Page 259 of Spring Guardians & Songbirds

Thora stuck her tongue out at him, and he quickly grabbed her jaw, pushing her tongue back on her mouth with a finger. “Careful, Princess.”

“Do I stop this, or do you stop this?” Kilian asked, staring at the bickering two.

I shrugged. “Let them play while they can.”

The forest was all sorts of odd from the outside but when we entered, it looked all normal, minus the grey fog that smelled like yeast.

A screech sounded in the distance and we all lifted our weapons, readying for whatever the veil was going to brew.

“Shit,” Mal bit out and Thora let an arrow loose toward where he was staring.

“What?” I asked, looking around till I noticed the human head rising from a puddle of mudd.

Ever so slow, the long-haired woman with a gnarly, bony face, pulled herself up on all fours and let out a high-pitched bawl that almost made my ears bleed. Something else peeked from behind the treeline ahead—another one. And another. And another dozen. Two dozen. Three—

We were surrounded. A throng of humans crawled on all fours towards us, tilting their heads to study us but not getting close or even attacking.

I took a step forward and one shot from the trees in my direction, howling like a banshee before Kilian slashed his black steel through it. The woman turned to a puddle of black tar. “The hells.”

I lifted a hand up, feeling the electricity skittering around my fingers and shooting bolts of it toward the creatures. It took no more than a minute for them all to melt and turn to black tar. “That was…easy.”

Mal shrugged though he was shaking a bit. “Henah probably didn’t count for a guardian to go through here.”

“I am not a—” A hand wrapped around my leg and dragged me down. My whole body lit with electricity and the gnarly woman rising from a puddle of tar turned back to liquid.

One by one, bodies rose from the ground again, creeping around us, doubling as it seemed so.

Kilian’s magic had turned the whole place into a black cloud, but the gnarly creatures tore right through it.

“It’s the mist,” I shouted. “Magic is useless.” No matter how many times we slashed through them, no matter how many times I zapped them with magic, they continuously rose, doubling and tripling till the forest began shrinking.

“Whose fear is this?” Kilian asked, slashing body after body.

A hand grabbed Thora’s hair and tugged. My sister didn’t scream, but a heart shattering sob left her mouth before she unsheathed a dagger and slashed it through her hair, cutting more than half its length. Ice had crawled around her, and it began spreading all over the forest coating the mist ashy white and the trees with a layer of frost.

Mal’s hands dug on the ground, his body enveloped in a black phantom fire that littered the humid air with a thick taste of magic, and every crawling body stopped in their tracks—frozen still, some mid-air and others from breaking through the earth. The Eldritch Commander breathed hard and heavy, his eyes entirely black.

He had stopped them. With magic.

Why was he able—

Mal stood and ran, kneeling before her, reaching a hand out for me to stop from nearing them. “Eyes open, bird, eyes open, let me see them. Don’t disappear inside your head again. Come on.”

What…what did he mean?

Her forest eyes were tearless, but she sniffled and quivered. “Is my hair ugly?”

“No,” Mal said, breathless, shaking his head and touching the tip of his fingers to the ends of her hair that ended just past her shoulders. “No, not ugly at all. Your face on the other hand.”

It looked like she forgot all that had happened and started violently slapping him all around. “Blessed idiot.”

He threw his head back, laughing. “Blessed idiot?”

“Rora?” Thin streaks of black began peeking from underneath her leathers and over her neck. “Your seal.”

She stood and touched a hand to her skin, jerking a little when she saw her hands coated with spidery, black lines. “I can feel it.”

“As we practised, Thora,” Kilian said and my sister shut her eyes, inhaling controlled breaths till the seal began sliding and disappearing from her face and hands.