“What the fuck was that?” she growled.
The world wheeled around him.
Dom opened his mouth to answer, and vomited rabbit liver in reply.
10
JYDI CHARMS
Corayne
She blinked, the air warm again, her blood running hot, the grass smooth between her fingers. The fear was paralyzing, and she searched against the darkness, hunting for another walking corpse.
This is your fate.
The strange voice rang her skull like a bell. Corayne winced as the words cracked and splintered, flowed and coiled. It was human but not, something more, something less. And so cold, leaving her skin prickling.
It does not wait, the voice continued, fading without echo, barely leaving behind a memory.
The white-faced demons were gone too. The smell of smoke and burned flesh disappeared with their forms.
A dream. They’re getting worse, she thought, her lips parting. She gulped down a bracing breath of air. I was asleep, and I dreamed of those creatures, red and terrible, broken and hungry.
But there was Dom, doubled over, spitting into the grass. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, his face nearly as white as the creatures. Sorasa grimaced at him, disgusted, her sword in hand, her body still tensed to fight. She glanced at Corayne and her gaze was hard.
Not a dream.
“Calm yourself,” the assassin said sharply. “Breathe slowly through your nose, then out through your mouth. You too,” she added, rapping Dom with the flat of her sword. He glared and spat again.
Corayne did as she was told, sucking in air.
Not a dream.
The leaping sensation in her gut began to ebb, leaving behind cold truth.
Not a dream.
“That’s what came from the Spindle,” Corayne said aloud. With a will, she pushed herself to her feet, her legs quivering beneath her. “That’s what you fought at the temple. With my father.”
Dom straightened. “It is as I said before.” His face turned more grim, if that was even possible. “They are of the Ashlands, a burned realm, cracked with Asunder, consumed by the hell of What Waits. They serve Him, and they serve your uncle, Taristan.”
Sorasa stepped around him, inspecting her blade in the dim light. The steel was clean. Her lips twisted.
“I assume they did not turn to wisps of smoke at your temple,” she said, casting a dirty glance over the Elder. “Or else I have sorely overestimated you.”
“They certainly did not,” he growled, pointing a finger at his scarred face.
Corayne tried not to think of such wounds being made, carved through his marble flesh with hungry ease. She felt them on her own skin. Knives and nails, tearing her apart. Her mouth filled with a sour taste and she was nearly sick herself.
“Those were a vision, or shades, maybe. A projection of what comes from the Spindle,” Dom muttered without much confidence. “The work of Taristan’s wizard, perhaps, or What Waits himself. They must know you live.” His free hand closed into a fist. “They must be searching for you.”
Corayne swallowed around her terror. And the strange new truth. All the Elder spoke of—the Spindle, my murderous uncle, the corpse army—they do exist. And they’re hunting me.
“We should keep moving,” she said through clenched teeth. She started picking up her meager things, if only for a distraction. “Harmless or not, if those things can find us once, they can find us again. And it’s only a matter of time until the real thing catches up.”
“At least someone here has some sense,” Sorasa muttered, stalking off to the horses.
The Elder opened his mouth to argue, but Corayne did not give him the chance. It was difficult enough trying to save the realm without the two of them at each other’s throats.
“I dreamed of them,” she said quickly, her cloak over one arm. “Even before you found me in Lemarta.”
Dom sneered at Sorasa’s shadow in the trees, but turned away, his face clearing. Some color returned to his cheeks. “The Ashlanders?”
Instead of a chill, Corayne felt a streak of cloying warmth, like a summer day gone to rot. It settled around her throat. She swallowed against the odd sensation.
“White faces, burned skin,” she whispered, trying to remember the dreams that had plagued her for weeks. It felt odd speaking of them aloud. “And something more. I couldn’t see, but I could feel . . . it. A presence watching me,” she said. “A red shadow, hunting, waiting.”
“What Waits,” Dom murmured. “You dream of Him.”
She felt the heat again. “I thought this was a dream too.”