Not yet.
She wants them to get closer. Wants them right on top of us.
Something brushes the bark on the other side of the tree I’m hiding behind. It ripples through the rings. I hold my breath when the pressure of this dark void begins to remind me of Hazel’s touch.
Shadows cast over the forest, deeper and darker than any nighttime. Than any overhang of branches. Even with Greer glowing in the night, the shadows close in. Sneaking up my legs and between the laces in my top. Stringing around my ribs so I’m fighting to pull in a breath.
Greer shakes her head again, even as shadowy fingers scratch at the flesh of my arm and neck. Surrounding me like a cast of darkness that can’t be seen, but I feel it there. Climbing. Ready to wrap its fingers around my throat and drink my magic from my bones.
Leaves crunch, and critters scatter. Birds take flight. I wonder if even the bone spiders hide deeper in theforest with the approach of whatever is on the other side. A breeze wafts between the trees. Warm and stale like an exhale from the seventh stratum of Sarrow as it clings to my tongue. I hold my breath and try not to vomit.
Something sings at a distance. A siren song of magic that has no words. No voice. It is simply a sound that urges me to leave my hiding place.
The dagger heats in my hand, and I use that as my grounding point. My toes are warm in my boots. The ground is uneven beneath my feet, but steady and firm. I am not drifting with those shadows, even as I watch them twist and twine in a dance that begs for me to seek it.
Greer’s silver eyes brighten, and she is the light in the night sky. While a kingdom looks to me for salvation, I look to her. Until the final snap of a twig is too close and fear lances my chest.
Only then does Greer nod her head a single time. One moment, she’s standing with her sword, and the next, she is everywhere.
She is the dance in the night. The warrior of a thousand paintings and stories.
Shadows wrap around us, and their nails are so long they rip through the leather as they scratch at me. I shove off the tree while Greer cuts like a star through the night sky. A barreling ball of light, driving back the shadows. There’s nothing physically there to fight. Ravagers only take form when forced to. But when Greer drops to a knee and drives her sword upward, a body solidifies around the blade.
The ravager barely looks Fae, with dark, stringy hair and white eyes. His fangs are out as blood spurts from the large gash in his chest.
It rains over Greer, but she doesn’t flinch. If anything, it fuels her fury. She shoves the ravager from her blade and spins, strikinganother one at the throat. Her head comes cleanly off, rolling to a stop at my feet.
I jump back, but something catches me from behind. It wraps me completely as if there is no end to its arms or body. It is the shadow that casts from the trees, and it is the absence of light.
When I was a child, Father told me the tales of ravagers. The taste of magic was not enough. What was in their veins was not enough. So they opened an artery in another, and one drink became a faucet of need. More and more, they fed the surge of magic that filled them until they were desperate. Until they drained their own families dry. Then their villages.
Father always ended his stories with a reassurance that they were lost in the lore, no longer real. But as these fingers of death grip me, I know his comfort was a lie. Like the ones told in the kingdom about the human girl who will save them.
Hope in a dying land.
It’s almost laughable. But as long as I have fight left, I will continue trying.
Lifting the dagger with both hands, I drive it behind me, nearly nicking myself in the side as I thrust it into something solid. The ravager forms. No longer a breath of darkness but an actual being I can fight.
I might be human, but Icanfight. For Greer and for Lune.
For Callum.
For Letia, who I want to believe is still on the other side of the tumultuous sea.
I will even fight for the king, who is cold and merciless and using me.
Blood drips down my dagger as I pull it free and spin around. Up close, the stench of the ravager is nearly unbearable. It’s worse than any funeral pyre. Worse than the dungeon of corpses at the palace.
The ravager rolls his white eyes until they turn red. No iris, no pupil. No glow like I’m used to from the Fae. Flat and empty.
His eyes can barely be considered eyes at all. They are pits that widen and seep. Tar tears trickle down his face as he stares at me, clicking his sharp teeth.
I take a step back, faintly hearing Greer to my right, battling two others. But I don’t dare take my eyes off the ravager. The second I do, he might slip back into his shadowy form, making him impossible to fight.
Staring into his heartless eyes, I cling to his gaze and force him to still. Refusing to let him become a murmur on the wind.
The ravager smiles, and it is the most alarming sight. Blood gushes from where I stabbed him, but he feels no pain.
