Before anyone can agree with him, and I’m pretty sure that we would all agree with him, he shifts. We all watch cautiously as he simply steps into the darkness behind Farren.
“Well, that’s new,” Mayhem mutters.
“You mean the cloaking?” Loki asks. He narrows his eyes as he looks behind Farren. “I saw him step behind Farren, and yet I can’t see him at all.”
I am not ashamed to say that I jump when Reaper, or Ryu’s dragon eyes, appear above Farren’s head as his breath moves her hair and she looks up at him with a smile.
The sound of footsteps stops us from asking any questions that we may have, and I watch as Reaper once again disappears completely.
It’s fucking impressive and makes him incredibly valuable in a fight.
Putting it to the back of my mind for a moment, I turn to face the direction where I know they’re approaching from. They aren’t trying to be quiet, which is weird in itself.
They should be moving stealthily in order to avoid being attacked.
The mumbling gets louder, but I still can’t fucking tell what they’re fucking trying to tell me.
I block it the best I can.
I don’t want to risk getting distracted, not in this situation. They have always felt like a threat to me. Even when they were being perfectly nice and helpful, I still didn’t trust them. Although it probably didn’t help that those moments quickly became few and far between as I grew up, and my magic grew with me. The funny thing is, I’ve hidden most of it from them.
That feeling of utter distrust is now tenfold.
There is absolutely no way I could talk myself out of thinking they’re a threat, not like I used to do.
Plus, if I’m being completely honest with myself, I will not risk Farren.
I don’t know what to do with that. Thankfully, I don’t have to think about that for any longer because the voices of the compound guards reach my ears, accompanied by the sound of their stomping feet, which reached us first.
The fact that they are guards concerns me.
Although perhaps it shouldn’t. They couldn’t send civilians. They aren’t trained or equipped to handle the darkness. Only the guards are.
And me.
But I’m only trained because one of the guards trained me. I wasn’t allowed to be in the guards. I got in too much trouble and questioned too much for that, but the guards trusted me enough that they allowed me to train with them and go with them occasionally.
It probably helped that my best friend was a well-respected member and vouched for me regularly.
He believed what I did about the compound, although he was better at pretending he didn’t and being more covert about his investigations.
Now that I’m thinking about it, I’m glad that they have been sent and that the leaders themselves aren’t the ones who we have come across. It would be unlikely to be the leaders though, they rarely leave the compound.
Unless it’s to make the exchanges with the Others.
The guards may have let me train with them and taken me out with them, but make no mistake, that it didn’t mean that they liked me or I liked them. It just means that they knew I could fight, and that my magic was strong. Having me with them also meant that there was someone else there who they could use as bait or a sacrifice should it come to that.
There is no love lost between us.
In fact, they’re all arseholes.
Apart from one.
“Aldrastos, fancy seeing you here,” Ricollio greets with a smile that is anything but friendly.
Awesome.
Of all the people that it could be, he’s the worst.
