We were happy in them.
Once Url is awake and has packed away his own tent and sleeping bag, we get back on the road once more. Pemba pulls out the small satchel of dried nuts again. Only this time, there isn't really enough to share, and he forces me to eat the last of them.
I move as though I’m planning on holding them out to share with the goblin like we’d done with the bread, but Pemba shoots me a glare, halting me straightaway.
It feels wrong not to share them, against the way I’ve been raised and trained in selflessness.
After an hour of nothing to be heard but the sounds of the birds calling overhead, I feel a trickle of unease down my spine. At first, I roll my shoulders back and sit up a little straighter, sure that it’s just my own discomfort at being stuck in the cart, but when Pemba shoots me a look, I realize he feels it too. There's something here.
Watching us.
***
Pemba slowly slides his hand away from my shoulder, moving casually as though he hasn't noticed the extra set of eyes on us, and he leans into my side to murmur, “Are you hungry? Let me get you something to eat.”
We ran out of food when I ate the last of the nuts. He’s signaling to me that he's getting something out of the pack, and in case whatever is watching us has keen hearing, it’ll assume that he’s rooting around in there for food.
Instead, he pulls out my mother's scepter.
I feel sick just looking at it. The dark oak wood of the base curls up and around the raw emerald gemstone that was the magnifier of my mother's power. She used it only in moments of desperation, usually when she was trying to save someone's life. The dark green of the gemstone is the same color as my eyes, reflecting and refracting sunlight onto my skin.
When we’d arrived to find the coven in flames, it was the first thing Pemba looked for once he knew there were no survivors. It feels dangerous for me to even hold it as a conductor for my magic, but when Pemba thrusts it at me, I have no choice but to take it. The wood warms under my hand, recognizing the power in my blood that’s building up inside me and pushing out toward the scepter instinctively.
It’s terrifying.
Url glances back at us, and his gaze catches on the emerald at the end of the scepter. His eyes flare a little as though it's unexpected to see two young witches out in the world with something like it.
Itisa very unusual sight.
When he looks back at the road in front of him, he curses under his breath and pulls the cart to an abrupt stop. I lurch towards Pemba, one of his hands steadying me as he studies the underbrush around us.
He’s expecting an ambush.
“What are you doing? You're about to get run over!”
I crane my neck around Url to see who he’s speaking to, and I find a dark elf standing in the center of the path, blocking it with his feet planted wide. His features are pinched and look almost animalistic as his beady eyes take us in.
He's tall, though not as tall as a high fae. His ears are pointed the same as theirs, but the sallow skin around his eyes is so thin that I can see veins standing out under them. His nose is just a little too pointed, and his mouth a little too small for his face. There's none of the heartbreaking beauty of the high fae in him at all.
He's dressed in rags.
Instantly, I feel uncomfortable. I might be an orphan, out in the world with nothing but the few belongings in the satchel my brother is carrying, but at least I have clothing. It doesn't seem fair, but the goblin doesn’t seem to agree with my assessment.
“You need to move,” he says again.
The elf just cocks his head, his gaze moving over the horse in a way that turns my gut.
Url is speaking in the common tongue, but I call out in Elvish, “We’re traveling to the Seer. If you need a ride, you're welcome to hop into the cart with us.”
I’m thankful Pemba doesn’t speak Elvish, having never shown an interest in learning languages, because I'm sure he would have alotto say about my offer. I'll have a hell of a time convincing them both to let the elf come with us if he takes me up on my invitation.
The elf zeroes in on me, and Pemba curses under his breath. “Just kill it,” he says, and I want to vomit at the thought of it.
I can'tjust kill it. I've never killed anything in my life, and I'm sure it’ll stay that way.
Except then the screaming starts.
Bone-chilling, mind-numbing, nails hammering into the backs of my eyeballs screaming. I had thought the wraith was bad but this is indescribable torture. The screams make me feel sick to my stomach, the type that sounds as though a woman is being murdered somewhere in the underbrush, or perhaps she's watching one of her children being harmed, but I already know the instincts I'm feeling are false.
