“We relocated everyone in the village,” he said. “She’s not there.”
Fear pooled in her belly. “What do you mean by relocated?”
He waved a dismissive hand as if he wasn’t talking about a disaster. “They were too close to the edge of the woods. We couldn’t spare anyone to escort them, but most of them headed to Sulen. You’ll likely find your mother there.”
“My mother is blind,” she said tightly.
“Surely someone will help her.”
She felt sick. Her mother couldn’t make it to Sulen on her own. Her whole world was the house and her garden. She only left when called to a birth or sickbed. And that was always on Rowan’s arm to make sure she made it safely. Tilly would have trouble walking all the way to Sulen. How was she supposed to get her mother there? George would be useless.
Her voice trembled with anger when she spoke. “Do you think we’d be living in Toam if there was someone to help her?”
Captain Shaw rubbed at a spot on his forehead. “Until the witch is killed, no one is safe anywhere near the woods. Casrian should have evacuated the village before he went after his patrol.”
“Send me with Sol then.” She needed to find her mother. “I’ll make sure he gets there.”
The captain shook his head as he climbed to his feet. “I’m afraid I can’t do that. You’re involved in this infestation. Until I better understand exactly what role you’ve played here, you’re coming with us.” To his man, he said, “Find her a place to sleep for the night but put a watch on her. The irons stay on for now.”
She shot to her feet. The weight of the irons overbalanced her, and she stumbled forward a step. A hard hand caught her arm and pulled her back, away from the captain.
“This is ridiculous,” she shouted. “I’ve done nothing wrong.”
Emrys’s lips thinned into a grim line. “Let’s hope so.”
At least theyput her on a horse when they set out the next morning. It wasn’t Copper. This horse was taller and didn’t have as smooth a gait. Copper carried Sol, who’d apparently woken up enough to vouch for her before setting off with the medic’s apprentice for Sulen. She’d thought his support would clear everything up with the captain, but it had not. She was heading back toward the nest, like it was the center of some kind of evil whirlpool that kept pulling her in.
She wanted to go home. She wanted a hot meal and a clean bed and her small world back where witches weren’t even real and every breath didn’t stink of rot. Where her body didn’t ache like an old woman’s and her heart didn’t sit like a dead weight in her chest, locked up with dread that Casrian was out there right now fighting the witch with only half a patrol.
How did he do this year after year? It was awful.
Especially when he didn’t need to. He was a baron with a townhome and a country estate. Surely he could find something better to do with his time.
LordDain…
She laughed, and the soldier next to her darted an uneasy look her way. She was still wearing irons. The captain hadn’t saidso directly, but he was treating her like an accused witch. They were exactly like the manacles her mother had worn at her trial. It was her blackest nightmare come true.
And this place—the darkening sky, the damp and the cold, the yellow fog stirring beneath the horse’s hooves, the feeling of being watched pressing in on all sides now—she hated it.
The trees still whispered to her, but now the whispers were dark and oily. Captain Shaw followed the map, forcing his way right through the woods, not even trying to avoid the trees that were taken by rot.
The fog never left them even as the morning sun rose toward midday. It spilled over the stream banks and crept along the forest floor, limiting sight. The stink of rot grew stronger. The trees here looked sickly. The bark sloughing off like diseased skin, leaving some kind of slimy black fungus growing on the smooth wood that was white as bone.
As they drew closer to the river, they were swarmed by small, biting insects. At first she tried swatting them away, but with the chains on her hands it was an exhausting and dangerous endeavor. She gave up in the end and just sat there, hoping the dried mud on her skin poisoned them all.
Turkey vultures flew overhead. Unnaturally large, they slowly circled above the woods, one of them occasionally sinking down to disappear into the trees. There was an infestation of large, flat-backed insects on the forest floor. She caught flashes of their glossy shells every once in a while until it made her queasy and she stopped looking for them. She couldn’t tell if it was dry leaves or the insects that crunched beneath the horse’s hooves.
She hardly recognized the place. Toby and his father would be appalled. It was like the woods had died and left behind this slowly rotting corpse. Another shudder racked her body, and this time she didn’t think it had to do with the cold.
They weren’t far now.
She kept looking up, thinking she should be able to see the old fort at any moment. But then, if they were that close, Casrian must have reached the fort yesterday. Where was he? There was no sound of fighting. No sound of anything at all. Just a dead, echoing silence.
If they’d killed the witch, the woods wouldn’t still feel like this. The trees would know, and they would tell her it was safe again.
There was still that itch between her shoulder blades. The lifted hair on her neck. The pressure in the air like the moment before a lightning strike.
It didn’t feel like a place that had been cleansed. The woods here felt alive and malevolent, like a hungry creature stalking its next meal.
