“All that work for a fucking rock.”
It’s safe to say Dessin is in a bad mood even now that we’re on the move again.
“And a fucking map,” I add.
His eyes pinch close as his entire upper body rumbles with laughter. He glances down at me, hugging the map to my chest, smiling smugly to myself.
He laughs again, flashing me his dimples and gorgeous teeth. I sigh at the moment, forcing it to memory, locking it away in a safe place.
“You’re adapting that soldier’s mouth just to throw me off.”
“Or you’re a bad influence.”
“I am certainly that,” he says, dimples prominent in the shadows of the Evergreen Dark Wood. “Do me a favor? When you see Kane again, drop one of your verbal bombs in his lap. I’d love to see how he’d react.”
I scoff. “I’d never curse at him. He’s nice!”
“And I’m not?” He feigns offense with a theatric hand to his chest.
“You’re tolerable.”
Dessin laughs again. His brow arches at a thought. “Runa was nice, hmm?”
My shoulders stiffen. Oh, he’s walking a thin line.
“You think she was nice?” I ask without raising my eyes from the dirt trail.
“Sure, don’t you?”
I grimace. “Not especially. But boy, did she like you. Laughing at your jokes, insinuating she wanted to—do stuff with you.”
“Stuff?”
“Yes. Stuff. Be alone with you. Take my place on your lap.” The heat of that simmering agitation comes back at the memory. She looked at him like a nice, juicy steak. I want to vomit.
“You must have been paying very close attention to her,” he comments. Emotions unreadable.
I shrug, but the movement is stiff, forced, mechanical. “She might as well have been shouting it from the rooftops.”
Dessin thinks for a moment. “Did you picture us together? Is that why you’re this tightly wound?” A wicked smile pours into his deep voice. “Did you imagine her riding in my lap the way you were in the tavern?”
I whip around and glare at him. “You—” I huff. Grinding my teeth together. “You don’t know anything!” I kick the ground, a cloud of dirt surrounds my feet at impact.
Dessin grins. “Did that make you feel better?”
“And another thing,”—I point my finger at him like a mother hen—“I don’t care who you have in your lap. As long as I don’t have to do it again.”
“Is that right?” He smiles wider.
“Yes.”
“So the thought of me with another woman doesn’t get you really angry?” He takes a step closer to me.
I push that angry bubble away but its persistence is overpowering. It wants me to burst. My hands clench into fists. Why does this bother me so much?
“Nope. Because the time in that tavern was just a game. It didn’t mean anything.” Why am I saying this? I’ve been dying to know if he felt it too. If there were any feelings fluttering in his chest the way they were in mine.
But he’s taunting me. He’s dangling the idea of him with another woman in front of me and I won’t entertain it. I won’t be the first to tell him how I feel.
“Is that right?” He tilts his head. “No part of you liked having my fingers in your mouth?”
I visibly shiver. “Nope.” Yes. I couldn’t get enough.
Dessin chuckles as if it’s obvious that I got caught in a lie. But the sound quickly sprinkles into the air and dissolves like a speck of snow hitting the earth. He stops walking, and it’s several moments before he blinks repeatedly, appearing disoriented.
I breathe in and out patiently. I wonder who I’ll see this time. It can’t be Greystone.
The man looks up at me from a lowered head, then takes a quick scan of the forest to adjust to his new surroundings.
“Where are we?” he asks.
The jealous anger evaporates from my nervous system. For now.
“Still in the Evergreen Dark Wood. But we’re leaving now, we’re headed,”—I hold up the map—“to the North Saphrine Forest.”
I peek up at him from over the map, hoping I can catch a single detail before he has to introduce himself. I watch him take a steadying breath, soft, warm eyes roaming past the trees. His posture is casual but confident, but his brow is knitted together; he’s concerned. Perhaps about how much time he’s lost?
Kane.
He’s been gone since Runa found us.
“Hey,” I say, taking a step closer. “What’s wrong?”
Kane’s eyes dart to me for a split second before he goes back to observing the forest with dread. “What happened? How long was I gone?”
“Like a day and a half. We made some new friends!” Another step. It’s like cornering a frightened animal.
Kane touches his left arm, feeling the pain from where he was poked by the cage spikes. He grimaces at the tenderness and runs his fingers over the bloody bandages.
“What happened?” he asks again, this time with a bite of resentment.
“It’s a long st—”
But he isn’t listening to me. He’s asking Dessin. Those soft-brown eyes look down, paying attention to an explanation that’s probably faster for Dessin to give than me.
Kane nods once. Looks up at me. He releases a weighted sigh.
“You can’t let him get a rise out of you when he picks on you like that.” And with that, Kane begins walking.
I huff. “How can I not? He’s good at finding weaknesses.”
“He likes his games.” He nods and glances back at me. “How’re you doing with all of this? You’ve taken on a lot since we left the asylum.”
“I’m better now than when I was working at the asylum.” The answer comes out rushed. No hesitation. This life is much more suited to me.
