Kresida and I hopped off, landing in the soft sand and setting foot in our homeland for the first time in over a year. We exchanged a look as we examined the massive prints that became clearer as the sand merged into damp dirt near the forest line.
“Ursa wouldn’t have sent Nivis bears to Lotrennia,” I murmured, shaking my head as I knelt.
“No,” Kresida agreed, her dark eyes sharp as she scanned the colorful forest of our homeland. “With Selvina in Votruvia, Ursa is all the people of Nivis have right now. She wouldn’t have left them. And why would she come here?”
Something tightened in my gut, and an eerie awareness crept into my veins as I replayed our last moments at the Vael Lacrima.
“Renova and Ganmira killed the bears on Kayj,” I added, reaching for the twin blades strapped to my back as I slowly stood, staring into the shadows of the firelit forest.
Kresida mimicked my movements, smooth and precise, before taking a slow step toward the tree line.
“You think they took the bears’ forms,” she said calmly, her body poised for attack.
Aquila’s wings beat a gust of dry, autumn air, and I blinked against the stinging bits of sand that hit the side of my face. He rose into the air and soared as fast as his weary wings could take him to the Gilded Fortress to warn Bayne.
“The goddesses are here.”
Kresidaand I moved silently through the forest. The purple and red leaves dotting the green underbrush slid noiselessly against our bodies as we passed. The tracks hadn’t disappeared entirely in the forest. The wide, deep indents in the mossy ground had shifted into two sets of thin, delicate human-shaped feet.
The inked wolf skull on Kresida’s dark shoulder shifted as she lifted a fist into the air, and my body stopped at the exact moment hers did. Our movements were perfectly aligned despite our decades of training having not overlapped. We were War Slayers, and the brutal drills of our shared upbringing positioned us as the perfect predators. Two wolves on the hunt.
We crouched in synchrony, Kresida’s fingers drawing a line through the air. My gaze followed, and my brows drew in as I spied the silvery, sheer wings of a pixie. I silently slipped past Kresida and lifted a small branch, stepping over a moss-covered log and into a small clearing.
My senses tingled as my eyes landed on the ground. Dozens of silvery pixie wings lay strewn across the forest floor, ripped from the tiny bodies of their bearers.
“The Embodied?” Kresida signed the question, her hand movements quick and precise after practicing so much on board theHydralast year with Drystan.
My lips drew a thin line. While I didn’tlovethe pixies, the little creatures never really harmed anyone. Elves always suspected they brought bad luck.Death follows their flight. But if I’d learned anything about death in recent years, it was that it was misunderstood. I’d seen Lyvia do terribly dark things with her shadows, but I’d also seen her welcome Xenelpha into that same calming darkness as life left her.
Beads of black blood stuck to the base of those wings and smeared across the ground. We silently stepped through the clearing, careful not to crunch their wings, when a howl ripped through the air.
My heart stopped.
Kresida’s face snapped toward mine, her dark eyes wide as the sound of the lost wolves of Lotrennia echoed through the forest.
Impossible, my heart chanted, as the pained cry of a wolf dragged out in a long, quivering note.
The phantom bite of a tattoo needle dug its fangs into my shoulder. The outline of my own wolf skull burned against my skin as if reacting to the call of its master.
We moved.
The howl cut off in a jerky, pained yip as Kresida and I raced through the trees, leaping silently over rocks and roots, twisting through leaves and ducking beneath branches.
My pulse banged beneath my skin. Flames licked to life as my power surged through my veins at the desperate plea in the wolf’s cry. Hurry.We had to hurry.
Muffled grunting and slurping reached our ears, and I forced myself to slow. Kresida matched my pace as the disturbing sounds became louder. Our forms lowered as the trees thinned. The leaves became brighter as the sun stabbed through the thick canopy above our heads.
A trampled path opened before us, and the potent scent of blood shoved into my nostrils. Moments later, the bright, crimson evidence of it lay smeared across the ground.
Movement pulled our gazes to a small clearing ahead, and we dipped into a low crouch as we crept through the brush.
A quiet rage grew in the storm of flames that rose in my chest as I took in the scene before us. Two human-like forms knelt in the blood-soaked dirt.
Ganmira’s long, pointed ears stuck out from beneath her jet-black hair, her naked skin as dark Lyvia’s shadows. Talons formed at the end of her long, stretched fingers, and she jabbed them into the lifeless form below her.
Renova’s snow-white skin was covered in blood. A long drape of hair covered her face as she shoveled crimson muscle and tendons into her mouth. My own mouth flooded with saliva as nausea rose, but the building wrath surged forward, squashing my own weakness.
I forced my eyes on the face of the dead wolf.
