“Don’t know,” the vampire murmurs. “Don’t care, either. Keep up.”
“I bet Aesir split all the groups up evenly,” the witch continues, stumbling over a branch until the merman steadies him.
As soon as their skin touches, the merman hisses and reels back, his seafoam eyes narrowed to slits. “Stop freezing the air!” He shakes out his hand, but the damage is done. His fingertips are partially frozen, their natural pale green hue turning white as the liquid in his body solidifies. “Marick! Calm down!”
So the ice crystalizing on witch boy Marick’s skin is a nervous reaction?
Taking a breath, I grab Marick’s arm and haul him two steps closer to me. “My body heat will keep you from freezing solid.” I push him to keep us moving. “Stay close.”
“Th-thank you,” Marick mumbles, stumbling ahead of me. The unnamed merman keeps a wide berth but stays close enough to warn Marick of debris in our path. Swallowing, witch boy glances back at me. “You’re that wild wolf. The one with the black blood.”
“It’s not black.” I hold back a wince. How many people were paying attention in class today? “Turn around and keep moving.”
“You know,” he continues, some of the ice collecting on his neck melting enough to stick to his clothes, “my gran says that the wilds aren’t the problem—that the rot is just nature reclaiming itself before everything renews in a few years.”
“She’d rather live in the rotting wastes than in a nice little cottage in the wood?” The merman asks, his sea green eyes flicking back toward us.
“Well, yeah. She’s a bog witch. Decaying plants are kind of her thing.”
I run a hand through my hair and glance up at the hidden moon. None of these kids know anything about the wilds, do they? Gods help us. “Your grandmother hasn’t seen true decay.” Sighing, I push Marick to walk faster. “The rot isn’t something to make light of. It’s—” I purse my lips, imagining the pitch black tendrils of wild rot crawling closer with every day that passes. “Growing.”
“I’ve heard that it’s alive,” the merman whispers, keeping his voice down. “Sometimes you can feel it in the deepest parts of ocean, like it’s trying to speak a language no one knows.”
The vampire slows her gait to join the conversation. “There is no such thing as a dead language.” She flicks her dark locks over her shoulder. “Only dead people who choose not to speak it.”
“You think someone would know a language that’s thousands of years old?” Marick shakes his head. “C’mon, that’s ridiculous. Vampires don’t even live that long. You all fall asleepwaybefore then.”
She grabs Marick by the throat and flashes her fangs in his freckled face. “Speak of my kind in that tone again, witch, and I will bless you with an eternal slumber.”
My senses rattle as they bicker, and I tune them out to check our perimeter. The hairs on my arms stand on end as a whisper of wind drifts past my ankles, a slow-rising mist suddenly blanketing the ground. The merman notices first, his nose twitching as he looks down. The air closest to Marick crystalizes, rapidly freezing him in place.
Fuck.
Tackling him and the vampire in the same lunge, I push them out of the mist before it can climb any higher. “Run!” I snap, my eyes glowing brighter silver as they shift. The mist isn’t rising from the earth but coming from somewhere nearby—and rapidlyincreasing speed. If I were with Sienna, we would approach the threat head-on, but a four-on-four fight when we don’t know our opponents is asking for trouble.
Not knowing my alliesalsocreates problems.
Half-frozen Marick trips over his own feet. The vamp girl leaves the three of us in the dust as she flees. Our merman’s scales appear as the moisture in the air compounds, but at least he can run, quickly following vamp girl into the nearest shadows. I lift Marick off the ground and toss him over my shoulder, swallowing a hiss as his frigid fucking skin burns mine. Goddamn, that stings.
I reach up and smack the side of his fucking head. “Stop freaking out!”
He shakes his head, the loose curls on top freezing in place. His breath doesn’t fog the air, but mine sure does as the temperature drops. “Something’s behind us!”
“Then fuckingdo something!”
Lifting his hand, Marick whimpers as he shoots a bolt of ice from his open palm. The first one impales a tree, but the second actually hits something. There’s a growl behind us, and Marick starts shaking again. “Sh-sh-shifter!”
Marick’s ice is fucking with my sense of smell. I jostle him as we catch up to the others. “I can’t scent anyone if you don’t control your powers. Take a breath and calm down. You’re fine. Nothing’s going to?—”
An arrowfwickspast our heads and hits vamp girl in the back. She screeches as she reaches over her shoulder to try and dislodge it, but it’s between her shoulder blades. As she spins around, merman grabs it and pulls it free, yelping just as loudly as his palms slice open. The bloodied arrow falls silently to the ground.
I glance at it as I drop Marick. The feathers are perfect, without a single rip or tear as they trail almost the full length toits sharp tip, the blood sliding off as though the arrow is coated in oil. I frown as I nudge it with my boot. There is no separation between shaft and tip, no twine to bind anything, no magic humming from its core. The tip is razor sharp, but it’s naturally created that way, as are the edges of the double-sided feathers.
It’s not manmade.
“Harpy,” Merman huffs, coming to the same conclusion. He quickly glances upward to scan the limited airspace above our heads. The trees are taller here than where we were previously standing, the lowest branches reaching a few feet over our heads. A flyer would have the advantage if they could see through the darkness. “Hate those fuckers.”
“Aren’t theyyourkind?” Vamp girl’s wound isn’t healing, but she doesn’t seem to mind the pain. “Deal with them, fishface!”
