Gone is whatever petty amusement lingered in his eyes in the gardens of Blackbourne Castle. Is this all some terrible mistake? Bringing Ransom along? Coming here myself? Agreeing to marry him?
Worry etches out along my bones, replacing the world around me. We have no plan, no food, no real knowledge of where to go. I search the forest for answers, but there is nothing. Just endless rows of slender trees reaching for the bloody sky.
Ransom is strangely still. I cannot make out the expression on his face. Something between determination and fear, but beneath it lies an emotion I can’t decipher. Like oil in a rain puddle.
I empty my mind of it and glance about the dead branches above us for the skeletal raven, but it is gone. Not even a trace of feathers left behind. Instead, a shadow catches in the corner of my vision. Like the hem of a coat. A wisp of something familiar, but only there in one moment and gone in the next.
I blink it away. The brightness of the moon stings my eyes.
Ahead of us, the woods are just as dead as they are behind. No sound. No change in the deep red light. Only the gentle swishing of the empty tree limbs.
I step forward, fallen boughs snapping beneath my boots. Ransom still does not move.
Then I hear it, a slight rustling, like cloth being dragged through underbrush. The air tightens.
Someone is here, watching us.
Ransom slips his hand into mine, tacky with sweat. His eyes fix on something behind us and blow as wide as harvest moons. My chest constricts, an uneven thrum to my heart, and I turn back.
Above us looms a woman. Or rather, what is left of one.
She seems to sprout right from the forest floor, her dress—if it can be called that—is all twisted shadow dusted with scarlet leaves. Her arms hang heavy at her sides, dragging along behind her, white fingers crusted with earth. The hollow of her throat is nothing but dry bone.
My eyes trail down the length of her. That is all she is beneath the shadows.
A tear in her dark shroud shows right through her ribcage to the forest beyond. Hair as white as a corpse slips around her face in wet strings, and her lips—stained like belladonna berries—part in a pale face.
I wait for her to speak, wait for her to do anything, while fear boils sour at the back of my tongue. But she says nothing, and in horror, I realize she is waiting for me to say the first word.
I open my mouth, searching for the right things to say, trying to string them together in a way that makes sense. But my brain feels like ash, my mouth as dry as dirt. Ransom’s hand is tight in mine, the other snaking to my waist. He might break my bones if he doesn’t release me.
I stare at the woman—the thing—before us. “Are you of Erybrus?”
In all our religious texts, the two warring gods have their servants, their minions. But never have I learned of something described as this. Our fear does not lie in their visages, but in what these creatures might do to our souls if we do not choose the right path.
The creature bends forward, casting murk, blocking out the sallow moon. Her body moves as if there are no bones, but they crack, catch like diamond dust in the dim light. Ransom pulls me flush against him, breath steaming at my neck.
The woman straightens, hair swinging like ropes, and then her lips peel back, exposing nothing but teeth. Rows and rows of teeth like hawthorns.
Atruemonster of the rowan wood. Not a thing of white smoke, a soul untethered. But something else. Something that reeks of copper and salt.
“Give me your name,” I say, my voice no louder than a breath.
“Adelaide, what do you think you’re—” But Ransom does not finish his question.
Instead, the air fills with the kind of silence that hollows the bones.
The shadow woman’s skin stops stretching, her face stamped with a sort of broken grin.
“We do not have a name,” she rasps in a chorus voice, metallic and bitter. “We have not had one in so very long. But you have one.” A laugh like warped bells. “We know your name. Yes, we know your name, have heard it many times. But we don’t like how it tastes. There is too much blood.”
The woman clacks her teeth, hums a kind of hollow melody, and her tongue spills from her mouth like a long, black worm.
My heart—the gentlest tightening. I squeeze my fist in Ransom’s, letting his warmth radiate up my arm to my chest. The fear at the back of my throat spreads like poison in my mouth. But this is the path I have chosen. This is the way to find Mother. To bring her back from this purgatory.
I take a small step forward, bringing Ransom with me.
“If you are not of Erybrus,” I say, voice shaking, “what are you?”
