“Ronan, I don’t like this.”
He shakes his head, not turning around to look at me. Entranced by something ahead of him. “It’s just up there. The altar.”
“Ronan.” I grab his hand. I don’t know how I know, but I need to stop him from seeing what’s up there. “Please.”
He shrugs from my grip, and that’s when I’m certain something is wrong. I speed up to walk around him, trying not to feel the oppressive sense of foreboding that weighs me down, trying to ignore the strange, high-pitched ringing in my ears.
I stand in front of him, looking up into his blank expression. “Ronan, please. It’s me.”
His eyes snap to mine, and they’re empty. Dark and malevolent. I stumble backwards, and his expression clears, his eyes returning to their normal golden-brown hue.
They soften and then startle when he sees my face. “What happened? What’s wrong?” He pulls me to him, and his heart pounds against my ear.
“I don’t know. I don’t like it here. You weren’t yourself.”
“No, I wasn’t. I’m sorry. I thought I felt…but you’re right. It’s the magic in this place, the scouring magic. It has to be. I didn’t think they would have bothered to come up here, but clearly they did.” He gestures at the barren ground.
I’m not so certain itisthe scouring magic that we’re feeling. That feels wrong too, but not like this. The scouring magic feels lifeless, like something vital is missing.
This place feels like death.
“Can we go back now? I don’t think we’re meant to be here—”
There’s a loud screech from below.
“Kira,” says Ronan, grabbing my hand and running towards the camp.
In our haste, I don’t notice where we’re going until we pass over it.
The altar. I can’t see it, but I feel it. It pulls on me, urging me downwards, inviting me somewhere dark and horrible, somewhere outside of time…
And then it’s gone. The feeling passes as soon as it came on.
“Did you feel that?” I ask Ronan as we run.
“Like stepping into a grave,” he says. “This place is cursed.”
I shudder, my shoulders tightening as we run, desperate to put that terrible place behind me. I have the urge to look back and see if something is following us, but I’m too paralyzed by terror to turn around.
It’s just the magic,I tell myself as the hair rises on the back of my neck.Just the magic,I think as I feel the wind of the sickle, as I hear its whistling sound.
The sight of the camp below is what snaps me out of it.
We’ve been ambushed.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Ronan tears down the hill, flinging light into our attackers as our friends wake to find themselves surrounded.
There are at least twelve of them. They’re all dressed similarly in dusty brown clothes, Nithyrian possibly, but the clothes are too threadbare to be certain. It’s a cold morning, but none of them have cloaks, and most of them are without boots, even.
“How could we have missed them?” I say, pulling a woman away from Quinn with my shadows. We scouted the area before we made camp for the night from Kira.
“The caves in the hillside,” says Ronan as he draws his sword. “The ruins were empty.”
Kira screeches again and rears back, tearing a bandit woman’s hand off with her beak.
“See?” shouts Quinn from the ground, catching one of the attacker’s clothes on fire. “Bitey was being gentle.”
