Page 9 of Dream Reaper

The human threw back his head with a roar. The sound that ripped from his throat was inhuman, monstrous, echoing in the forest like incessant peels of thunder.

Talos yelped, wiggled free, and flung himself to the side.

She too flung herself to the side, toward a broad oak tree to her left. She reached up, caught a low-hanging branch in her bound hands, and swung herself behind the safety of the trees just as one of Talos’s firebombs hurtled past her.

The heat of it blistered the side of her cheek and filled her nostrils with the stench of burning hair.

Ducking behind the oak, she swatted at her hair to make sure that she wasn’t on fire. Talos bellowed something unintelligible, and Ava peered around the trunk to watch the dark elf thrust another ball of fire toward the human.

Was he even human?

Two massive wings ripped free of the stranger’s back, shredding through the low-hanging branches of the surrounding trees.

One of those wings knocked Talos clean off his feet and sent him hurtling into the shadows of the forest. He shrieked as he skidded past Ava and vanished into the darkness.

The human—the creature—stalked after him, ripping a branch from a tree and swinging it in front of him like a club. He swung it wildly, and Ava ducked to avoid being bludgeoned or decapitated.

Branches and leaves showered down on her as she tried to wrap her bound arms over the back of her head to protect herself.

“Please…” she choked out.

But the human stomped past her, his boot sinking into a pile of leaves mere inches from her face. Then he was gone, leaving her to wonder if anything she had just witnessed was real. How hard had she been hit on the head? Was she hallucinating?

Ava picked herself up, staring into the darkness of the Shadewood. Talos loosed a bloodcurdling curse. The forest exploded in angry blue sparks as the dark elf released his magic yet again. She caught glimpses of hurtling shadows, sweeping wings, flailing limbs.

Then darkness until another fireburst exploded.

An inhuman howl washed over her, causing goose bumps to prickle across her skin and ice to race down her spine.

“Go,” she said for her own benefit. “Go, go…”

With one last confused glance over her shoulder, she put her back to the battle taking place and ran for her life. She’d rather face the danger she didn’t know than face the creature bearing down on Talos.

He’d brought this on himself, and she wasn’t going to stay around to see how it turned out for him. Hopefully, the man with the wings would kill him, and by the time he was finished, Ava needed to be as far away as possible.

She didn’t know what direction she ran. There was no trail to follow, no light to guide her other than the glow from her fracturing bonds. The farther she got from Talos, the weaker the magic pulled.

She wriggled her wrists as she crashed between two tall, spindly saplings, reveling when her wrists moved more freely.

“Come on!”

All she needed was one good tug…

She realized her mistake the moment the magical chains popped and dissipated into blue sparkles. As the sparks stung her bare arms, Ava skidded to a halt and gasped as darkness closed in around her.

She’d broken the magic and left herself alone in the forest with no light.

Painful breaths exploded from her lungs as she snapped her fingers and tried to summon a spark of her own magic. Just a small, meager flame to light her way…

But her magic ignored her, cowering in the corner of her mind. Weak and useless.

Ava stretched out both hands and stumbled forward, completely blind. Was this what life was like for the prince she served? The one she had tried and failed to heal? How did he live in this endless void and not go mad?

She could feel her sanity slipping away from her with every step she took deeper into the void.

One wrong step and she’d careen down another ravine or walk face-first into another nameless horror. Danger lurked all around her, behind every tree and shadow. She longed to drop to her knees and curl into a ball on the ground, waiting for death to come for her.

But she had to get out of this forest and go home to her brother, to Peregrin.