Chapter One
Itried not to stare at the Dakkari witch, even as chills ran up my arms and prickled down the back of my neck.
I failed miserably.
There was fear quivering deep in my belly as her black-rimmed eyes moved over me for a brief moment. Her eyes were a bright red and the smudged black around them gave them the appearance of being otherworldly. Dangerous.
My hands shook as I poured the boiling water into her goblet, splashing droplets on her hands, which were covered in golden tattoos. Words I didn’t know how to read.
The witch didn’t flinch but her eyes narrowed on me. Unwelcome and alarming, that gaze seemed to rip back the layers of my skin until I felt like she could see all of me. And though I wished to, I couldn’t look away.
Please, I wanted to beg. But my tongue wouldn’t form the word. It was like a boulder in my mouth, as useless as always. Perhaps it was best if she believed I couldn’t speak at all.
Dizzying relief made me feel as light as air when she broke my gaze and returned hers to Benn, who sat across from her at the fire.
“Ignore her,” Benn told the witch, dismissing me easily with his glance. “She’s a half-wit. Can barely speak.”
The witch laughed and I flinched, turning my back as I retreated towards the darkness of the forest, where the others were waiting.
Behind me, I heard, “Careful,vekkiri. Kakkari often gives power to those who seem most harmless, to better defend themselves with.”
Without seeing his face, I knew that the words had given Benn pause. I could almost see the way his mouth turned down into a deep scowl, the way his brows drew together and his eyes narrowed.
Ducking my head, I ignored the others as I sat close to the second fire, not far away, built to give the illusion of privacy between Benn and the witch who’d come to meet with him.
Wrapping my arms around my knees, I curled into myself and stared at the flickering flames, all while listening.
There were thirty-one of us in total, though not all were present tonight for this meeting. A large group was out hunting, though they’d needed to push farther west than ever before. After the red fog began to spread, the game had left the eastlands. Hunger was constant among us. And we were getting desperate.
The witch seemed to be as well. The fact that a Dakkari witch was meeting with a human at all was proof of her desperation, though she hid it well behind a veil of displeasure and distaste.
“Have you anything to eat?” the witch asked next, her words slow. “I travel all this way to be given boiled water?”
Sitting next to me, Mohamed shifted. I sensed others casting wary, angered glances at each other, lobbing them across the flames. As if their muted outrage would make a difference.
Benn’s voice was tight when he barked out, “Get her some food.”
Though he hadn’t said my name, I knew from his tone that his words were meant for me and I stood. Others cast me glares of derision, as ifIhad offered food to the witch, food from our already dwindling rations, and not Benn.
Stumbling to our food sack, I fished out the dirtied hide, my stomach growling when I peeled back the layer to expose our dried strips ofrikcrun. One of them was riddled with blue mold but I stared at it longingly nevertheless.
Behind me, Benn grumbled, “We have very little food left, witch. Did you come all this way to eat it or do you actually have the ability to break this curse, like you claim?”
“Feed me now,vekkiri, and I will ask Kakkari to bless us with a bounty, so that you will not question my intentions again,” the witch growled. As I approached with a strip ofrikcrun, those red eyes were on me again, though they were angry now.
The witch’s hand flew out and snagged my wrist when I deposited the dried rations before her. When I winced, she tightened her grip but her voice was calm.
“Whatever magic Kakkari has given you, whatever it is that runs in this blood,” she cut my wrist with a flick of her black claws to emphasize her point and I bit my lip as red blood trickled from the small wound, “she gave you an advantage overus,her true children.”
My heart was beating rapidly in my chest and fear was making me shake. I cried out when the witch leaned forward and licked the line of my blood from my wrist, smacking her lips together at the taste, her nostrils flaring.
“I have come to honor her wishes. I have come to find outwhy,” the witch finished, her lips smeared with my blood. Finally, she flung my wrist away and I stumbled back, the feel of her hot, sticky saliva on my flesh making my stomach roil. “Whycan humans withstand this curse while the Dakkari and our creatures fall to it? You are weak where Dakkari are strong. Yet, perhaps it is the Dakkari that need to realize thatvekkiriare strong whereweare weak. And it is only together that we can survive.”
“Humans are not immune to the fog,” Benn pointed out, though his eyes came to me, briefly, before his mouth pressed and he regarded the witch again.
“Humans are more immune to it than any of us. That is powerful in itself. I am told that even theDothikkardoes not yet know this,” the witch said and she brought the dried rations to her lips, tearing at the hunk of meat hungrily. Her teeth were filed and sharp. Some of my blood still decorated the corner of her mouth and I felt that strange chill again, funneling through my body, making me want torun.
But where would I go?
