“And stay out of the water,” Azriel added solemnly.
“What if the Mask is in the water?” She gestured to the vast bog. They’d fly over it, they’d decided, and let her sense whatever lay here.
“Then Az and I will draw straws like the tough warriors we are and the loser goes in.”
Azriel rolled his eyes, but chuckled. Cassian’s grin at last glowed in his gaze as he opened his arms. “Oorid’s beauty awaits, my lady.”
Cassian had been to some horrible places in his five centuries of existence.
The Bog of Oorid was by far the worst. Its very essence spoke of death and decay.
The oppressive air muffled even the sound of their wings, like Oorid would abide no sound disturbing its ancient slumber.
Nesta clung to him as he flew, Az at his side, and Cassian peered at the dead forest that spread below, the black water that had flooded it like an obsidian mirror. It was so still that he could see their reflections perfectly.
The wind whipping her braided hair, Nesta said, “I’m not sure what I’m looking for.”
“Just keep all your senses open and see if anything sparks.” Cassian began a wide circle to the west. The air seemed to press on his wings, as if it would cast them down to the earth.
But to enter that black water would be a last resort.
Islands of grass dotted the expanse, some so crowded with brambles that he could find no safe place to land. The tangles of thorns were a mockery of what might have been—as if Oorid had ever produced roses. Not a single flower bloomed.
“It’s unbearable.” Nesta shivered.
“We’ll stay only as long as we can stomach it,” Cassian said, “and if we don’t find anything, we’ll return tomorrow and pick up where we left off.”
He had two swords, four knives, an Illyrian bow, and a quiver of arrows, plus all seven Siphons. Yet he couldn’t shake the feeling of flying naked.
“What else dwells here other than kelpies?”
“Some say witches,” he murmured. “Not the human kind,” he added when she raised a brow. “The kind that used to be something else and then their thirst for magic and power turned them into wretched creatures, banished here by various High Lords.”
“They don’t sound so bad.”
“They drink young blood to fill the coldness the magic left in them.”
Nesta winced. Cassian went on as she scanned the bog, “There are lightsingers: lovely, ethereal beings who will lure you, appearing as friendly faces when you are lost. Only when you’re in their arms will you see their true faces, and they aren’t fair at all. The horror of it is the last thing you see before they drown you in the bog. But they kill for sport, not food.”
“And all these horrible creatures are just left here, untended?”
“The Middle lies under no High Lord’s jurisdiction. It’s long been the dumping ground for any unwanteds.”
“Not the Prison?”
“Their crimes are ones of nature. A kelpie is designed to lure and kill, just as a wolf is designed to hunt its prey. The Middle keeps them separate from us without punishing them for what they were made to be.”
“But no one will come rid the world of them?”
“The Middle is full of primal magic. It has its own rules and laws. Hunt the kelpies or lightsingers without provocation and you might find yourself trapped here.”
She shuddered. “How would the Mask have wound up in the bog?”
“I don’t know.” He nodded toward the ground. “You feel anything?”
“No. Nothing.”
Cassian glanced over a shoulder to Az before they entered a cloud of mist hovering above the northern section of the bog. It was so thick that Cassian rose higher, not wanting to impale them on a tall tree. The mist was chill enough to run icy fingers down his wings, his face.
Nesta jolted, then breathed, “Cassian.”
He cleared the mist, banking to the left. “You sensed something?”
“I don’t know what I sensed.” She swallowed. “Something is here.”
He looked over his shoulder again to signal Azriel.
But Az wasn’t there.
CHAPTER
33
“Azriel!”
Cassian’s shout didn’t even echo.
Clinging to his neck, Nesta scanned the mist. Cassian hung back from it, wings beating in place as he searched for his brother. “Hold on,” he hissed before he launched into a drop, using the momentum to swoop into the mist.
Blue light flared below—ahead. Azriel’s Siphons.