AllFreeNovel
Share Us
There, on the bridge to Windhelm, was a single figure walking towards us. Lithe, feminine, and entirely alone, was a woman whose confident stride easily identified her as Malys Wolfsbane even though I had never seen her before in my life. Valerian stood in front of me, Balahil’s Elk became instantly unsettled, as did Balahil himself.
I was about to open my mouth to call out to the advancing crone, but she pointed at us, and while I didn’t see a flash of light or feel any magic, I heard Balahil begin to choke and gargle. Hot blood spilled from a wound in his throat, his eyes rolled back into his skull, and he started to convulse.
I couldn’t help myself; I ran over to him and placed my frantic hands on the wound in his neck. I couldn’t see what had caused it, but that didn’t matter. The damage was done, and it was severe. He was dead in an instant, and now I had his blood on my hands.
CHAPTERSEVEN
Valerian pulled me away from Balahil’s corpse. He then smacked the elk on the ass and sent it, and the cart, scurrying off down the road, away from the woman coming toward us from across the bridge. I couldn’t think, I could barely take a solid breath. I had blood on my hands, actual blood on my hands. It wasn’t hypothetical anymore.
I had caused someone to die because I had brought Malys into existence.
“I need you to get behind me,” Valerian said.
I wouldn’t have been able to argue with him even if I had wanted to. The stink of the rapidly cooling blood on my hands was everywhere, assaulting my nostrils, invading my lungs. Stupidly, I wiped my hands on my clothes, but that only made things worse.
“We need to go!” Melina yelled, though her voice sounded distant to me, and somehowslow.
When I looked up at her, I saw her standing next to Colbolt, who looked entirely unsettled. Gullie was buzzing around them both; she was also yelling for Valerian and me to run toward them, to leave this place of death.
But I knew I couldn’t leave. She wasn’t about to let us just leave; she was almost on top of us already, her lithe silhouette looking far closer than it had been mere seconds ago. The way she moved, the way she walked, the way her hips swayed, it was with utter confidence and calm.
She wasn’t worried that she was alone, and that there were five of us. Malys didn’t care that she was outnumbered, nor did she seem to care that Valerian was with us. Surely she knew about him, or knew enough about him to understand the kinds of abilities he had. Of all of us, he was the only one wielding a weapon, after all.
The fact that she wasn’t afraid of him, or of any of us, made me even more terrified of her than I already was.
“Amara!” Valerian said, his voice snapping me out of my trance. “Are you with me?”
“I… yes. I am,” I said, shaking off the daze I had been in. It was as if the world suddenly came into focus; time reasserted itself, the sounds around me grew sharper, and clearer, and I was no longer entirely focused on the blood on my hands.
“Good,” he said, “Because we’re going to need your help.”
“What we need to do is get the hells out of here!” Gullie yelled. “Before she gets here!”
“She’s already here,” came Malys’ voice. It low, and husky; like the purr of a jungle cat. She was already standing at our end of the bridge, only a few feet from where we were standing… and for the first time in my life, I got a good look at the woman pretending to be me.
I had expected a doppelganger, but that wasn’t at all the case. Malys was lithe, and tall, and while her skin was as fair as mine and some of our facial features were similar,similarwas about where the line was drawn.
Instead of antlers rising from the crown of her head, she had curved ram’s horns that traced the shape of her skull, their points ending along the sides of her jaw. Her hair was dark, and long, and there, nestled between those horns was a crown that looked like it was made of pure, white ice, adorned with blue jewels.
She angled her head to the side slightly and smiled at me, her purple painted lips parting to reveal perfect, pearly white teeth and two enlarged and sharpened canines. “Hello, Amara,” she said, as if she were greeting an old friend, “I have been eager to see you again.”
“Don’t come any closer,” said Valerian, wielding his sword in front of him like he was ready to fight.
Malys’ striking violet eyes swung over to him. “This is a private conversation,” she said, “I suggest youshut up.”
I felt something, then; a pulse of magic that was so subtle, I may not have detected it if I hadn’t been as focused on her as I was.
Valerian suddenly dropped his sword. He grabbed hold of his throat and began to hack. My heartrate shot up. I turned to him and tried to look at his throat, horrified that I was about to see blood gushing out of it. There wasn’t any blood, but he was having trouble pulling in any kind of breath.
“Valerian!” I yelled, as he fell to his knees. He was struggling to breathe, each inhalation was labored, and raspy, but hewasbreathing. I glared at Malys. “What did you do to him?!”
“I just gave him something to think about,” she said. “And you…”
“Release him from this magic.”
Malys’ eyes narrowed. “Or what?” she asked. “You and your friends have no power here. The sooner you realize that, the sooner we can have a conversation.”
“We have nothing to talk about.”
