Page 38 of Heart of Night and Fire

She choked on a laugh and then groaned again as the movement made her head throb. “Don’t be charming—I almost died.”

Vikram grinned, but his smile dropped away as he looked outside.

The shower of eggs appeared to be tapering off. After several more minutes, the eggs finally stopped as the scarlet birds cleared away, disappearing into the clouds, their distant shrieks carrying on the wind.

“What were those?” Zarya asked, peering up at the sky.

Vikram shook his head, his brow furrowed with concern. “I don’t know. Another demon returned from the storybooks.”

“But it’s daytime,” she protested, and he regarded her with an expression that suggested he knew that and was extremely concerned about it.

“Can you walk?” Vikram placed a hand on Zarya’s back as she staggered to her feet. “We need to get you back to the city to get this taken care of.”

“I think so.”

Zarya and Vikram slowly emerged from the cave to a picture of destruction spreading as far as they could see. Shattered and whole eggs littered the ground; their shells were chipped, the shiny, smooth surfaces blemished. The eggs ranged vastly in size, the smallest as compact as limes, the larger ones nearly as tall as a person, though none matched the size of the original egg that had landed on their picnic. Massive banyan and neem trees sagged, split through the middle, their roots torn from the earth.

Zarya’s stomach had settled again, and she couldn’t help but notice the way her body reacted whenever the demons were near. She was sure it had grown worse since leaving the cottage. Had that happened when she’d lived on the shore? Sure, she’d always felt a bit queasy in the swamp, but she’d always put that down to its sticky, cloying air and her need to always be on alert.

What Zarya could feel now was the eggs’ life pulse, like a synchronized beat resonating through the forest.

“Do you hear that?” Zarya asked.

Vikram shook his head. “What?”

“There’s a… feeling. Like the air is breathing. You don’t notice that?”

“I don’t,” he said slowly, touching her head gently again, his brows drawn with concern. “We really need to get you to the healers. Come on.”

Right. That’s what it must be. Just a side effect of hitting her head. But she’d felt it when the first egg had fallen. Or at least she thought she had. She bit her lip as her heartbeat continued to thrum to the backs of her teeth.

Vikram looked around. “The horses ran off—do you think you can make it all the way back? I can leave you in the cave and bring help.”

“No, don’t leave me here. Not with these things. I’ll walk.” He nodded, holding out his hand. She grasped it, and they slowly picked their way through the forest.

“We should bring one of these back. Apsara or Kindle might want to examine one,” Vikram said, bending down to inspect an egg, but Zarya tugged him away.

“No. Don’t touch them. It’s just a feeling, but I don’t think you should.”

He gave her a quizzical look but nodded in agreement. “We’ll get you to the infirmary. We can send out soldiers to look for survivors. Let’s hope these didn’t land in the city, too.”

The silence between them was tense as they walked. If the demons were acting during the day with this much impunity, it signaled things really were changing. How much worse would they get before the blight swallowed everything whole?

Finally, they crested a hill that brought them into view of Dharati, the city spreading out before them.

They stopped dead in their tracks.

“No,” Vikram whispered before he broke into a run.

SIXTEEN

Zarya paused on the hilltop, surveying the scene. The north end of the city was now in ruins. Chunks had been scooped from the perimeter wall that now surrounded a row of jagged, broken outlines that once made up a series of houses and buildings. Smoke rose in grey plumes, and the screams of the wounded carried on the wind.

Vikram stopped at the bottom of the hill and looked up at her, the lines around his eyes tight.

“I’m fine. You go,” she called down. He shook his head and waited for her to descend, taking her hand before they both picked up their pace.

The moment they passed through the city gates, soldiers descended on Vikram, seeking his orders on how to proceed. He began shouting out commands to search for the injured and to seal up the gates, along with demands for construction crews to begin work immediately on repairing the damaged portions of the wall.