Page 59 of Fated to the Wicked King

An odd roar grew from behind.

I cast a puzzled glance over my shoulder.

What had been a sleepy, quiet village had transformed into a war zone as every able-bodied villager had emerged. They poured out through doorways, from alleys, from behind fences and carts. Frenzied men and women charged after us with axes, sticks, blades, and tools turned into weapons.

Eyes wide, my mouth dropped open. “Are they chasing us?”

A pickaxe flying past my shoulder answered my question.

The king flung out his free hand, magic flicking the pickaxe away. It crashed through a cottage window.

“The only two people we came across our way seemed to be in a haze.” Breathless, Sophie ran alongside me. “They couldn’t tell us their names, or what they did for a living.”

An arrow whizzed past us.

Crying out in alarm, Sophie shoved me aside, widening the gap between us.

Darkness lashed backward in a violent arc, shadows tearing across the lane like living smoke. I caught the king’s gaze for a moment as he summoned his magic.

Three pursuers were hurled into a stone wall hard enough to crack timber beside them, while two more were snared at the ankles and dragged screaming into the snow. It should have slowed them.

It did not.

More people kept coming.

Gregory couldn’t mask his bewilderment. “What in the fresh tide’s name is going on?”

“They are like ghosts,” the king declared.

“Ghosts,” I echoed.

Souls whose hearts had been stolen by the Red Queen. They wandered across the land, in their own villages, sallow and stripped of feelings, moving through their day-to-day. A mindless mob of terrorized spirits, eager to drag everyone else down to join them in the wretched underworld.

I’d thought they had all been laid to rest once the Red Queen met her demise.

I had only encountered ghosts in Wünder once.

At the Hatter’s house.

“The Hatter,” I mumbled, my brain insisting I connect the dots despite the din of our harried escape.

We ran downhill through twisting paths barely wide enough for two abreast, boots slipping on ice and packed slush, shoulders striking fences and walls as we fought for speed.

My chest was burning. My legs shook. We had to keep going.

The king cast again, sending a wave of force through the lane that shattered a cart and blocked half the road behind us with splintered wood.

An arrow answered his attack, striking through his upper arm with a sickening thud.

He staggered, jaw tightening, but did not release me. Blood spread dark across his sleeve as he ripped the shaft free without slowing, tossing it aside into the snow.

His grip on my hand tightened. “This is part of what I have been finding in my investigation. These people have been afflicted with some type of…malady. Similar to what’s infected a percentage of Wünder on the other side of the river. Surely, you must have noticed. You interrogated many of them.”

I couldn’t breathe. “Are you saying this is the reason you’ve been decimating villages and kingdoms these past moons?”

Before he could reply, Sophie asked, her eyes wide in alarm, “Is it contagious?”

The king shook his head. “The villages will need to be cleansed, or the affliction will only spread. Until we know what’s actually causing it, we may all be at risk.”