We pass the time while hiking up the mountain with old folklore. Kane shares the many tales that the agronomists and watchdogs would entertain with over a big bonfire. He tells me about the time travelers in the woods. Some would claim that they’ve seen people wandering around the forests, asking the agronomist children what the date was. There were also legends that there was still one RottWeilen left alive, roaming the seven forests and sometimes would sneak into the city. They claim that this beast could carry at least a ton of weight on his back, that he kills animals higher on the food chain than himself, and eats babies.
“Babies, huh?” I laugh.
“And get shot by one hundred arrows and not die. Although, that parts probably true.” We both laugh this time.
“Where is DaiSzek, anyway?”
Kane tosses a cluster of branches to the side of our walking path. “He’s scanning the perimeter of several miles around us. He doesn’t like to be surprised.”
I bend down to tie my hiking boots. The Nightamous Horde graciously gave us packs of supplies and clothing to wear over our backs. Hiking coats, boots, hats, gloves, weapons.
“Have you ever seen him in action? Like in a real fight?” I ask.
“I have.” He turns around and crosses his arms. “And you have too from what I remember.”
“Yes.” I stand up and look at my feet, remembering. “Aurick tried to shoot him. He thought DaiSzek attacked me. But he saved me from the night dawper.”
Kane scoffs. “Aurick is very lucky that he kept his genitalia that night.”
I cringe and pick up my pace. I push at his arm while I jog past him. “You’re so slow, we could have been there by now if we didn’t have to move like snails!”
“Oh, so it’s me that has been holding us back, huh?”
I’m already out of breath from jogging ahead. “Yeah! We need to get you in shape! Have you lost all of those big muscles or something?”
He starts to jog to catch up to me. “Oh, so you think my muscles are big?”
I choke out a surprised laugh but the sound is cut off.
The ground disappears from under my feet. Without even a moment to react and process the next few seconds, I’m gliding through the air, now smelling like hot rain and moist dirt. I shriek as I hit softer ground, palms down, directly on my chest and stomach. The air deflates from my lungs like a popped balloon.
My joints explode with pain. Muscles are floppy and sore. But my ankle is on fire. Searing white agony stretches up my calf as if I’ve been caught in barbed wire.
“Skylenna!” His voice is finally making its way to my eardrums. A deep gravelly sound echoing in this hole. I hear my name again, this time traveling downward, closer and closer until I feel the earth hemorrhage violently under my limp body. A puff of dust spreads over me.
“Where does it hurt?” he asks, struggling to keep his tone calm. He’s in the hole with me now, kneeling somewhere beside me. The left side of my face is smashed against the dirt. Oh God, I broke my face. The constrictions on my chest loosen and I gasp in air, coughing and choking on my own saliva and particles of dirt. His hands are on my back, examining my bones.
“Nothing’s broken.” I hear him mutter. He pauses. A featherlight movement on my searing ankle. “Skylenna? Can you feel your ankle?”
I finally have enough oxygen back to my brain to release a guttural groan.
“Honey, can you speak?” he asks again, more urgently.
“Yes, I can feel it. Do me a favor and cut it off,” I moan and mumble into my new friend, the dirt.
“I see your humor didn’t break your fall.”
Even with the sharp shooting pains sinking teeth into my pathetic body, I smile at the kind of friendship we have. To still make each other laugh during hard times.
I try to lift myself off this bed from hell with my palms still embedded in the crime scene. I fall back down with a whimper. Welp, safe travels, Kane. Send me a postcard when you reach the next colony.
“Skylenna, please don’t move,” he instructs. A trickle of fear drips down my back like the first stages of a thunderstorm.
“Why do you sound cautious?” I ask three octaves higher than normal. He’s hovering over my legs without touching my ankle. Oh God, did my foot actually get cut off?
“Your foot got trapped in a snare designed to capture larger animals. Your ankle is small, so we’re lucky it didn’t chop it off. It just pierced it. But it’s stuck in there; I have to take it out.”
“I’d rather die,” I say, trying to get a good look at him. The twisty movement sends a bolt of fire through my calf. “Augh!” I lie back down and slap my hand back on the dirt.
“Don’t move until I tell you to. I have to open the trap, and when I do I need you to pull your foot out as fast as you can, okay?”
I grunt in acknowledgment at his request and brace myself. I hear him bear down behind me as the trap begins to rise from being embedded into my skin. It’s like pulling a thumbtack from the bottom of your foot, except a million times worse.
His movements cause the snare to dig farther into my shredded skin. I yelp and bear down at what comes next.
“NOW!”
I yank my foot out and pull my knee to my chest. Crimson blood pours down my foot and saturates the dirt. My grunt isn’t ladylike. It isn’t pretty. The sound is unrecognizable as it whooshes from my chest.
“I know, I know,” Kane soothes. “I’m going to roll you on your back now.” He grips my waist, and I howl as he twists my body until I can finally look up at him. He moves my hair out of my face with two fingers. For just this moment, I forget the painful throbbing in my ankle, my stomach flips and the depth of his stare is pouring into my soul, warming me from the inside out. And he isn’t looking away. There’s a silent breeze of déjà vu fluttering over my heart. A moment of recognition.
