Dagne screamed.
It lifted its chin, jerking its head to the side at the sound.
I dropped Madoc as the dweller came at us, walking a direct line, its hairless head listing to the side as it assessed our movements.
Still in a panic, Dagne wouldn’t release her grip on my sword arm. Cursing, I snatched the sword from my right hand with my left. The delay cost me. The dweller was on me before I could bring up my blade.
The stocky body slammed into me, solid as rock, and we went down. My sword flew from my hand. Wet, rotting breath panted in my face, a rancid gust on my cheek. The mouth yawned wide, revealing sharp, serrated teeth trying for a bite as its thin feelers shook and stretched for my face like hungry serpents, ready to release their toxin.
I shoved one hand at its thick throat, forcing distance between us. It lunged for my face. I dodged its mouth, turning my face and watching a drip of toxin narrowly miss my nose. I spotted my lost sword, just out of my reach.
Giving up on it, I located the dagger strapped at my thigh and yanked it free. With a grunt, I brought it up and sawed at the throat, pressing deep into thick, corded skin. The small eyes turned glassy, reminding me of an onyx-beaded necklace my mother had always worn.
Blood soaked me, pouring from the slash in its throat. The creature fell limp on top of me.
Grunting, I flung off its weight and scrambled for my bow.
Dagne cried out. A thump behind me had me spinning, bow at the ready, arrow trained straight ahead and pointing directly into Luna’s face.
She held a dagger, blood dripping from the blade. A dead dweller sprawled at her feet between us.
I lowered the bow a fraction. “You came back.”
Her eyes glinted in the dark. “I told you to follow.”
I huffed. “I can’t move as fast as you when I’m carrying someone else.”
She turned her back on me and started moving ahead again. “More are coming. From the east. Hurry.”
I glanced to my left as if I could see them through the chronic night. Almost in response to her words another keening cry stretched on the air, soon answered by another, then another.
Already her slight figure was hard to detect in the swallowing dark. Bending, I hauled Madoc up again. He was weaker than moments ago, a heavier burden.
With a sniffled whimper, Dagne fell in close behind me as I hastened after the girl. I ignored my exhaustion and kept moving, pushing ahead, one foot after the other.
UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE
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I STRETCHED MY arms beneath the trapdoor, my fingers securing and locking it in place, sealing us in. I could still hear the dwellers outside—their tromping feet and uneven breaths. Their odor chased me down into the tunnel, sour in my nostrils and bitter copper in my mouth.
“This way.” I turned briskly, leading them through the narrow space, jumping a little when I heard Sivo call out my name ahead of us.
“Who’s that?” the boy at my back demanded.
I shook my head and squared my shoulders. I’d been practicing different explanations in my head, but didn’t think I would have to use them until after we went upstairs and I woke Sivo and Perla.
Sivo thundered toward me. His large, square hands closed on my arms, fingers flexing as though assuring himself that I was whole and uninjured.
“What were you thinking going out on your own?”
“I wanted it to be a surprise.” I glanced down to the satchel at my hip as though he could see within to the contents. “For your birthday.”
“You daft, soft-hearted girl.” He shook me slightly as his voice cracked. “Getting yourself killed would have made for one memorable birthday.”
“That didn’t happen though, did it?” I asked gently, patting his hand. “I’m right here. I’m fine.”
Sivo’s sharp intake of breath told me he’d spotted them in the gloom behind me.
“What have you done?” Sivo asked me, his voice strained tight—it wasn’t how he usually talked to me and for a moment something twisted inside me.
I stepped to the side, revealing the trio behind me.
Sivo’s hand clamped on my wrist and tugged me back as though I needed protection from this ragtag group that I had saved.
Then I remembered how quickly the archer dispatched the dweller. He wasn’t totally helpless. He could likely fend for himself if he wasn’t looking after the other two. The other two . . . I couldn’t imagine they would remain alive much longer. Not with one of them injured.
