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So rather than try, rather than hope and see what we could be, I shut down.
“I’d appreciate it if you didn’t do that again.”
Something fractured inside me. They had been my words, my request, and still they cleaved at my heart. It wasn’t a clean break, either. It splintered and shattered into hundreds of shards, so that my hitched breathing was riddled with the burning pain of razor-sharp cuts. I’d been lying to myself to avoid this very feeling, thinking that vocalizing my emotions would make everything worse. I was wrong. Nothing could have prepared me for this, and no amount of hiding from the truth could have prevented the ache.
Gaige looked as if I’d slapped him. He opened his mouth to say something, but I started toward the clearing with every intent of never discussing this again.
“Wait.” He caught my wrist. Just like I had done to him. “You can’t walk away from this.”
“Why? You’ve done it countless times.” I refused to turn around and look at him. I was afraid that if I did, I’d see something in his gaze that would make it impossible for me to leave.
An exasperated groan met my ears. “Would you just look at me?”
“Let go of my hand, Gaige.” My throat bobbed, but I forced my voice to be even. Stern. “That’s an order from your guild master.”
He released me then, and the raw feeling of air against my skin burned. Even so, it was better this way.
This time when I walked away, he didn’t try to stop me.
I barely had a few minutes to gather myself before we sat down with the Charmers. I wasn’t positive I even fully absorbed the firsthandful of stories detailing the monster attacks. My mind was still on Gaige. Who, infuriatingly, had chosen to sit beside me. The tension rolling off him in waves was palpable, and Ozias and Calem continued to shoot him furtive glances. But as the stories went on, time softened some of the roiling emotions, and I was able to better grasp the Charmers’ accounts.
We spent several hours listening to multiple retellings, and the only thing consistent about the nature of their encounters was that they were entirely unexpected. Some had been logging in the woods and were careful not to disturb existing beast habits, yet they were bombarded by monsters just the same. Others were returning home after a beast hunt and found themselves face-to-face with what they thought were passive creatures, only to be blindsided by their vicious pursuit. Round and round the conversations went as we all asked the same questions with different slants, hoping a clue would reveal itself. But as we pushed aside tin plates, once full of food from our now devoured lunches, we were no closer to finding the cause of the seemingly random attacks.
Leena had braced her elbows on the table and steepled her hands, grazing the tips of her fingers with her lips. “Tell me again about the Havra ambush.”
Another bizarre incident. Havra were docile, nymphlike creatures with bark for skin and gangly limbs. They lived in trees, fed off berries and, according to Leena, were fairly easy to tame, maintaining strong bonds with Charmers. A full-scale, strategized attack—complete with sharpened staves from broken branches—made absolutely zero sense. As the Charmer in question began to recount the story for the fifth time, I removed my glasses and set them on the table.
“What do Raven and Kaori think about all this?” Ozias asked, pitching his voice low so as not to disturb the Charmer’s retelling.
Gaige shifted uncomfortably beside me; one ear tipped toward the story but his body pivoted toward us. Even with the distraction of the Charmers’ accounts, I was painfully aware of his every movement. That kiss had done something to me. Tuned me into him in a way that I could’ve never imagined. “They’ve already heard these tales. They’re just as confused as we are.”
“Should we consider moving everyone until the problem is resolved?” Noc subtly nodded to those around us.
“They won’t leave.” With a grimace, Gaige picked at the stitching of his glove. “They only just came back, and they’re committed to rebuilding their home. Not to mention, they’ve always lived around these creatures, albeit in a strained sort of harmony.”
Calem drilled his fingers restlessly against the wooden tabletop. “This is getting us nowhere. What about traps? Could we contain the monsters somehow?”
“We don’t even know what we’d be attempting to lure,” I said. “We need more to go off of.”
Noc sighed. “Maybe we’ll glean more information when Leena and I visit the towns bordering the forest. We’re missing something.”
Indeed we were. It took everything in me not to glance at Gaige as we fell into a tense silence. Despite the variety of locations, the encounters always happened within hours of Gaige’s wayward shadows. I didn’t want to acknowledge that, but I didn’t believe in coincidences. When those dark tendrils erupted from his frame and shot out into the woods with the speed of Lendria’s only train, it suddenly made the sporadic locations less confusing. A monster attack could happen virtually anywhere his shadows traveled, all within relatively the same time frame, give or take a few hours.
Gaige had to come to grips with his role in the matter. Ineededhim to because I didn’t want to be against him on this. It felt wrong to be on opposing sides after we shared…that. And while I believeda small part of him had come to accept what was happening, he’d yet to voice it. He’d shifted his attention back to the Charmer describing the Havra attack, but his expression was guarded. How much would he have to hear before he would admit the inevitable?
As the Charmer once again detailed the darkening woods and the rush of beasts, my ears prickled at the description. He’d said it the same way five times over, and each time one glaring, minute depiction nagged at my conscious. Darkening woods. One Havra lingering at the rear of the attack. Why didn’t it strike with the rest? And the Kitska Forest wasalwaysdark. Sunlight rarely permeated the thick network of branches, leaves, and pinesco pods, so any additional layering of darkness meant something else was blanketing out the light. Something like shadows.
I squeezed my eyes shut and blew out a breath, steeling myself for what I feared would invoke Gaige’s anger. Opening my eyes, I speared the Charmer with a pointed look. “You said ‘darkening woods.’ Did you see shadows?”
Gaige stiffened beside me but didn’t object. A small boon. The Charmer’s stare nervously bounced from Leena, to Gaige, to me. “I–I don’t know. It all happened so fast.”
“You said the Havras were normal beasts. But the one that didn’t attack… Was it undead? A Kitska beast?” I asked.
The Charmer rolled his lips together as he stared upward, seemingly in thought. “It’s possible. Kitska beasts tend to have different shades to their hides than normal beasts. This one did seem like it had been bleached of color, but again, it was dark. Hard to tell.”
“Like with the Slimacks,” Ozias said.
I nodded. Then I loosened a breath. “There seems to be…shadows aggravating the Kitska beasts.”
