“I warned you.” Standing, he leaned over me, securing the cloth around my mouth. I growled, but the fabric muffled the noise. Torrin patted my head, lowering his lips to my ear. “Sweet dreams, pray that I am not within them, Little One. I find I rather enjoyed the sounds you made when you entered my mind. Keep me awake tonight, and I’ll make certain you don’t sleep for days while we travel through the Badlands.”
Chapter Four
The mountain passes were covered in thick snow, making the large party move slower through the slippery trail. We’d been on the path since dawn, or what would have been dawn if the entire mountain wasn’t bathed in the darkness. There had been no sign of animals or people since we’d traveled past the first village.
The girls on my team paired up and rode with Torrin’s men. None of us were allowed to ride on our own mounts this morning, and none of us spoke, ignoring the men and their comments to one another as unease filled us. Until we knew what their actual intentions were with us, it was best to remain silent and listen.
Repositioning my body, I stiffened against the masculine form behind me. If Torrin noticed, he ignored it. It was mortifying to be forced to ride with the pompous cave dweller, and it had pissed Chivalry off to no end that I wasn’t to allow to ride him.
I hissed as Chivalry nipped my leg once more. Leaning forward, I patted his head even though the arm around my midsection tightened. Torrin grunted while he watched me, comforting my horse. Chivalry chose that moment to toss his head back and neigh loudly, complaining.
“I know, Chivalry. The stupid warlord is making me ride with him. Don’t be cross at me. You’re still the best boy ever, and the only boy for me,” I cooed, reassuring my horse that I wasn’t willingly choosing to ride with the brainless warrior instead of him.
Another grunt sounded, and then the warhorse I was on reared back on its hind legs, sending me flush against Torrin’s heat. I peered around the trail while he got the stallion back under control, slowing it to an easy walk.
The surrounding woods were silent, which wasn’t normal. Usually, the creatures immune to the darkness would be prowling, hunting, or scurrying around. They weren’t today, which meant either they were afraid of the group passing through, or something worse was within the forest that had only months ago been teeming with life.
A scraping noise started to the right of the path, and we paused to search the woods. The hair on my nape rose, and a shiver of unease settled within me. The warlord’s arm tightened around me as if he was expecting to have to move quickly.
“Hold still,” he gritted as I adjusted, settling closer until I’d felt his body molding against mine.
“Something is coming,” I warned at the same moment something dropped from the sky, snatching one rider at the front of the line from his horse.
“Into the woods!” Torrin ordered, and before I could argue that we may not want to enter the woods where we could be separated from the others, he moved toward them.
“They may want us to go into the forest!” I screeched as all of my warning bells were triggered, screaming that we were purposefully being split from the others.
“Hold on and shut up, woman,” he growled, pulling Chivalry with us.
Inside the woods, darkness reigned. Still, no sound met our ears. Not until something whizzed past us, zigzagging through the woods. One minute we were on the horse, and the next, Torrin had dismounted fluidly with me in front of him, forcing me behind him with the cloak still covering me.
“I need weapons,” I growled. Hearing Torrin’s grunt of disagreement, I bristled.
“No, you don’t. Shut up and stand there.”
My head snapped to the right as a shadow moved within the darkness. Turning, I placed my back toward the obtuse warlord and faced the road where a horse laid unmoving. The ominous sounds continued, growing louder until a sinister form met my wide, horrified stare.
Standing in front of me was a faceless body hovering over the ground. Bloody clothes hung over its form, the stench pungent and obnoxious until it was sickening. Beneath the bloodied clothes it had stolen from its victims was grotesquely disfigured, graying, rotten flesh. My eyes burned from the reeking stench, and my stomach roiled with bile pushing up against my throat.
“Reapers,” I whispered, barely audible enough to be heard by Torrin.
Reapers were scavengers of the Darklands—a place filled with death and despair. No light touched them and hadn’t for a very long time. The plague of darkness created monsters like reapers and other creatures that devoured those who still held light within them. They fed on corpses and victims left behind by the stronger beings that hunted the living down, sucking their marrow from their bones like juice from a fruit. Reapers came in behind those creatures, feasting on the remains of what was left, stealing their clothes to hide the skeletal, emaciated form that comprised their bodies.
The reaper shot forward, and I was shoved to the ground by Torrin’s large hand, barely avoiding the blade that moved, swinging wide to cleave the monster into two parts. I was yanked from the ground as Torrin made a loud clicking sound with his teeth, forcing everyone back to the road.
“I told you they were trying to separate us,” I snapped, but he ignored me.
The moment we reached the road, more reapers slithered out of the woods to surround us. I could hear the others making their way toward us, still riding their mounts. I dropped my cloak, pulling my power from deep within me to ignite like a flame within the darkness.
My skin glowed iridescently, illuminating the dark road. My hair floated, glowing white within the darkness, remaining platinum without the power of the moon to highlight my vibrant colors. My skin pulsed, swirling delicate, silver markings that covered my flesh as I lifted the shirt over my head. I exposed more light before I sent it shooting toward the reapers, which jerked back as if they’d been physically struck.
I felt my team sliding in around me, shedding their clothes to reveal light much weaker than my own. Light terrified the creatures of darkness, or at least ours did. It drove them back into the shadows, forcing them to abandon their hunt of living beings. The reaper’s behavior was off, growing bolder with the new area to hunt inside.
My eyes filled with light, and my lips parted to whisper the words of a spell that danced on my tongue, forcing the beings to remain in place while the light pulsed through them. The reapers imploded one by one, folding into themselves until the sounds of their bones popping and cracking with their final death filled the clearing.
When it was over, my body sagged, and strong arms caught me, lifting me. I glanced into Torrin’s angry stare and then lifted my eyes to the sky, seeing something move directly above us. Slowly doing a double blink, I watched a body fall toward us from the sky.
“Move,” I whispered weakly, and Torrin sidestepped seconds before the body would have landed on us. I shivered and pressed my head closer to his shoulder, uncaring if I looked weak.
I knew how the body on the ground looked. It was a corpse, sucked dry of moisture and marrow, with nothing but skeletal remains left. It was in the beginning stages of becoming a reaper. Swallowing bile, I gagged at the putrescent odor and cadaverous, decomposing organs.