“Is there a problem?” The boy’s boot stepped closer, scraping over the stone floor. Fowler. That was what the weeping girl had called him.
He couldn’t be much older than me. He moved with an agility that surpassed Sivo’s. An air of competence resonated in the deep pitch of his voice and in the sure way he moved. He didn’t waste precious moments, life-and-death moments, debating what to do. He just acted.
“Sivo, I had to.” I motioned to Madoc. “He stepped in one of the traps.”
The tremble in my voice must have given me away. Guilt, maybe? It wasn’t our fault. We needed the traps for our survival. No one ever came into the Black Woods. No one was supposed to.
“The traps? Are they yours?” Fowler demanded.
I uttered nothing.
Sivo admitted, “We set the traps. We have to eat.”
“Yes, well, your trap caught Madoc here. Nearly got us all killed.”
“If it wasn’t for me, you’d all still be out there. Dead,” I added in case he missed my point. “You’re welcome for bringing you here.”
His focus snapped back on me. His gaze slid over me like a palpable touch. “If it wasn’t for your trap,” he countered, “we wouldn’t even need your hospitality. We’d be safely on our way.”
I snorted. I couldn’t help myself. “Indeed? You think you would still be safe? For how long?” I nodded toward his companions. “These two traveling with you are as quiet as stampeding horses.”
“How quiet would you be with your leg shattered to bits?” the girl complained.
“Enough,” Sivo declared, his voice settling over the group with authority. “We’ll take you up—see what we can do for that leg. Your weapons stay here though.”
Fowler adjusted his bow on his shoulder, the arrows rubbing against each other. His distrust flowed sharply in the space of the tunnel. He was the one that kept them alive. This I knew. He was primal. His weapons were as much a part of him as his own limbs. He didn’t move to set his weapons down and Sivo’s body tightened beside me. The point was nonnegotiable.
I rested a hand on Sivo’s arm and addressed Fowler. “If I wanted you dead, I would have just left you out there,” I murmured. “I never would have brought you here. You present as much risk to us as we to you.” More, I silently added. Sivo tensed beneath my fingers. He didn’t like me being even this honest.
“Fowler?” the girl said softly. “Please.” Clearly they followed his lead, but she wanted inside.
After several moments, his deep voice replied, “Fine.”
I smiled slightly, amused that he thought there was ever any other possibility. Out there, death waited. In here, with us, they had a chance.
He stripped off his weapons. Once they were unarmed, Sivo turned, leading the way through the tunnel, his great shape cutting a path ahead of us. I hurried after him, lightly touching his sleeve, the sounds of weapons falling on the stone floor echoing behind me.
“Sivo?”
“Yes,” he grumbled back at me.
“Happy birthday.”
I was the first to reach the second floor and find Perla waiting. The fire in the hearth popped and crackled but it was nothing compared to the angry energy radiating off her. The warmer air sighed over my chilled skin. We gathered in this space daily. It’s where we ate and where Perla knitted before the fire after meals. It’s where Sivo a
nd I cleaned weapons and practiced knife throwing. The minutiae of our lives unfolded in this room. For Perla, it was her universe. To an extent, mine, too.
A hollowness spread through my chest, pushing everything else out. It was a familiar sensation that plagued me whenever I thought about my future here. Perla and Sivo wouldn’t be around forever. What would it be like when they were gone? They were the only people I had ever known. I talked to no one else. Touched no one. Heard no one.
Until now.
The air stirred as Perla paced before the hearth. When I cleared the threshold, she turned on me, snatching me up and embracing me with her soft, yielding body. Not that hugging let her forget her annoyance with me. She pulled back and gave me a small shake.
“You know the thoughts I’ve been suffering since waking up to find your bed empty? It’s bad enough when you venture out with Sivo . . . but to go alone when—”
“We have guests,” I interrupted, stopping her short.
