Avalon had no answer, but he still waited for one. “I don’t know,” she finally admitted.
He sighed and uncrossed his arms. “Avalon, this is a fool’s errand. Even if there is a way to break her out of that mask, we’re never going to…” His words trailed off, and even in the pitch-black, Avalon caught the look of panic that flitted across his features.
“What is it?” she whispered.
Hadrian didn’t need to answer. The pressure increasing inside Avalon’s head and the threat of a nosebleed would’ve been enough for her to guess what was happening, even if seven pairs of glowing red eyes hadn’t just surrounded them.
The Silver Maidens.
They were wights that took up the form of whatever their prey feared most, their chosen skins visible only to the person whose dread they were representing. Men had looked upon them and found their hearts instantly stopped from overwhelming terror.
Avalon’s own heart skipped a beat as the Silver Maidens shimmered, their shapes flashing between obscure mist and fleeting illusions of the many things that terrified her.
The Gwyllgi—hairless, gray-skinned hounds feared by most as harbingers of Death. Avalon had only ever seen them in paintings and books, but she’d always prayed to never see them in the flesh.
Her eyelids slid shut.It’s not real,she told herself.It’s not real.
When she dared to open her eyes again, the Silver Maidens had crept closer, but this time the group of seven appeared as women veiled from head to toe in milky gauze that fluttered in the wind. They each had six arms and two legs; they reminded Avalon of spiders. Their features were impossible to make out beneath the wispy fabric, though their breasts were clearly bare, their skin the dusty gray of the moon. The veils were kept in place by crowns of ivy and acanthus, and on the mossy ground before them rested a spinning wheel.
“Put the mask on,” Hadrian commanded, the words thrusting like a needle through her pocket of suffocating fear. “I’ll cover you.”
“You threw it on the ground!” she hissed. Her heart was pounding so hard, she thought she might be sick.
“It’s three feet behind you and two to the left.” His hand drifted toward the hilt of his sword. Nine Hells, he wasshaking. What had these awful creatures become in Hadrian’s eyes?
It’s now or never,she thought.
Sucking a breath in through her teeth, Avalon spun and bolted—but her toe caught on a rock, and she cried out as she tumbled into the leaves.
The Silver Maidens lunged in a blur of shadow and gauze. The sound of Hadrian’s blade hissing as it cut through their otherworldly forms sent a violent shiver up Avalon’s spine.
The mask was in her hand at last, and barely a second passed before it was sealing with her skin.
Sable came alive again, and she was not happy to see the trouble they had managed to get into while she was away. Not happy at all.
But her fury was another weapon, and Avalon gave herself over to the warrior as she and Hadrian battled the writhing shadows.
~
Sable made no promises that she wouldn’t kill those two idiots once she was finished with the Silver Maidens. But the seven red-eyed shadows would’ve likely been too many for her to handle on her own, and as much as she hated to admit it, Hadrian certainly knew how to fight.
And the blade Hadrian had tossed her was unlike any she’d ever used. Since the first time Avalon had worn the mask around the captain, and she’d got a good look at the pair of ancient-looking swords strapped to his back, she’d ached to hold one. Had yearned to feel the weight of it in her hand. To cut and kill.
So, she and Hadrian swung away, gritting their teeth against the shrill screams they were met with upon severing a head, a leg, an arm. The Silver Maidens could take up any form, and so they changed often, at times even disappearing entirely or vanishing into shadow. Shadow that could maim like acid or kill as swiftly and effectively as a sword through the gut.
But as a team, Sable and Hadrian were unstoppable. It wasn’t long before only two Silver Maidens remained, and when they realized they were outnumbered, they retreated into the forest, leaving behind nothing save for a ghostly chuckle that vanished quicker than they had come.
~
“What in the Nine Hells was that?” Sable thundered, speaking through Avalon’s mouth. She was marching after Hadrian through the dark forest, kicking up leaves behind her. They were nearing the temple, but Hadrian refused to speak to her.
It felt…ridiculously amazing to walk on her own. To move her arms and legs without restraint, to twitch the smallest muscles with the barest of thought. To feel the wind in her hair and caressing her skin. Tospeak. But then she remembered whose arms and legs she was controlling—whose mouth she was speaking from—and the exhilaration faded. She wasn’t free.
Not yet.
Hadrian stomped through the forest, swords gleaming in the moonlight. As soon as the Silver Maidens had vanished, he’d snatched the sword right out of Sable’s hands. Apparently, he didn’t trust her with a weapon.
She growled through bared teeth. “Slow it down a notch, pretty boy!”
