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I’d never seen spiders look like that before. The poisonous ones I could identify didn’tglow.
“What do wedo?” My voice didn’t sound like my own. It was shrill and filled with glass shards. My fingertips started to buzz beneath the leather of my gloves, a prickling sensation that coursed up and down my arms. For a moment, darkness edged in on all sides, and a coldness unlike anything I’d ever known chilled my blood.
Jude twisted to me, an irate look gracing his severe features as he unexpectedly lunged, the broad palms of his hands roughly colliding with my shoulders. “You need to leave. NOW!” he roared, inadvertently pushing me to the ground in his attempt to usher me away.
I crashed onto the packed earth with a resounding thud, my attention drawn to the atrocity taking place in front of me. I couldn’t look away.
And I would have givenanythingto have been able to.
Carter’s shaved head was covered in black legs and moving bodies, his brawny form thrashing back and forth across the packed dirt. I might have screamed myself as I helplessly watched him curl into a ball, his arms and legs contorting. Shriveling.
Shrinking.
Blood flowed across the packed dirt, the red appearing nearly black. The insects wove around his face, biting mercilessly into chunks of flesh as he wailed.
No one was doing anything to help him! He was dying a horrible and painful death, and my commander wasn’t doing a damn thing.
The prickling in my fingers grew, as did the shadows, the black wisps of midnight gliding across my eyes, turning the dimly lit tunnel impossibly dark. Yet I could make out Carter, could hear his pitiful begging.
“He’s gone!” Jude growled, reading my look of violent outrage. “One bite would kill him, and he’s been bitten over a hundred times.”
But he still screamed, still fought. Crying through the sheer agony of being eaten alive.
If Carter was already past saving, he needed to be put out of his misery. I might not have known him well, but I couldn’t sit back andwatch.
My hand shot to my belt, and before I could think about it, I sent my dagger sailing through the air—
Straight through Carter’s right eye.
The shrieks instantly ceased, his flayed and mutilated body going motionless. I choked on an inhale, a biting shiver running down the length of my spine.
Carter was dead.
And I’d just killed him.
Jude lowered his gaze to me for only the briefest of seconds, a flicker of sorrow darkening his brown eye to an impossible black.
Before the spiders could finish their meal, Jude’s torch landed on his fellow Knight’s lifeless shell, his black clothing catching the flames before the rest of the fire scorched him.
It wasn’t the sight of the spiders feasting on his mutilated body that propelled me to twist over and retch, but rather, the smell of burning flesh. Burninghair.
I heaved my earlier meal of nuts and granola, my hands fisting the dirt as I emptied my stomach. The smell suffocated me. The ash and smoke and Carter’s phantom wails—
Two powerful arms reached around my waist, hauling me up and away. Away from the charred Knight who had given his life to his kingdom. Who’d died in the worst way imaginable.
My head pressed against a broad chest, and an arm slipped around my waist, supporting me in case my knees gave way. I knew I was moving, but the putrid smell still clogged my nostrils, and my mind replayed the last few minutes over and over again until it was all that I could see.
My rational side argued that Carter had already been gone. That I’d saved him from more misery. But I wasn’t thinking rationally.
I’d neverkilledbefore.
Above the smoldering fumes and singed human flesh, I smelled a hint of pine and musk as my nose nuzzled into Jude’s shirt.
Patrick’s voice sounded from far away, joined by Nic’s and Jake’s.
Suddenly, there were more hands touching me, rubbing at my skin. Comforting words were murmured into my hair, words I didn’t catch. The blanket of night that had cloaked my vision began to wane, as did the stinging in my fingertips as reality settled in and robbed all else.
Ikilledsomeone.
