My wolf’s speed is immense now, making us a blur of white nearly as fast as any eagle as we streak across the landscape, the ground so dark that I can’t tell if we’re running across ash or dirt or possibly even black bones ground to dust.
I have moments to decide which valley or mountain peak we should head toward, mere seconds before the vampyrs will detect our presence.
The Oracle told me to come for her when the stars go out.
But it’s her second command that consumes me now:find me where the light hides.
Finding anything in the bloodlands will be impossible, letalone a light where light simply doesn’t exist because otherwise, it would burn the vampyrs?—
Ah.
But of course. If there is such a place within this darkness, the vampyrs will avoid it.
I need to listen for the spaces where theyaren’tswarming.
My eyesight may not be as strong as my wolf’s, but my hearing is just as keen.
I inherited my acute hearing from my Lethian mother. In a crowded, noisy room, she could isolate the scheming murmurs of those who wished for her death. She could identify the crunch of snow beneath feet creeping through the night. Even make out the whisper of frozen air wafting between icy boughs. Sometimes, she hummed to herself the melodies she heard in nature, sharing them with me and my younger sister. Like secrets only we knew.
Now I have heartbeats in which to decide which direction my wolf should run.
Already, a stream of vampyrs breaks away from the main group in the distance and streams in our direction.
To her credit, my wolf doesn’t balk at the death coming for us. Like all Frost wolves, she’s a powerful fighter. She can leap far higher and run much faster than any other land animal. This isn’t the first time she and I have fought for our lives against malevolent creatures.
As she maintains a steady forward path, I close my eyes, block out my other senses, and expand my hearing, focusing past the cacophony of vampyric shrieking, seeking a space filled with silence. An absence of sound.
Perhaps even the sound of the Oracle’s breathing.
Maybe her voice…
My brow furrows deeply when I discover more empty spaces than I was expecting. Far more.
If anything, it seems the vampyrs are emptying out of the valleys and leaving the peaks, flocking from the east and the far west toward a single mountain ridge situated ahead and to our right.
I’m not capable of fear. Not of feeling it or succumbing to its debilitating effects on my body. I gave up my ability to feel dread when I destroyed my capacity to feel every other emotion.
But now my eyes fly open.
Instinct and logic warn me that the number of undead circling that mountain could be impossible to defeat.
I was wrong.
I won’t find the Oracle in the quiet.
No fear of light would keep starving vampyrs from the promise of food. They would risk burns for even a drop of her blood.
Whatever light she spoke of when she told me to find her where the light hides, its glow won’t save her.
My wolf, always attuned to my moods, gives a sharp growl.
To reach the mountain where the vampyrs are gathering, we’ll first need to cross two mountain ridges and two valleys between them.
Without me even uttering a command, my wolf veers in the direction of the first mountain ridge.
Acknowledging her courage, I lean lower and murmur, “Fight well, Nara.”
Her ears prick. No doubt at hearing her name.
