Stepping out, I gaze around for the best plan when I freeze. I shift to cover my men behind me as a young man stops before me, his brows furrowed. He had been coming around a tree, no doubt after taking a leak, and now he’s looking right at me.
He stumbles closer, and his mouth drops open when he sees me. “Cora? Cora Black?”
Fuck.
I recognize him. I worked alongside him in the field a few times. He was one of the nice ones.
“Erm, nope?” I say, stepping backward.
“It is, it’s you!” he gushes, stepping closer.
I hear the others behind me gearing up to kill him, so I grab him, yank him to me, and press my lips to his. I infuse magic into my touch and push it into his body before he can exclaim in surprise. When I pull back, his eyes are closed, his lips parted. With my magic moving through him, I wipe him of his memories, though I’m not sure how I know the process.
“You saw nothing. I am not the woman you think I am.” When I step back, he’s blinking and confused.
Suddenly, Krug appears behind him from the dark like a demon and smashes him across the back of the head, knocking him out. The poor guy slumps to the ground. He’s not dead, but he’ll definitely have a terrible goose egg tomorrow.
Meeting my eyes, Krug snarls, “He touched you. He’s lucky he’s not dead.”
“I agree,” Bracken drawls as he grabs the human man and none too gently throws him into the field behind us. “Next time, don’t kiss someone else,” he mutters, and I roll my eyes.
“Jealous much? I panicked.”
“And your first thought was to kiss him?” Grim grumbles.
“It worked, didn’t it?” I throw my hands in the air. “Now let’s get moving.”
“I can’t believe she kissed him,” Nero mumbles. “He looked like the offspring of a donkey who had sex with a pig.”
“Humans,” Zee agrees.
Men, I think to myself.
Nero scoops me up, and I ride him as we travel over the darkened road. We need to get near the castle before day breaks. There will be no hiding then, not when the sunlight of the Gilded Lands touches the horizon. As we move, the dirt changes to paved gold, hard and glittering.
The barely living land around us changes to natural growth and thriving life. Beautiful trees stretch over us, and plants shimmer with whatever magic is left in our lands. All of it is calling to me.
Then we crest the hill, a hill I didn’t even know was here since I’d never really crossed the barrier, and there, laid out before us, is an entirely different world.
“Welcome to the Gilded Lands,” I mutter bitterly, remembering all the times I starved while no one here even knows what it’s like to be hungry. Disgust fills me, but still, even I can’t deny the beauty of the realm.
It’s like a crown studded with corpses, or a heaven filled with devils.
ChapterForty-Two
We stare longer than we should, me included.
I knew their lands would be opulent, but I wasn’t prepared for…this.
The road winds down the hill to a huge gate below, the only visible opening in a low wall that runs as far as I can see, splitting us from them. Guards patrol the gate, but not the wall, or so it seems. I guess they aren’t too worried about the Shadow Landers sneaking in. After all, we’re all just trying to survive and not starve.
But the Gilded Lands? It’s perfect and beautiful. Behind the wall are shops and homes, all made from bright white brick and paint, some as tall as three stories. Their roads are paved with gold, and they glitter under the moon. The whole city is bright and shiny, with perfect rows upon perfect rows of houses and markets.
There’s a circle in the middle, which I’m guessing is their town center.
In the distance, almost mirroring the black castle of the monsters, is a glittering gold palace. Shining in the moonlight like a jewel, it reaches up into the sky, lording above everyone.
My sister is in there, and in those golden walls is also my destiny.
