“Others think the marks are nothing more than shapes they’ve seen in the flow of magic but don’t actually understand.” I tried to give Kat a reassuring smile. “We’re still a couple of hours away. Keep your bow ready, but if we are spotted by one, our best bet is to run. I’ll use my other self as a decoy so we can escape.”
Nodding, she squeezed the weapon mounted on her saddle. “Will my arrows harm them as they’d harm fae?”
My hand went to my Shadowblade. I’d traded illegally to get my hands on an unseelie weapon. It had taken years to pay back some of the favours. It was worth it.
“Probably not, but if you hit a weak point, that should slow them down or at least deter them. Their bodies are covered in hard carapaces. The only gaps are the eyes and armpits. I wouldn’t bother to tell most people, but I think you could actually hit the mark.”
The flush of pleasure that darkened her cheeks warmed the worst of the chill that had lingered in my bones since seeing the name of our destination. She turned away, but I caught the edge of the smile she tried to hide.
We rode on, that warmth growing more and more distant as dread ate it up.
I couldn’t shake the feeling something awful was going to happen in that town. Despite eating lunch, my stomach remained a pit, threatening to swallow me up.
Not long before midday, the birdsong stopped. I kept my shadows bound close. There was little magic to draw upon here, and if I let them spread, the Horrors would scent them. A little while later, I pointed out the marking on a boulder a few feet back from the road.
Kat swallowed, gaze tracing over the long upright line criss-crossed with short diagonals, a circle, and a triangle. “Is there anything else I should know about them?”
“Horrors can smell magic—it’s what they feed on.” I could barely smell it here, only really noticing its constant presence now it had faded. Kat’s was fresh and vibrant, like the first flowers of the year. “Can you sense it around you?”
Frowning, she stroked her arm. “Normally I can. A slight buzz on my skin, but…” She cocked her head as though listening. “It’s so faint now.”
“They’ve been feeding. Together with their carapaces, that’s what makes them so hard to kill. You can’t use magic on them directly. If I tried to attack with my shadows, they’d consume them. Only powerfully enchanted weapons work—something the magic is fixed in. Even then, if they got hold of it for a period of time, they would suck it dry.”
She grimaced, squeezing her bow.
The scent of its magic, green growth and leaf mulch, strengthened in response.
I nodded towards it. “Your bow is powerful—it might work, but you’d need arrows with a more potent enchantment to be sure.”
Her eyes narrowed, and I could practically hear her making a mental note to get better arrows. My billing account winced in response.
Still, knowledge was also power, so I continued feeding it to her in the hopes she wouldn’t ever need to rely on it. “The fact there’s any magic left tells us they don’t come here frequently, but as we go further, you’ll feel it less and less. At the centre of their territory, there’s none.” I shifted in the saddle, the thought of it not just wrong, but terrifying.
Unlike most fae, I drew from the world around me—evidence along with my eyes that my unseelie blood wasn’t just a rumour.
In a true dead zone, I would be powerless.
But that wasn’t the only reason my shoulders grew tighter the further we rode. Something else ate at me. Something wrong. Something ahead.
Half a mile on, we found another marking.
It made my teeth grind. “The patrol who’s meant to mind this area is going to get a personal visit when they next report to Tenebris. These things are running wild.”
“How do they keep them back?” Kat shot me another look, chewing her lip.
“Wards. They’re kept stocked with powerful wardstones. They should fucking use them. We embedded them in the wall between here and Albion,” I added. “It’s to keep our monsters in as much as to keep humans out.”
“Why not just kill them all?”
“We tried that at first. It didn’t go well. For each one of them we took down, at least two of us died, and with our numbers depleted after the wars…” I shook my head, suppressing a shudder. “Better to sacrifice this area of land rather than more lives.”
Then I saw myself in the disorientating double vision that always came when both parts of me reunited. One riding. One walking from an outcrop of rock.
It was like looking in a mirror—his tight movements echoed my own agitation, and when I shifted my attention to his view, I could see how rigidly I sat on my stag. This feeling of dread wasn’t just about bringing Kat out of the city or taking her into Horror territory.
It was something else. Something older. Something deeper.
I merged back with my other self, not feeling any stronger for it.
When we reached a copse outside Innesol, that something else hollowed out my insides and I understood.
A ruined tower rose at the centre of the town, but I knew what it had once looked like before its mortar had crumbled and its roof had caved in.
I had been here before.
22
Bastian
“Bastian? What’s wrong?”
I shook my head and dismounted. Words were suddenly impossible.
As she landed, she stared up at me. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost. You’ve gone the colour of one, too.”
We left the stags in the copse, and I managed to give them the instruction to stay before entering the ruined town.
My bones itched so much I could’ve scratched off my skin as I surveyed the road and saw both crumbled walls and pristine buildings, tall and proud. Homes. Shops. Schools. They’d even had two theatres and a gallery.
I could see it all as it had been then, and the centuries old ruin it was now.
But I wasn’t centuries old. I couldn’t have seen it.
Yet I remembered.
We crouched behind a half-fallen wall, and I scraped my fingers through my hair, giving it a tug to clear my mind. When I peered out again, I saw only the ruins.
A main road led to the town’s centre. Where we huddled now was the old school. I refused to look at our feet in case I found broken toys.
Elthea’s note said the house with the box was further into the town.
“Ready?”
Kat looked back at me with her eyebrows pinched together and lips thin. Now we were away from the stags, she’d removed her gloves, and her fingers twisted together. The stain covered them completely. “I am. Are you?”
I ignored her question and led the way out onto the main road.
Once upon a time, we’d marched through, victorious, so pleased with ourselves to be so close to the capital. Two days’ march and we’d be there. True, the combined armies of the Dusk and Dawn Pretenders stood in our way, but we had new weapons my beloved had told us about. He hadn’t seen them yet himself, but they were going to be unveiled here at Innesol, and they’d help us journey east and take Tenebris for the rightful queens.
My happily ever after was shame that bowed my back, dragging on each step.
I tried to tell myself that I hadn’t been here, it wasn’t possible, but I couldn’t logic away my feelings or the memories that haunted each view of the town.