My focus rises to the castle we left behind, the eastern side of it now lit with the first rays of dawn.
How the Queen’s desperation must be growing.Assuming she actually cares beneath her self-centered façade.
A feeling of dread settles at the base of my stomach.
Desperation can drive even good people to do terrible things, and a monarch like Karasi is already primed for cruelty.
It takes us an entire day to climb the top of the mountain at the edge of the valley.
A sparse forest sits across it, made up of scraggly trees with leaves that appear brittle in the fading light.
The wind whistles past them, making their boughs creak and groan, and I find myself shivering, not from cold, but because the air is weirdly heavy up here.
We traveled at an angle, heading upward but easterly, and as we pick our path through the fallen vegetation—old branches and crackling twigs—my skin prickles.
From up here, I can see that this mountain range sits farther north of the mountains that circle the Cursed City. I can nearly imagine it in the distance, but I can’t be completely certain how far away it is.
Thaden is relentless, pushing onward even as night falls.
He glances back regularly to check that I haven’t fallen behind.
I don’t complain. Or try to slow us down. Although that strategy does occur to me.
The farther we go, the more I find myself studying him.
The air around him is changing.
Maybe it’s the way he carries himself, more upright. Maybe it’s the expression on his face when he looks back—the little tension lines around his eyes and mouth that have eased somehow.
The way his breathing sounds different… Deeper, maybe.
There’s a scent in the air.
Of copper and… something else…
Something not quite right.
I can’t quite put my finger on it, but I know that Gallium is aware of it, too, because every now and then, his hand brushes my arm. His focus will glide from Thaden’s back to a point in the environment around us, as if he wants me to take note of it.
A tree with oddly black bark extending up one side of its trunk.
A fallen branch with trails of a dark, goopy substance crisscrossing all over it.
The faint rustle of leaves when the trees appear to shiver as we pass them by, except that it isn’t caused by the wind because it happens when the breezedies down.
Finally, when the moon sits high in the sky, Thaden draws to a halt. He studies our surroundings, his head held high as he draws an audibly deep breath and then nods to himself.
“It’s safe enough to stop here, but not for long,” he says. “We’ll need to take turns keeping watch.”
“What makes it safe here and not elsewhere?” I ask, keeping my voice to a low murmur.
He gives me a grim smile. “The creatures in this forest wake up at night. I think you noticed the black bark and the trails of slime?”
The fact that he was aware of us doing so concerns me a little.
Nothing seems to escape his notice.
“The beasts of this forest sleep within the trees during the day,” he continues. “They wake up at night. But there aren’t any nesting in this location.”
