Page 19 of Dream Reaper

“I’m not sure you’re the person I would trust to teach me such a thing.”

Ava impaled him with a look he couldn’t quite interpret, but he found himself rather wishing he did know what it meant.

“Suit yourself,” was all she said, and it was more than a little sulky.

I will, thank you very much.

They headed toward the structure, crossing the open meadow. The wind blew heavily against them, unfettered by the thick branches of the trees. It carried a sickly sweet scent, like rot.

Usually open places didn’t bother him, but here—in this unfamiliar land—unease rippled over Jerrid’s skin as they marched across the open patch of ground. Goose bumps prickled his arms, and he rubbed them vigorously.

When he looked over his shoulder, he caught Ava staring into the forest to their left with a frown. Could she sense it too? This feeling of…wrongness?

Perhaps they were both tired.

Or losing our minds.

They reached the edge of the clearing and forced their way through a brittle patch of briars. The branches were long dead and snapped easily as Jerrid pushed against them. The trees thickened around them once more, but instead of bringing relief, a heavier feeling of dread fell over him.

“The air feels so dense here,” Ava complained, breathing heavily as she tramped close at his heels. “It’s like there isn’t enough of it.”

Jerrid grunted his agreement. What he wouldn’t give to be high in the wide-open sky right now, dancing with clouds instead of battling his way through briars.

Behind him, Ava muttered something under her breath. Apparently, she wasn’t enjoying this any more than he was.

“I would have thought someone like you would enjoy being out in this.”

Her loud footsteps faltered. “Someone like me?”

“You know,”—he shot a look over his shoulder—“a healer. Don’t you people like being out in nature and stuff?”

She narrowed her eyes at him, hands clasping her hips. “For your information, people like me don’t enjoy being out in the unpleasant elements any more than anyone else. I prefer a nicely tended garden or greenhouse, thank you very much.”

He mouthed an “oh” but quickly turned back to the path he was attempting to create through the undergrowth. While he hadn’t meant to nettle her, clearly he’d done a bang-up job of it.

They stepped out of the thicket into an open space. Jerrid paused, his gaze skimming down to the steep ravine below them. It carved through the forest like a scythe, about a quarter mile wide at its thickest point. The bank on their side plunged in a nearly vertical drop for a good fifty feet.

Ava whistled as she leaned around him to peek over the edge of the cliff. “We won’t be going down that way, unless you have a lot of rope hiding in your pockets.”

He grunted.

“Which direction should we go? The ruins are almost directly across from us.”

To the right, the ground sloped upward as it followed the widest curve of the scythe. The terrain looked rockier and unpleasant. Going south, however, the ravine sloped downward…although, if Talos was still lurking around, that route would take them back in his direction.

“That way looks easier,” Ava said when he took too long to make up his mind.

“Yes, but it takes us back in the direction of Talos.”

“Oh.” She pursed her lips and reconsidered the rockier route to the right, a wrinkle forming between her eyebrows. “That way would take us longer though. It makes more sense to go down to find a way into the ravine than to go higher up.”

Exactly what he had been thinking. He slanted a look at her, grudgingly impressed that she had followed his line of thinking unprompted.

“Or,” she hedged, nibbling on her lower lip, “we could give up the ruins altogether and try to find our supplies somewhere else.”

His admiration withered and died a horrible death.

“And where exactly,” he said, with a tone so sarcastic it could not be missed by the densest of people, “do you propose we do that? These woods are teeming with towns and villages. We have so many to choose from.”