Dread pools in my gut. “What is it?”
“Tonight is not a deathless night,” he says. “The souls of the dead are near.”
24
Taliesin strikes a torch to light, and the sudden flames rumble like distant thunder. Shadows writhe through the trees, and the heavy silence that follows thickens the dread in my stomach. Before, the crack of twigs and the rustle of leaves marked the woodland creatures fleeing, hiding from intruders, from us.
Now the forest is still. The animals have already run.
Bryn is silent on Taliesin’s shoulder, huddled against him, face pressed into his neck. He strides forward with the flames dancing across his face, his eyes narrowed on the path ahead, like if he glares at the dead hard enough, they’ll leave us be.
I fall into step beside him, my pack thumping against my shoulder blades.
“You’ve come across them before, right?” I ask. “Tell me what to expect. What, exactly, are we walking into here?”
“They scream at you until you forget your own mind,” he mutters.
“But they can’t hurt us?”
“Physically? No.” His eyes darken. “But it’s been many months since I got surrounded by them. They haunt my dreams, even now.”
“Lucky for me I don’t dream.”
“What?” He frowns. “Of course you dream.”
“Maybe I do, but I don’t remember them.” Just like so much else I forget.
“Hmm. We need to do something about that.” He glances my way, the firelight illuminating the strong angles of his face—and that ancient power in his eyes I’ve only seen him reveal a handful of times.
“There’s nothing to be done,” I say softly. “There’s no controlling it.”
Before he can respond, a whispered scream winds through the trees, prickling the back of my neck. I slow my steps. Beside me, Taliesin does the same. A moment later, another cry rises from deeper in the forest. Its high pitch scrapes across my eardrums, sending a sharp flare of pain through my skull.
I hiss between my teeth, overcome by the urge to double over. I shove it down, forcing myself to stand tall. Another scream rents the night.
That voice. I know it. I often hear it when I raise the dead, echoing in my mind until I collapse. And as terrible and mournful as it is, something in me stills when it fills the air again, ringing through the forest like a warning bell. But somehow I know it’s not warning me. I do not need to be afraid. Not of this.
“What is it?” Taliesin asks.
“We keep moving,” I say.
He frowns but doesn’t argue, handing me the torch when I reach for it. I take the lead now, driving us deeper into the forest, toward the sound. Every few steps, it rises again, but it never grows louder. If anything, it softens. As the hour stretches on,more voices join the first, but they are no longer screams. Just sobs of sadness and pain.
We reach a section in the path I don’t remember passing on the way here, where a ring of sticks stands a few feet off the trail. Something calls me toward it. I step off the path and move inside the ring, tipping back my head to gaze up at the starless sky.
“What are you doing?” Taliesin asks. For the first time since I met him, he sounds afraid.
The wails build, echoing through the forest like a song. I close my eyes and let them wash over me, let the cries fill the hollow spaces deep inside my mind.
And then—shockingly, violently—an ancient memory sparks to life. In my mind’s eye, a face hovers above mine. Silver hair falls across his brow. It’s shorter than it is now, only brushing the edges of his tipped ears. He looks younger. No, older. No…justdifferent. A silver crown rests on his head, and his high-collared tunic smells like…
“Rowan blossom,” I breathe.
He smiles. “Angha—”
“Swynwraig?” A worried voice sounds in my ear.
A hand closes around my arm and pulls me from the ring of sticks, and the memory vanishes like mist. Taliesin’s face hovers in front of mine. Long hair to his shoulders. No crown on his brow. Different. No,the same. But now he smells of leather and blood instead of rowan.
