Total pages in book: 63
Estimated words: 59565 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 298(@200wpm)___ 238(@250wpm)___ 199(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 59565 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 298(@200wpm)___ 238(@250wpm)___ 199(@300wpm)
The stream narrows and takes the moon’s illumination with it. What’s left of the light casts eerie shadows into a web before me; stepping into it sends a crisp chill over my skin. My breath becomes foggy wisps, and branches take on strange shapes in my imagination: all the sick I couldn’t help, clawing angrily towards me. Their skeletal figures multiply and the fear of the dark I had as a child creeps back to me.
A sudden urge to turn back has me halting, but then I see the faces of refugees in the trees, an ominous foretelling of what might come if I don’t push on. I curl my damp palms and try not to worry at the sudden ceasing of the wind.
Each step is a crunch through silence; I hold my breath, shiver, and wish for someone to hide behind . . .
From a slit between craggy trees, I spy Grandfather’s cabin. I jog over uneven ground towards it, and halt abruptly before stepping onto the veranda. Was that a faint creaking? Footsteps? Why did it—I breathe in and my stomach turns—smell putrid?
A shadow passes the window, a flicker of light.
I grip the rail and haul all my courage. Something sticky meets my palm and I lift it up to the silvery light.
Blood.
My pulse hammers. There’s the instinct to run. This might mean danger.
There’s a stronger instinct.
Someone is hurt. Someone needs aid.
Heart pounding in my throat, I climb the steps and fumble for the cabin door.
Rusty hinges squeal as I push it open.
A gust of wind howls through the cracks in the walls, lifting the smell of rot and damp earth into the room. The wooden floor groans under my steps, and—movement.
I shoot my head up.
A single candle flickers in the corner of the room, casting shadows over a hunched figure . . . and a dead body.
I scream.
My scream is short and sharp, and then I’m storming across the room brandishing the only weapon I could find: an ostrich duster. It might be a shock of feathers at one end, but I wield it adamantly.
At my ruckus, the hunched male figure tenses, but does not turn until I’m a feather’s width away. When he does, when he unravels himself with the help of a cane, I’m the one who freezes, arm extended, weapon pointed at his face.
“Quin?”
Quin prods a finger into my feather duster and steers it down. “Arcane Sovereign. You’re a lost cause. Next time, run.”
My gaze drops and zips along his limbs. “There was blood. I had to come in.”
“Ah, like any sensible person.”
I lift the duster and give him a good . . . dusting. He shakes his head in dismay.
“Why are you here?” I ask.
He grinds his cane against the floorboards. “Why are you?”
“I’m not hiding. I mean, I am hiding. I don’t want my face seen. And . . . Grandfather had a lot of books on snake venoms.” I gesticulate wildly to the cabin and everything in it, halting at the dead body behind Quin. “All this belonged to him.”
I frown as something about the body prickles my senses. I put down my duster, pick up the candle, and kneel at the side of the decaying redcloak. I look up at Quin, expectantly.
“There’s another behind that shelf.”
I startle.
“Don’t worry. That one’s alive, though slightly damaged.”
The blood . . .
I rise and round the shelf to another prone body and an unconscious but familiar face. “Vitalian Dimos.”
“Quite the day for the lost being found,” Quin murmurs, gaze straying from my hands to the clasp on my cloak.
I swallow. “Get me some cloth.”
I tie up the deep cut on Dimos’s arm and eye Quin, who is leaning nonchalantly on the wall beside us. “Why didn’t you heal him?” This much Quin could do alone.
“At this point, he’s lucky to have his head.”
I give him a chastising headshake.
“He was dragging a dead redcloak through the woods.”
“You followed him?”
“In case he led me to more bodies.”
“Just the one, then?”
“Mm.”
“What has he told you?”
“He threw a spell, I shielded, he got knocked off his feet and landed on something that did that to his arm. He tried another spell and I knocked him out.”
“In other words, you haven’t asked.”
“Shall we now?” He thrusts his hand outward and hits our suspect’s acupoints.
The vitalian groans as he sits against the bookshelves. “Who are you? What do you want?” He squints at us and lingers on me. “You. You’re the par-linea with ruined meridians.”
I wince. He’d been very rude the first time I’d talked to him, but that didn’t necessarily make him a bloodthirsty killer. Although finding him with a dead body in a decrepit cabin in the woods . . .
Quin grabs hold of the man’s shirt and hauls him forward. “The soldiers. What did you do to them?”