AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Dolus grinned at me. “What would suit you better?”
I shook my head. I wasn’t in the mood for games today, and Dolus looked like he was in a good mood. That was dangerous territory. The gods had different ideas of “fun,” and Dolus looked like he could be on the dark side of the god spectrum if he wanted to be.
“You’ve been distant lately,” Dolus remarked.
“Yeah?” I hadn’t thought he’d been around at all.
“Yeah. We should get together more often. We should talk. If you want to do this thing, we can’t just sit on our hands.”
I nodded. “Just say when, and I’m there.”
Dolus nodded back. “Good to know you’re still on board. I was starting to wonder there, what with you spending so much time with the human.”
“It’s just a pastime,” I said.
“Is it?”
“Are you saying I’m lying?”
“I don’t give a shit if you lie to me,” Dolus said matter-of-factly. “What really fucks you up is when you start lying to yourself.”
I was suddenly angry. Who the fuck did he think he was? I opened my mouth to ask just that when the atmosphere shifted and something dark crept into my forest. My attention jumped to my tree.
Dolus disappeared in a blink, and I was alone. The forest wasn’t empty, though. Someone was here. Judging by what I felt, I had an idea who it was.
I crept through the trees, taking care to move quietly. I sent out my magic, stretching across the trees. I hadn’t yet reached my tree when I saw him—ugly, determined, with dark energy hanging around him. Hatred was an ugly thing, and it twisted and changed humans until they were ugly, too. This one had a very unhealthy dose of hatred and anger, and it spread through the forest like a black fog. The plants curled away from it, and the druses in their trees shivered as he walked past.
They didn’t get out of their trees to stop him, to chase him away. As long as he did nothing to the forest—the druses only protected their own, usually—then they would let him go on his way.
I shut myself off from what I could see through my tree and moved through the forest. I wanted to know what the fuck he was doing here. Why was he back? They’d stopped looking here a while ago, moving on to a different part of the forest. Unless he had a good reason to come back to the vale, this man was lost.
I wanted to know what was going on.
I reached my tree and looked around. He wasn’t here anymore. I closed my eyes and looked for the darkness, the strange, unsettling sensation that came with this man’s energy. He was here somewhere. I could sense it.
A twig snapped behind me, and I spun around.
“I thought I was alone in these woods,” he said gruffly, suddenly right behind me. His face was twisted in a permanent snarl that looked like it was the only way it knew how to be.
“Really?” I asked coolly. “It looked to me like you were looking for someone.”
That got his back up. His neck stiffened, and his arms hung by his sides.
“What do you know about it?” he demanded.
“I know you’re a long way from home,” I said. “It’s best you go back to where you came from.”
He bared yellow, broken teeth at me. “Why don’t you mind your own business?” he sneered.
“You being in this forest is my business,” I said. “So get the fuck out of here before I make you leave.”
The man burst out laughing. The sound scraped against my skin.
“If I didn’t know any better, that sounded like a threat. I know you’re not stupid enough to threaten me, boy.” With those words, he unsheathed a large knife with a gleaming blade.
I studied the blade calmly. “I don’t think you’re going to use that,” I said.
“Yeah? You seem to know a hell of a lot for someone who’s got jackshit to do with any of this.”
