The wraith’s music was also back, louder than before, mocking in his ears. As if he needed another reminder that he was losing Griff to this spirit—as if he couldn’t have lost Griff all on his own.
It was a terrible song even in its softness, because beneath its outward beautiful sorrow was a dissonant drowning that reverberated painfully in Mal’s teeth. The way the notes echoed in the curve of his ear, its message was plain: There was no hope here.
Even as the wraith pulled Griff toward the lake, the wind it seemed to have conjured continued to whip the leaves on the trees, earning several rebuking caws from the ravens who had stubbornly stuck around despite the threat. The gusts flung dirtand debris into Alys’s eyes, making her recoil against the sting as she passed the broken blade to Mal. She drew Rhun’s old sword again, then grabbed the raven-topped dagger from her belt as she ran alongside Mal in pursuit of Griff.
He shouldn’t have hit the flask so hard; half his steps were stumbles that were costing him precious seconds. Seconds in which, from a distance, he watched the shadowy mist solidify into bone. Whereas before the wraith’s eyes had been empty pits, a cold blue glow now illuminated the gaunt face from within, as if it possessed some magic of its own that crackled to life the closer it got to its resting place.
Still, his tattoo prickled as sharply as it had the day Kage gave it to him, because this spirit had been spun from the queen’s magic in the first place.
The wraith pulled its cracked lips back in a snarl again as Mal staggered toward it, rushing past the bounds of the wards and even smudging one without care for his own safety, ignoring the burn in his side as his busted stitches throbbed in protest. “Hey!” he shouted, gripping the makeshift hilt of the spirit blade tighter. “I know you can hear me! Why don’t you leave him the fuck alone and tell us what you’re really after? You want the treasure? Fine! You can have it!” he lied.
He was stalling, because Alys was moving faster than him, and this was the best way he could think to help right now. To try to start making things up to Griff, if that was even possible. He would need Griff to let him know whether there was still a chance for them if they both made it out of this.
Alys certainly had things of her own to make up to the cinnamon-roll-loving foreman who would never agree to a deal with the darkness, because she had known about the deal from the start and kept it secret. He could guess some of what was on her mind as she aimed her father’s raven-topped dagger at a spot several inches over Griff’s head and threw it so that it spun neatly end over end, a trick Wynnie had taught them both.
The wraith smiled sharply, no skin on its lips, as it slid a hand up to Griff’s throat and squeezed, dropping his limp form in the mud just in time to grasp the shiny raven-topped weapon that had sailed slightly to the left of the dark hole where its ear should have been.
It looked back up at Mal, winked at him, and disappeared, taking Rhun’s dagger with it.
The wind that had been tearing through their camp stopped completely.
So did the sorrowful, teeth-aching music.
Alys ran the rest of the way to Griff, kneeling beside him and pressing her ear to his chest as if she was checking for breath. “Still alive!” he was relieved to read on her lips.
Mal finally reached her, passing the broken blade from his hands into her more capable ones without really looking at Griff. He couldn’t let himself think about the man he loved right now, or how hurt he might be. He needed to focus on where the hell the wraith had run off to, so he could tell Alys where to aim their only useful weapon.
She shouted something to Mal, but he couldn’t quite make out the words thanks to the sudden incensed screeches of the ravens. They were gathering at the base of the pike on which Alys had staked the shriveled orc’s head, several yards away from the fire, hopping around as if greatly agitated.
He detected admonishment in their cries, giving him the sense that something was about to happen that their master didn’t like.
Despite his dislike of the damn birds, Mal strode toward them, hurrying back over the broken wards that had marked their camp. He intended to shut them up somehow so he could listen for the wraith’s ear-piercing song—but as he got closer, the silver coins fell from the orc’s unseeing eyes, and he knew exactly what had upset the ravens.
Leo the Head blinked once, twice, freezing Mal to the spot where he stood as a cool bluish gleam of intelligence entered thatlong-dead gaze that moments ago had been gray, almost colorless, lost to the decay of time.
Leo’s cracked lips twisted into something like a smile. “You want to talk?” it asked in a voice as old as the dirt, as brittle as the leaves in winter. “Talk, then. No one ever wants to talk with the likes of me, save for the Deathless Lady, and I’m afraid we are no longer on speaking terms. Haven’t been for at least a century.”
Mal could hardly find his own voice, shaking with cold as he was, but he squared his shoulders and stared into the glow in the orc’s eyes. “What the hell do you want?” he demanded of the spirit inside the head, even if Wynnie had once told him that old line about flies and honey. The wraith had laid hands on both Alys and Griff now, and he didn’t have any politeness left. “Let me guess: It’s your treasure, not Her Dreadful Majesty’s, and if we take another step toward that lake, you’ll drown us and keep our weapons for your pile of pretty baubles?”
This thing was clearly powerful; Mal could feel magic radiating off the severed head like an invisible hand pushing against his chest, urging him to back away. But stubborn as he was, ever Wynnie’s faithful student, he stood his ground and tried not to let his face betray any glimmer of fear.
“I want you three. Your souls. They’re far more important than any armor or weapons, even enchanted ones. All those old things matter little to me these days.” The head wheezed with laughter like the clack of bones. “The blood of heroes runs in you, no matter how you conduct yourselves to the contrary. You reek of it. Elf blood,” the wraith continued through those long-decayed vocal cords, narrowing its eyes at Mal. “You’ll make fine additions to my growing army of spirits; it’s been well worth the wait, though I admit I’m surprised you made it this far. I almost had you on your own stupidity when you gave yourself an infection and nearly died from that fever. But I’m patient, and that always pays off … like when you angered your companion into stepping outside those wards.”
At that, Mal darted another glance at Griff’s seemingly unconscious form still slumped in the mud several yards away, his stomach writhing.
Then came movement at the corner of his eye. Beyond the agitated ravens, far in the distance, several filmy green-eyed ghosts had dared to peer around the trees. Watching, curious to see which way this battle would go, though they apparently still weren’t going to risk getting too close.
“You’ll be in good company here,” the head rasped, as if trying to reassure him. “And when I’ve collected enough souls, we’ll move against the Shadow Queen together. That should make your dark-haired friend very happy.”
Mal took a step back, darting a quick glance over at Alys. Like him, she was staring at the head, seemingly able to hear every word now that it was speaking through a mouth of flesh and bone.
“They’ll be delicious too,” the wraith crooned, clearly trying to rile him.
Mal didn’t answer. He was trying to make sense of what he could now see just behind his friends, the army of ghosts that the rogue wraith had boasted about, trapped souls of elves and humans and all sorts gathered around to watch the proceedings. At their forefront, near Griff’s unmoving body, a few pale forms knelt—no, had been shoved to their knees, Mal realized upon closer inspection, weighed down by ephemeral chains that must be heavy on their shoulders and ankles.
One of them was vaguely familiar, and before he even glanced up and into Mal’s eyes, Mal knew who he was. Rhun.
He had been here all this time. He’d never left. Never chosen another life for himself but the one he’d had with them and Wynnie. And now he was being held an arm’s length away from Alys, close enough to reach out to his daughter if his hands hadn’t been bound.
