They’d already gone as far as the trees had told her. She’d either have to risk reaching out again, though the oak had warned her against it, or she’d have to pick a direction and hope for the best.
She’d have to lie to Casrian again.
Gaze searching the ground below, she started to move along the edge of the cliff, focusing her attention on the east and south. If the men had passed this way days ago, they’d be well out of sight. She wished she had the ability to see great distances or to find things with her mind. Those would be useful abilities. Tilly had once told her about a fae she’d met as a child who could cast her awareness into a pet falcon and see out of its eyes when it flew. Now, that would be a useful gift.
Trees wouldn’t even talk to her half the time and when they did, it wasn’t like an actual conversation. It was impressions of soil and air and water. They didn’t understand time in the same way people did. They didn’t care much about what people did beneath their branches so long as it didn’t involve fire or an ax.
She was lucky the oak had told her enough to get her this far.
Disappointment settling in her gut, she walked back toward the spot where she’d climbed up. She tied her rope to the trunk of a nearby tree and tugged it to make sure it would bear her weight. She took one last long look at the forest below.
A smell reached her on the breeze. Stronger and more acrid than the smell of rot. A musky animal smell that clogged her throat and made her freeze like spotted prey. Cold shot down her spine. She crouched, going still as a rabbit. Her gaze swept past the rocky ground—open and clear—to the trees. There, she saw it.
The creature was about four feet tall at a crouch. Its head was turned her way, tilting slightly to the side like it was studying her, seeing what she would do. It was very aware of her presence. At rest, it looked like a large wolf. Powerful haunches, thinner front legs, enormous paws ending in curved claws. It had the snout of a wolf too, and the teeth, but that was where the similarities ended. It wasn’t a wolf. Not a natural one anyway.
For one thing, it had no fur on its body. Instead, it was covered with a thin, slick skin that clung to its ropy muscles andseemed to repel the sunlight. Or maybe that wasn’t skin at all but blackened muscle wrapped around a bony frame. It seemed to gather shadows to itself just as the witch had done. Even in the daylight, it was hard to tell the boundary between its body and the darkness around it. A darkness that moved, twisting lazily in the hollow beneath a fallen tree.
She could see its eyes though, slitted and yellow and hungry, staring out at her from a lean face above that heavy jaw.
She went dizzy with fear. Her breath locked in her chest and her mouth went dry. She stepped carefully back toward the edge of the cliff.
The thing tracked her movement, sliding closer to her as she retreated, step for step. Then it lunged, moving faster than she could follow, and she dove for the rope.
23
Casrian stared at the spot where Rowan had disappeared over the top of the cliff for several moments before he remembered to breathe. Watching her slight body hanging by her fingertips so high above him had knotted his guts.
She was a good climber. He’d give her that. She knew what she was doing—that was clear—and had a good deal of experience, which surprised him.
Everything about her surprised him.
Her head appeared at the top. She smiled down at him and gave him a cheerful wave before disappearing again. He turned away, his gaze sweeping the area behind him. A familiar could have walked right up behind him while she was scaling the wall and he wouldn’t have noticed.
As competent as she was, he hated letting her put herself in danger when there was nothing he could do to help. He hated thathewas the one putting her in danger. He also knew it would have been wrong on a fundamental level to stop her. She would chafe at any kind of leash.
There was a shout from above.
He turned to see his rope drop, unspooling as it fell. He grabbed the end to steady it and looked up, expecting to see Rowan preparing to climb down.
The rope jerked in his hand at the same time he saw her swing out, her legs searching for a grip. He started to call out for her to go slow, but the words died in his throat. She was already sliding down the rope. Too fast. She was going to lose her grip.
That fear was quickly overshadowed by the thing behind her, crouched on the ledge, watching her flee. A nightmare wrapped in living flesh. A creature warped into an abomination to serve the witch. The same familiar that had attacked his patrol in the woods.
Closer to a wolf than a cat, it wasn’t built for climbing, but it looked like it was considering hurling itself after Rowan anyway. Its mouth stretched open as it let out a long wailing howl, and Casrian’s blood went cold at the rows of needle-sharp teeth visible even from below. There were too many teeth for a mouth of that size. Claws gripped the rock face, digging in, sending a spray of dust and pebbles pinging down the side.
It could shred the rope. One swipe of those claws, a bite of those razor-sharp teeth. The wound on his chest throbbed with the memory of exactly what that felt like.
The familiar growled at Rowan. She was less than a dozen feet down. The shadows wrapped around it began to unravel, tendrils stretching out and coiling around the rope like dripping ink, reaching toward Rowan’s bare hands.
“Off the rope!”
Rowan glanced down at him with wide eyes. “It’s faster.”
“Get off the fucking rope,” he said again, thinking they needed to have another conversation about her following orders.
She looked up, saw the black shadows stretching toward her, and froze. He thought she was going to lock up. Trained soldiers did that all the time, and Rowan wasn’t trained for any of this.She’d thought witches were herbalists and charm peddlers until just a few days ago. But she moved, sliding down another foot and stretching out her leg to reach a foothold, searching for another even as she pressed her fingertips onto a ledge.
“Cut the rope,” he shouted. “Keep moving down.”
