Page 93 of Blood & Claw

Dumping the rolled blankets and water skins next to Rùn, Ailsa went to fetch the saddle. Dale was taking his time. Kayla would already be on the move, and she’d had enough of Fern’s unsettling observations. “Really?”

“Different from him.” Ailsa turned to see that Fern was leaning toward her, nostrils flaring as she took another sniff. “Ice. And something metallic … like blood.”

Cold slid through her chest. Blood?

Fern’s gaze roamed over her face, scrutinizing. A moment later, she drew back, a groove etching between her finely arched brows. “You both smell like … predators.”

A twig snapped behind Ailsa.

“Good … you’re both up.” Heart pounding, she glanced over her shoulder to see Dale emerge from behind a large oak on the far side of the glade. He moved toward them, boots crunching on frost, limping slightly. “Time to get going.”

“Watch yourselves with the Circines in The Goatfells. They don’t welcome visitors.”

Darach nodded as he cinched Rùn’s girth. He appreciated the warning, although he wouldn’t say so.

Fern already treated him like he was a wet-behind-the-ears pup, and he didn’t enjoy being patronized.

All the same, he hadn’t traveled farther north into The Uplands than this before.

The Goatfells loomed ahead. Lawless ground, if the tales were true. Hill tribes. No crown ruled up there.

“Which way are you headed now?” he asked, vaulting up onto his stallion’s back.

He itched to be rid of Fern. She put him on edge.

It didn’t help that the beast was growing restless again. The fucker had pushed and clawed all evening, and he’d awoken before dawn to a throbbing pain in his thigh. His breathing was now tight, his nerves taut.

The two of them, Ailsa and Fern, had been whispering together earlier when he emerged from the trees. A conversation that had abruptly ended upon his arrival.

He didn’t like that either.

Ailsa’s already pale skin had turned the color of bone. Her face looked thinner than it had a few days ago. She’d appeared shaken. Frightened even.

What had Fern said to her?

“Golval Barrow isn’t far from here,” Fern replied, adjusting the dagger belt around her hips, before strapping on the quiver of arrows and shouldering her bow. The day before, she’d been half-dead, and now, she looked fresher than either him or Ailsa. “I will return to Sheehallion there.”

Despite his impatience to part ways from Fern—to strike out into The Goatfells after Kayla—curiosity pricked at Darach. Shee used barrows, portals between this realm and theirs. Malevolent wraiths, wights, protected those burial mounds. They allowed the Shee to pass, but not Marav. He wondered what it would be like to cross into Sheehallion, to see the land of eternal spring.

Like all his people, he’d never get the chance.

Wordlessly, he held out a hand to Ailsa. She took it and sprang up lightly behind him. However, her body felt as rigid as a plank of wood this morning.

Aye, whatever Fern had whispered had rattled her.

“Thank you … both.” The words, spoken sincerely, made Darach glance Fern’s way once more. She was watching them, her expression solemn now. “Coming to a stranger’s aid is no small thing … I’ll remember it.”

Darach nodded, acknowledging her, even as his stomach tightened. She shouldn’t include him in her thanks. Ailsa was the soft-hearted one.

Something caught his eye in a nearby oak then. Bare branches were silhouetted against a grey morning sky. A huge black raven was watching him.

He stilled. Was it the same one they’d spied twice the day before?

He jerked his attention back to Fern then, just as she turned, braid swinging. And then, she stalked away without a backward glance. With a loud caw, the raven launched itself from the branch and took flight, following her into the trees.

Darach watched them both go, frowning.

Enough of this. Gathering the reins, he urged Rùn into a canter, northeast.