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“Mercy, Téron. What is this abou’?” An aged woman with silver-streaked hair opened the old door and stepped out of the dwelling.
I stamped my feet and strained my neck toward the forest edge of the city. “Ellehra—she—”
The horn sounded again, further away this time, and a filthy Atsunic word shot past my tongue. A warm hand gripped my wrist, and I turned to face the woman. Her eyes filled with concern as she placed her other hand on my daughter’s head.
“Shades and whispers.” Orlagh let me go. “Is she all righ’?”
“I don’t know. I don’t ...” Another curse, another agitated shuffle of the feet.
Her mouth pressed into a thin line. “Go, then. Go to yer wife.” She turned her attention to Amyrah, waiting calmly at her feet. “I’ll take care of this sweet bairn.” She gave a tender smile.
With little more than a dip of the chin, I took off down the street.
“Téron.”
Myrzeth seemed to glow in the gloom. I raced up to him and slid to a stop.
“Have you seen her? Ellehra?” I panted, staring wildly into the trees.
“You need to calm down.” The young man planted himself between me and the forest. I lurched to go around him, but he stepped deftly into my path. “The Hunt has already started. There’s nothing you or I can do about that now.”
Furious, I glared at him with all the intensity of a furnace. “I am calm,” I said, eliciting an eyebrow raise from Myrzeth. “But she is out there, throwing herself right in their path. I can bring her back.”
His cold hands clamped around my forearms. “Think about it, brother. The kaligorven are only interested in the solas. They will pay no attention to her. And I am sure the hunting party is too far ahead for her to interfere.”
Beads of sweat dripped down my temples as I looked from the blackness to Myrzeth and back again. His firm hands rose and fell with the heaving breaths that shuddered my entire frame. I shook my head. “No ... no, I have to go out there.”
He jolted me until my eyes were his again. “What will it accomplish? Let the Hunt take place. Don’t make a fool of yourself.”
For a beat, I wondered if he was right. Ellehra was foolhardy. Maybe this would be the moment she learned to back down. But reason broke through.
“Who are you to counsel me?” I ripped my arms from his grip and took a step back. “You are just a boy—not yet a man.”
Tentacles of ténesomni seemed to wrap around Myrzeth, and a darkness filled his irises. But he said nothing.
“I have let you fill my head with nonsense about the Shrouded, but I really should have been paying attention to my family.”
As I stepped away from him and under the roof of the treetops, holding my lantern out ahead of me, I caught his subdued reply. “One day, you will know how wrong you were.”
I would have turned around right there and given him a physical answer to his poison-tipped words, but that was when the screaming started.
I do not remember that wild plunge into the woods. I do not remember dropping the lantern, or earning the gash that spilled blood all over the side of my face.
What I do recall is the surging of my heart inside my chest, so hard and fast that pain rushed through my body at each pump.
Somehow, I never questioned where to go. An irresistible force propelled me to the exact place where light died, where the tether between me and my beloved snapped.
What did I expect to find? A horde of dark beasts feasting on her flesh?
There was nothing there except her, incandescence seeping from the hundreds of punctures in her once-perfect skin.
Mangled body, twisted limbs. Yellow dress, torn to shreds. Her face oddly peaceful. I tried to press my hands to the gashes, my hands soaked in the blinding light that flowed from those mortal wounds.
The solas did this, I screamed inwardly, but only strange wails issued from my lips.They rewarded her pure faith with a violent end.
That wicked lie took root that day, sending me down a terrible path that would haunt me for years to come.
“It’s been a long time since we’ve been able to have a chat.”
