Page 8 of The Reaping Rose

My senses perk, but everything is duller here.

Quieter.

I close my eyes and take a deep breath, catching the tang of blood breezing from my left. A twig snaps, and unlike the branches breaking in the wind, it’s muffled by the crunch of dry leaves. I pierce through it, stretching my senses farther, until I hear two sets of footsteps winding through the trees.

“There.” I unsheathe my sword, pointing.

The blade glints through the darkness, heavier than it was before I came here. Everything is heavier. Everything is harder without magic.

Yet this sword I claimed upon my father’s death is a part of me. I pull it close, readying my stance and moving toward the noise.

Elorie grabs her daggers, walking in stride beside me. Any signs of the hesitant human I first met in the Ley Court have worn away. Her white-blonde hair is tied off her face in two long braids. The winter-blue ends of her hair are darker than they were when we first came here; they reach her shoulders now. And her three freckles, set in a wide V beneath her right eye, continue to glow like flecks of starlight on her cheek.

At least it makes her easy to spot with the thick cloud cover casting darkness around us.

We walk in stride, quick but careful. Until I step on a rock sideways, and pain radiates up my leg. A burning sensation shoots all the way to my hip, reminding me of the night it was snapped.

The night my parents were murdered.

Apart from the scar cutting through my eyebrow, I didn’t think I had lingering physical damage from that night. But now, I realize I only thought that because the magic in Lyrichia masked the dull ache of old wounds. Here, there is nothing to soothe what never healed properly inside me.

With every step, my leg trembles and my hip throbs. But I don’t let it show because I don’t want sympathy. I don’t need anyone worrying about me. I’m here for Elorie, to see her mission through to heal our realm. I failed once; I won’t do it again.

We go so deep into the forest that I lose the sense of where I am until the lap of waves draws closer. We’re almost at the cliffs now, and we haven’t found Dorn and Isra. Dread swims in my chest as the beat of water haunts me. Those same waves reach all the way back to Ruse Village, where I last saw Aunt Millicent and Lune.

Are they still there? Are they still fighting?

Has the Well swallowed them up?

This is all my fault. For a century, I bowed to the king responsible for the realm crumbling. To a king who slaughtered my parents and let me do the same to the male he framed for their deaths. He wields a gods-touched object against his own people. He betrays that which he should stand for.

When I find Malachi—and I will—my blade will be the last thing he feels as I shove it through his heart. Even if he takes me with him.

The trees thin as we reach a break in the forest by the cliffs. It’s the middle of the afternoon, but where there should be light, we’re met with shadows.

“It shouldn’t be dark this early.” I make note of the horizon, slowing my pace.

Elorie does the same, and we shift so we’re nearly back-to-back, studying the thinning trees surrounding us.

“It’s barely midday.” Elorie’s attention snaps to the right as a falling branch crashes to the ground. “There’s only one thing that drinks light from the sky like this.”

“The Well.” My voice thickens.

The inky darkness that surrounds us is tangible. A tang of death and rot hangs in the air. There was a time after the Collision when the Well was contained to the space where the realms touched, but now, it spreads. Its arms reach—made worse the longer Malachi wields the orb.

“There have been no signs of a vein from the Well on the island.” Elorie shakes her head.

“The storms have been worsening.”

“But if it’s reached this far—” She doesn’t finish that thought.

She doesn’t need to.

If the Well is here, how far does it stretch everywhere else? Only a few months ago, it was contained to Rohldova, with the occasional veins opening elsewhere. To see evidence that it might be stretching farther has my spine tingling.

“Let’s keep looking,” Elorie says.

Her voice is even, but her confidence is slipping as she avoids my gaze.