AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“I had a suspicion.”
I smiled at the memory of our day at the castle.
“He brought me to see Windolek, his mother’s home when she was alive.”
A bittersweet sting caught in my breast at remembering the look on Goll’s face when he spoke of his mother. I’d folded the handkerchief he gave me and tucked it carefully in my satchel of clothes to keep it safe.
He had obviously loved his mother very much and lost her too young. And then his father locked him in a dungeon for years. It was remarkable that he’d grown to have such compassion. For though he liked to admonish himself for the blood he’d shed, there was such tenderness in his heart.
Perhaps it was his hardships that had forged a creature who longed for love. That was what I felt when he reached for me in the night and pulled me close, pressing his mouth tenderly to my skin.
Thinking of the wee babe now growing inside me, I rubbed the soapy cloth over my bare stomach, having lifted my chemise to my hips.
“What is that smile for?” asked Hava. “You have a secret.”
I hadn’t wanted to tell anyone yet. “I do.”
“Tell me,” Hava urged, running a cloth over one of her horns.
“Not yet. I want to—”
“Shh,” she snapped suddenly, her gaze darting to our left where the stream disappeared into the shadow of trees.
I froze, staring where she did. I didn’t hear anything.
“What is it?” I finally whispered.I didn’t have the heightened sense of hearing that Hava did.
“I thought I heard—there it is again.” Hava stepped backwards. “Get out of the water.”
I didn’t hesitate, sloshing through to the shallows and onto the soft bank.
“Meck!” I called.
My guards instantly turned and rushed over. Hava was still standing in the shallows, staring into the darkness.“I can’t see anything, but I can hear it.”
“What is it?” Ferryn demanded gruffly from beside me.
“Hava, get out of there,” I urged, stepping toward the shore. I was about to yank her out if she didn’t get to the bank.
“No.” Ferryn gripped my shoulder and firmly pulled me back, then stepped in front of me toward the edge of the water.
Then I heard it. The soft sloshing of water. Something was coming toward us in the brook, slow and steady. Then more splashing. More than one of them, whatever it was. My blood froze, remembering the maddened Meer-wolves. But those beasts had come at a sprinting run and attacked fiercely. Whatever this was, it was moving methodically slowly.
“Hava!” I cried.
Ferryn reached forward and grabbed Hava by the arm and hauled her back. Meck stepped in front of me, facing whatever was coming.
And while instincts urged me to run, I couldn’t move, frozen with both fear and frantic need to know what was coming for us. I could just barely make out movement in the shadows of the trees blocking the moonlight. Then they came into full view, marching up the stream in a staggered line, straight toward us.
“Gods save us.” I stumbled a step back, dropped the rag and soap I still had clutched in my hands, watching my nightmare come to life.
Skeletal fae—half-rotten in trappings of their graves—lurched slowly forward. Some had the bones of their once flesh-covered wings spread behind them. They were the dead of the shadow fae. But the shadow fae didn’t have the gift of neklia.
Meck jerked around but not to face me, his horrified and fear-stricken face on his brother. “How could you?” he ground out accusingly. Meck gripped his sword tight, pointing it toward Ferryn. “I won’t let you.”
My shocked gaze twisted behind me to see Hava on the ground beside Ferryn, unmoving. I gasped, disbelieving what was happening.
Ferryn glared at his brother, sword drawn as well.“You knew it would come to this.”
