Two girls. Two secrets.
Only one can survive.
Years before Nelle Wychthorn plans her escape, Tabitha Catt may unearth something in a Horned God's lair that is the key to freedom.
Desperate to save her beloved aunt from a dark curse, Tabitha is out t...
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Which way...? Which way had my aunt gone? Had it gone?
I sent my senses shooting through the lower level of the forest, twining through bracken and spearing between gnarled trees. The forest floor, with its shades of brown and dark mossy green, showed that nothing large or with many feet had disturbed it, because it would have taken to the trees and leaped from bough to bough.
A dull prickle abraded my palm from where I shifted my spread hand upon the roughened bark of a wild pine. I quietly gobbled down cool air, the ribbed sleeve cuff of my hoodie dampened with sweat after I used it to swipe the slick moisture from my forehead.
Freaking Hells-gate.
I didn't know what to do, or where to go. I unconsciously rotated the hilt of my dagger over and over with slippery, shaking fingers. The Bloodhound suddenly pricked its ears and snarled low as it shifted its senses, and picked up a trace of my aunt's scent.
She, it, wasn't far off.
And it wasn't alone.
I stalked through the forest, careful to keep myself concealed, my movements silent. As I drew nearer, I first heard murmuring so low I couldn't make out what was being said, but I recognized the annoyed hiss of the speaker. It was the thing that possessed my aunt.
I crept closer, cringing when my weight snapped twigs beneath my sneakers. I froze, cocked my head, listened, and felt with all my senses to see if I'd been caught.
The bloodhound gave a low whine, the dark magic alert and on edge.
Silent.
The forest here was unnaturally silent and still. Not a single chirp from a bird. Not a rustle of a small critter scurrying across the damp craggy ground. Even the sound of the wind sighing as it slunk through green and rust-red leaves had died. Anticipation and tension hummed through the stale air as if the entire forest was focused on just one spot, leaning in to listen as I was too.
I kept hidden within the bushes and confined myself to the murky gloom. I couldn't see beyond the dense layer of branches and their cloak of leaves, but I could hear what was being said and I could smell them too. Their scent reminded me of spices that had sat too long in their boxes, tainted with the reek of a rotten sheep, its corpse half buried, eyeballs consumed, and manky wool and flesh writhing with maggots.
The first speaker, the stranger, said with a voice like sand scraping against glass, "I can sense a shift in you..."
A crunching, like teeth cracking bones. And something that slurped and was wet like pursed lips sucking marrow. A deep laugh, low and cruel—that thing. "Not so diminished any longer," the thing taunted the other. "I stole something... And I learned a few things too..."
My eyes flared wide. There was such black bitterness and simmering wrath threading through its tone to dust those curious words with such vehemence. I wondered if it knew Master Sirro. If it had encountered the Horned God before. It had stolen a sliver of Master Sirro's power, but what had it learned? What new knowledge did it now possess?
