think about Ten’s blade, carried behind his back at all times. How the sharp edge had drawn blood when I used it against Crimson, and how it would easily make the killing strike here.
But I didn’t have a blade.
“Ever, you need to do something,” Ravi shouts from the side, but it earns him a glare from the Jarkoreth, and I watch as Ravi shrinks backwards.
The forest erupts with a howl that rings so long and so deep that it seems to sing to the stone buried deep beneath us, making it shake in fear, too. My hands clamp over my ears, and I crouch down, instinctively wanting to get low, but then I see the maggots and writhing dead things littered around us and jump right back up.
I want to run.
I want to run and not look back.
It was the Jarkoreth that made that sound, that awful, terror-inducing sound.
“They are coming for you, Fifth. The forest can hear. The forest knows,” it speaks in that low, deep vibration that only adds to the fear of the words.
They mean to harm, harm, only harm…The forest chants.
“Who?” I ask and look around at the rest of our team, all of whom look as startled by the noise as I feel.
“My guess is Ascella and Crimson. They would be the only ones to get here this fast. Or they’re gifting their speed, too, so worst case, all of them.” Ravi leaves out the ‘I warned you’, comment.
We’re still in the camouflaged area, hidden by the foliage that shields us, but I don’t know how far our little ‘raising the dead’trick travelled. We have the physical screen behind us, but after the trees, all they’ll see is a whole bunch of death.
“What do we do? I can’t fight them.”
“We have to. This is a Warrior trial,” Capella states, closing the distance between us. “We can hide, ambush them.” She gestures between me, her, and Micah.
