Frowning, his gaze drops to my shuffling feet before slashing a glance around. He points at a fallen log a few feet away. “There’s a perfectly good spot. I’ll give you my back so you have some privacy.”
I blink at it, back at him. Thatloghas got all the privacy of the bucket the sailors used on the ship.
“I’d rather perish.”
He cuts me a look so damaging I feel it slice into my bones.
I wince.
Wrong choice of words after our earlier conversation.
Sighing, I massage my rumbling gut, though that only makes me want to pee more. “I’ll be right back. Just … wait here,” I say, threading between thick shrubs, feeling his icy perusal track me until I shift from his line of sight.
I blow a shuddered breath and edge down a slight hill, finding a sheltered spot tucked behind a rock where I can squat without the threat of losing my balance and tumbling to my doom. I’m just resecuring my sheath to my thigh, about to head back up again, when a soft voice comes to me:
The words feel like vines wiggling on the wind, hooking on my ribs and twisting around my spine. They give me little tugs.
Caught in the clutches of some kind of trance, my feet move of their own accord, easing me farther down the steep slope—running in places, dropping to my ass and sliding in others, a litter of dirt and debris chasing my swift descent through the humid murk.
I’ve heard bits of this song before …somewhere.Like drips of a dream that keeps slipping through the gaps in a clenched fist.
I want more—therestof it. I want to collect every twirling lyric and pull them close to my chest. Let them whisper their secrets upon my skin.
The tune tapers, and I become suddenly aware of a familiar rattling symphony, like a sea of singing cicadas. I push free of the jungle near the base of a frail gorge pinched to the right, as if some mighty hands plunged down from the heavens, gripped the mountain, and began splitting it apart—then paused. Nuzzled within that split is a cavernous slash that’s tapered at the top, spewing a radiant gray light.
No sunshine filters through the connecting canopy above, as if the trees on either side are clasping hands. A huge pack of Irilak are huddled in the dense shadow at the cavern’s mouth, just shy of the spewing light, like slender slants of vapor caught in some sort of waving trance.
They’re watching that hole the same way Shay used to watch my mice treats before I’d toss them over my Safety Line …
A deep rumble belches from the cave, and my heart flops. The Irilak shift in unison, like they’re preparing to pounce, and I glimpse a taloned claw swiping at the prowling shadows like a threatened cat.
Realization slams into me.
Vruk.
More of that singing voice:
The melody is a silky serenade to my violent unraveling—my throat tightening, breath failing to wisp through and fill my aching lungs. I scramble back a step, another, noticing the strange terrain the Irilak are nesting on: dehydrated lumps of fur, claws, wide-open maws, and slack, fluffy tails.
A graveyard.
It’s a fucking graveyard.
That cornered beast snarls again, the sound a slash to my chest.
I spin, colliding with something hard and cold.
Rhordyn’s arms band around me, and my entire body trembles against the might of his embrace, a breath pooling into my lungs that’s all leathery, earthenhim.His hand weaves into my hair and cups the back of my head, and I nuzzle against his chest—no longer ice cold, butwarm.
Why is he warm?
Here.
He’s here.
He tightens his grip.
“It’s okay.” His voice is a throaty rumble, so much thicker than it usually is. Something settles inside me, like a freshly planted rosebush weaving its roots into uncharted territory.