Loosening her grip on my arms, she assessed the newcomers as they cleared the threshold behind Sivo. She stared at them for an eternity. I could hear her thoughts spinning. Her breathing altered, too; grew raspy and agitated. She wanted them gone.
“You’re dripping blood all over my rug,” she finally muttered. “This way. You can use Luna’s room. She can bed with me.” Her joints creaked as she led them to my chamber.
I held back. Sivo hovered at my side. “You shouldn’t have brought them here, Luna.” His voice came out gravelly, tired—not like his usual self—and I felt a little guilty for being responsible for that.
“Did you expect me to leave them?”
“We cannot let them decide we are vulnerable. They cannot know who you are—”
“They don’t know.” I understood his meaning. “There’s no reason for them to ever know.”
He released a rattling sigh. His breaths were like that a lot lately. Phlegmy and wet like he suffered from a perpetual ague. I didn’t want to think about what it might mean.
“That boy’s leg is going to take time to heal. It may never be right.”
“Whatever his leg is at the end of all this, it’s better than him being dead. Which is what he’d be if I left them out there. They’d all be dead.” Maybe not Fowler. He had been on the verge of running and leaving them. When I first stepped into their midst, I’d felt that. I’d known.
“What I’m saying . . .” His voice gentled into the tone he used when he talked me down from a tantrum. I hadn’t heard that voice since I was a child. I realized then just how defensive I felt. As though these strangers belonged to me, as though they were mine to keep. Stray pets that I found and intended to have with me forever. “. . . is that they can only stay a little while.”
And what was so wrong with them staying indefinitely?
Thankfully, I held back the question, knowing it was counter to everything I had ever been taught about surviving this world. Let no one in. Keep our existence secret.
The three of them were the most interesting thing to happen to me in the entirety of my life. A sad testament, but there it was. Even though I knew next to nothing about them, I didn’t want to see them go.
“That older boy. The leader . . .”
“Fowler?”
He hesitated. Heat crept over my cheeks at the quickness of my reply. “There’s a look to his eyes. He’s dangerous.” I resisted pointing out that perhaps this was a good thing. Being a little dangerous in this world was a requirement. “As long as they’re here, you’re not to be alone with him. With any of them. Understand?”
I nodded. Sivo didn’t say any more, but he didn’t have to. The truth was there, a cloud hovering over us. If we were to keep our secrets, then they couldn’t stay.
And yet the thought left me hollow. I’d never been given a taste of anything else. I’d certainly never confronted a boy that smelled of ferocity and life and vitality. A boy with a deep, rumbling voice that made everything in me tighten in a way that I couldn’t comprehend. It was new. Different. It was feeling.
Guttural cries drew our attention toward my chamber, where Perla had started to work on Madoc’s leg. My mattress groaned and squeaked from his thrashing. Perla’s brisk, efficient voice shushed the boy and then instructed his sister and Fowler to hold him down.
I winced as Madoc’s moan stretched over the air. The terrible cries twisted into shrill pleas. “No, no, no, no . . . stop, please, no . . .”
This was even worse than the death cries I occasionally heard from my perch in the tower. This was the sound someone made who wanted to die. I shivered, the noise worming its way beneath my skin. I pressed a hand to my twisting stomach and inched closer to the hearth, lowering my face and soaking in the warmth.
Sivo claimed that because I had grown up under the mantle of dark, my senses of hearing, touch, taste, and smell were keen. He claimed it was an advantage in this world without light. Right now, with my throat closing up at the noises coming from my chamber, I wished myself free of the advantage.
“Go back down and change,” he instructed. “I’ll ready breakfast.”
Glad for the escape, I descended the winding stairs, leaving Madoc’s sobs and the crunch and grind of bone as Perla reset the leg.
I entered the anteroom and quickly undressed, shivering in the cold air of the tower’s bowels. My heart still beat swiftly, body humming with exhilaration. The events of the morning left me in a strange daze almost like I had woken from an especially vivid dream and didn’t know quite where I was anymore. But of course, I was where I always was. Only now, at long last, things were different.
