There was a long silence. “Why would he need to do that?” Griffin asked, blandly.
Shea stomach sank. She’d just damned herself by trying to defend a creature that would probably bask in her death before this was over.
“Because,” Shea said, her mind racing to come up with some plausible lie. “I was scared.”
Griffin took a step closer to her.
That was good. It meant he was listening.
“It had been so long, and I thought you were dead all this time,” Shea continued.
Griffin stared at her. It was not as easy to read him as it had once been, the changes in his skin making his facial expression unfamiliar and strange.
He stepped closer, one hand reaching up to her cheek. Shea fought a flinch as his cold fingers touched her skin. He tried to bring her closer, to draw her in for a kiss, but she resisted, the response instinctual.
An ugly smile crossed his face. “So, you have some loyalty to your fallen warlord after all.”
Shea didn’t respond.
His hand slid away. “No matter. We’ll have plenty of time now that you’re here.”
With those words, he moved away. Shea hadn’t come out entirely the victor in that exchange, but at least Griffin had stopped torturing the mythological.
*
Shea gazed up at the view in front of her, awestruck in spite of herself. The second demarcation. She’d never thought to see it.
It was the golden hour, the sun setting behind the mountains but not before bathing the land in the last dregs of its golden light. The second demarcation wasn’t like the first, a forgotten ruins, pitiful in its shambles. This was a statement, one forever stamped into the land around it.
Statues of long forgotten people appeared on the mountainsides, their giant forms bursting from the stone as if they’d crawled up from the ground itself. Their somber eyes and grim expressions forever watching as the world fell into chaos around them.
The mountains of staring eyes—named for these statues and countless others that perched on the mountain tops, carved by some long ago hand for reasons known only to them. Some were as tall as the mountains themselves, others were smaller icons perched on the peaks. All stared down at the world below in judgement.
A gate arched between two of the largest statues, behind it ran a narrow corridor framed on both sides by sheer cliffs, impossibly steep and dangerous.
“Brings back old memories, doesn’t it? Discovering something new, seeing a place most are too afraid to explore,” Griffin said with a conspiring look aimed in her direction
Shea tucked her chin but didn’t respond. Griffin had tried to engage her several times in the last few days as they worked their way toward the heart of the Badlands. Sometimes he was persuasive, displaying that boyish charm she’d once found so attractive. Othertimes, he was angry and accusing, blaming her for everything from his failure at becoming a pathfinder to his current transformation.
His emotions fluctuated between extremes like a dizzying, spinning top. It was a struggle to keep up. He never hurt her, but the mythological wasn’t so lucky. He seemed to be a favorite target when Griffin was in one of his moods.
Shea didn’t enjoy being the reason for another’s pain, so she was even more silent than normal.
“Come, lover, I’m eager to show you my land,” Griffin said before heading for the gate, the beasts trailing behind him.
Shea stayed stuck in place, unwilling to follow. If the first demarcation was the marker that signified where the Badlands really began, she couldn’t even imagine how bad things would get after the second demarcation.
“Is there another way through?” Shea asked Ajari as he hesitated by her side, showing no more enthusiasm for the coming journey than she.
“There are traversable passes. I don’t recommend them, however. There are creatures who wait there who are a challenge even for me,” he said.
She kept the dismay she felt at those words to herself. If Trenton or Buck were following her, the gate would make their task that much harder. All Griffin needed to do was place a beast on the other side to hide in wait. The moment they killed it, he would know they were being followed.
Ajari turned and surveyed their backtrail, his thoughts seeming to mirror Shea’s.
She waited for his question, wondering if he’d ask her about possible pursuers. She didn’t know how she planned to answer him. He’d shown himself an unwilling ally, but it was impossible to guess how far that goodwill extended.
If it came down to his life or theirs, would he choose to protect her secrets or give them up? Giving him plausible deniability seemed like the best bet for now.
