AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“She’s weak,” a gruff voice says. The one beside me on the left tightens his grip, and it feels like my body tries to pull away. I’m rooting for it to be free, but I can’t help myself from where I float above.
My body is no longer my own. I should be terrified, but I’m not.
“She’s fine. Keep moving,” says a deep voice that rolls against my skin like velvet.
Wait. I can understand them!Except that their voices are far away, further down the tunnel than I am, and I want to catch up to where they’re tugging my body along.
Are they even really talking, or am I imagining it?
Probably I’m hallucinating. My conscious mind knows that, like it knows that none of this is real. It can’t be. But the pain in my head, the throb of my pulse inside my brain, says otherwise. Panic burns in my veins and my body begins to struggle, but they continue to move me forward, unhindered through the tunnel that smells like earth and my own fear.
“It’s okay.” I don’t know which one is speaking, but the slow cadence, the gentle tone, comforts me. A moment later, or a year, I can’t tell, we emerge into the forest and the light of morning hurts me, so I shield my eyes with my hand.
We’ve gone only a few steps, maybe more, I don’t know, when I see a black cloud, ominous, just a few yards ahead. It moves like black smoke, only it’s made out of something thicker than smoke. Oil maybe. It spreads out as far as I can see in that direction, and even up so high that I can’t tell where it ends.
I don’t want to go near it, but it summons me much the same as these beasts draw me toward them. The slow-moving, twisting, black cloud holds answers. It holds something dark and dangerous that wants to consume me, I’m sure of it.
But if the beasts see it, they don’t react. They continue forward on a path I can’t see.
I want to ask them about it because it feels significant, but my mouth doesn’t seem to work. We move away from it until it’s hidden by the trees. And for some reason, I can no longer see it in the sky. Not at all.
Which is impossible.
I’m definitely hallucinating.
The forest moves around me like I’m speeding through a cave, and the early morning sun is rising and climbing across the sky in the blink of an eye. The second cave they bring me to is much smaller, almost too small for the four of us, or even just for the three of them. The walls are closer, the ceiling shorter, and even though they don’t duck, the sheer size of one of them overpowers the space.
The green-eyed beast looks at me, and I must be hallucinating because I think he smiles, almost as if to say, “Welcome home.”
THREE
Ann
My eyes flash open, and I half expect to see the ceiling of my room in the dorm at Royal Fae Academy. I roll to my side, looking around me, but I don’t see my huge bed or white-washed walls, I just see…a cave. And three shadow beasts around a fire, eating.
Slowly, I sit up, and all eyes go to me. I’m lying on some kind of bedroll near them. My throat feels dry and sore, and my head spins a little before the spinning stops.
What now?
“Do you...know me?” My voice is tentative, softer than I’ve ever heard myself, and I don’t know that I intended to talk, or if this is real, or if I understand what’s happening, but I have to try to figure out who they are, why I’m here, if I’m in danger of some sort.If I can only get around to why I’m here, I’ll be able to figure out how to get away.
Or if I want to get away.Which is a strange thought. Of course I want to get away! Yes, it’s true I don’t have my mate any longer, and that Esmeray is my only true friend. But I miss my dads… That’s enough reason to go home.Right?
But what if you only imagined the shadow beasts talking? What if--?
“Yes, we know you.” The green-eyed shadow beast’s voice is soft, deep, not gruff like I would have expected from someone so big.
Okay, alright. Be calm. They can talk. You can understand them. This is progress.
“Why can I understand you now?” There’s some sorcery going on here. Maybe even some wickedness, although I don’t really get that sense. Despite their size, the overall menace between them, my senses tell me they aren’t dangerous. But this isn’t a typical enchantment or magic. This is more and, while I’m not frightened, I’m going to be careful.
“We made it so.” While the one I’d nicknamed Daddy continues to speak to me, the blue-eyed one communicates by hand with Tiny, the massive blond.
“How?”
For a second, I don’t think he’s going to answer me, and then he sighs. “We could speak some basic words of your kind after being kept prisoner, but we speak another language that doesn’t exist in this world. The brew we gave you allows you to speak our language and to understand it, without any effort.”
I’m speaking another language?I don’t know if I find that cool or terrifying.