I tied up the laces at the front of my gown with deft fingers and smoothed a hand over the soft fabric, once again the girl Perla preferred me to be. The queen of Relhok.
The title meant nothing anymore except to Perla and Sivo. Even to me, it rang dully. A royal assumed dead. Lost and forgotten. Trapped in a tower within a cursed forest, surrounded by monsters. It was the kind of fairy tale villagers entertained their children with on long winter nights when the world was good and right.
I returned to the second floor, my silk ribbons with their fraying ends clutched in my fist. The room was empty, the pop and crumble of a log in the fire even more pronounced in the vacant space.
Sivo’s deep voice rumbled from my bedchamber and I knew he was in there with the others. I thought about joining them, but the ribbons in my hand reminded me of my fallen hair. Self-consciousness seized me. For some reason my appearance mattered.
Deciding to tidy myself in Perla’s chamber, I moved across the stone floor and pushed open the door to her room. As I stepped inside, a swift intake of breath greeted me. The sound, combined with a warm, musky, undeniably male smell, was freshly familiar.
Too late, I realized the room wasn’t empty.
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“EVER HEARD OF knocking?” I faced Luna, annoyed at the intrusion. In truth, annoyed at everything. I shouldn’t have been here with any of these people. I should have been far away, my only distraction avoiding dwellers.
Propping my hands on my hips, I gave her an eyeful, waiting for her shock, her embarrassment, but it didn’t come. She stared straight at me, still that oddly composed girl from the forest unaffected by arrows flying at her head or approaching monsters.
Or by me standing naked in front of her.
“I didn’t realize you were in here,” she explained.
I didn’t bother to reach for my clothes. I angled my head, waiting for her to move, to avert her eyes, to turn. Expected behavior. She did none of those things. She didn’t even blink.
“Your mother—”
“Perla is not my mother.”
“Your friend then.” I lowered my hands to my sides. Awareness prickled over my skin at the proximity of this girl to me when I wasn’t dressed. “She complained that I
reeked of blood and the outside. She told me to change in here.”
Luna angled her head in that curious manner of hers. “Perla doesn’t like the Outside. Not even the smell of it. Reminds her of them.”
My bare feet moved over the cold stone as I approached her, waiting for her to bolt. I swept my gaze over her, inches from her now. Still, she gave no reaction. I was reacting but she didn’t seem to notice.
I studied her. She was too clean and her attire was far too fine. The gold thread woven into the bodice transfixed me. It was a long time since I had seen a female wearing so fine a dress. Most people wore threadbare garments, worn and patched.
Shaking my head, I looked at her face again, studying the smooth and shining hair and bottomless dark eyes. Now, in the lamplight, I could detect tiny flecks of amber in the deep brown depths that I hadn’t noticed outside.
Her lips parted slightly with unspoken words. I was close enough that I could count the smattering of freckles on her nose. They weren’t sun-kissed freckles. There was no chance for that. Not in this life.
She stared back at me, her stare fixing dead center in my chest. An alarm went off in my head, warning me that something wasn’t right. Something wasn’t as it should be.
“You . . .” My voice faded as I struggled with an idea that couldn’t be possible.
“What?” She lifted her chin, her expression mild, unaffected, her eyes now looking directly at me.
Through me.
My heart hammered in my ears as I slowly lifted a hand between us. Not touching, but simply putting it out there with all the stealth of a hunting predator. “You should have knocked.”
“Why?”
“Why?” I echoed like I was testing the word, tasting it. This close, her body radiated a warmth that settled into the pores of my exposed skin. “Are you really so bold you don’t . . .” My voice constricted into that strangled hoarseness again. I looked down at myself and then back up to her face again. Still no reaction on her part. She folded her hands in front of her, the fingers laced. She wasn’t this bold. No. She was something else.