“Skylenna…” Kane’s tone isn’t calculated or teasing. It’s heavy with memories. Caring. Kind. Brave. “Is it too soon to tell you this is what you get for telling me I’m out of shape?”
We chuckle in unison.
“You’re so fun—” A low growl startles us. The sound of a bear. Like the times in the early morning, my father would watch them from a window outside of our house.
Kane turns slowly, and we come to the same conclusion together. This hole is bigger than we thought, and we’re not in here alone.
Behind Kane stands a massive shadow, like a tower built behind a cottage. It has thick coffee-colored fur, the body of a grizzly bear, with the face of a—of a cat? Yes, a huge, ugly mountain cat.
“A Saphrine Mountain nadaskar.” Rough. Assertive. Alpha. I know the switch was inevitable. Dessin is now standing over me, and I’m racking my brain to figure how he could possibly get us out of this one. We’re at least ten feet in a massive hole, and even if we could figure out a way to climb out of here, we wouldn’t be fast enough. From what I remember, the nadaskar has the strength of a bear and the agility of a mountain cat. Not a fair fight.
“Dessin,” I whisper, failing to hide the terror choking my voice.
He stays completely still and I mimic him without question. Dessin plans a lot of things but couldn’t plan for this. We’re going to die here, aren’t we?
“Skylenna,” he murmurs while slowly reaching for something to his left. “On my word, I want you to scream at the top of your lungs. Like your life depends on it. Because it does.”
I’m about to object, but I see he’s reaching for a tree branch, thick in size, about the girth of his thigh. I can’t question him now. This is one of those times where I need to have complete and utter faith in Dessin.
The growling increases and I can see now why it’s taken time for this massive beast to attack. His foot is gone. He must have gotten it caught in the trap and ripped it out.
Suddenly, the growl turns into a cat’s hiss, and I know that must mean it’s about to do something. Run or fight. Please let it mean run.
“Scream, Skylenna!”
I do as I’m told. I could have shattered windows and wineglasses and destroyed eardrums with this scream. It’s shrill and dry and traveling a great distance out of this hole. The nadaskar lunges at Dessin with its one leg, and Dessin swings the tree branch straight into the amputee’s leg. It shrieks but this only angers it. It lunges at us again, this time I’m certain Dessin won’t be able to stop it from crushing us.
Faster than I can blink, a rush of black smoke flashes across my vision and tackles the nadaskar to the ground. Another animal. A hellhound.
And they’re a tangled mess of snapping teeth, blood, and vicious growls that have reached a new level of feral. But I recognize the russet spots of fur. The RottWeilen that has come for me once again. Only this time, he knew he needed to attack.
DAISZEK! IT’S DAISZEK! HE’S SAVING US!
The hole suddenly smells of death massacring a farm of cattle. Entrails spilling over the muddy floor. Bones crunching. And I look up at Dessin who is now lifting me off the ground.
“Wrap your arms around my neck and keep your body stiff,” he demands. I do as he says, still unable to tear my eyes away from the mass of dark fur. I hear the nadaskar scream along with another noise of ripping flesh from bone.
Dessin hooks an arm under my knees and begins to climb us out of the hole. Thankfully, there are large curly roots striking out of the walls of the hole for him. He makes each movement seem effortless, climbing with another human in your arms is as easy as walking to the kitchen. I lean my head against the side of his temple.
As we get to the top, he lets me pull myself from his arms onto the surface. I sit up and hold my ankle. The gushing of blood has slowed down but there are shreds of my skin hanging off and I think I might throw up.
Dessin looks down at me, pulls his shirt off, and uses it to wrap around my ankle. “Just don’t look at it. I’ll patch it up when we get out of here.” But I’m not focused on that. This is the first time I’ve seen him without a shirt and it is glorious. His pectorals are two firm hills over his chest. He has a faint yet definite lining of six muscle ridges. His eyes are on me and oh my God, I’m gawking.
A yelp breaks this moment from growing awkward. We both look back at the hole but there is silence. “DaiSzek!” I yell. “Oh, Dessin! Is he okay?”
Dessin leans over the hole to look down and that’s when I see his back. His back without a shirt. I’m briefly mortified. Burns across his shoulder blades in the size and shape of a picket from a wooden fence.
I lean in to get a better look.
But DaiSzek leaps from the hole, graceful like a deer stepping over a puddle. Blood covers his chin and nose. I shriek.
“Is he hurt?!” I touch the side of his face. He merely pants like he’s just got done chasing a squirrel.
Dessin has his hands all over him, examining his entire body, then slaps his butt.
“Who taught you how to fight like that, nadaskar slayer?” He’s beaming at DaiSzek. Okay, no injuries. DaiSzek starts to wiggle his butt, honored by Dessin’s approval. “I mean, I probably could have taken it on my own, but wow, you really did a number down there!” He glances over his shoulder again, down at what probably is a mess of blood and fur and body parts.
“So, he’s not hurt?” I ask.
He shakes his head. “No, this was an easy feat for him,” he states, gazing at DaiSzek now sitting down proudly.
I nod. “Good. Good.” Then, tip my head over the side of the hole and vomit. A lot.
