Running.
Stumbling.
Too slow. Too slow. Too bloody slow.
My toe caught. I pitched forward. Falling and falling. My body slammed into the earth.
I’d failed. And now I would die.
A hand touched my back. A screech wrenched from my throat.
I wouldn’t go silently. I wouldn’t let her take me without a fight. I rolled and kicked and clawed.
Until I heard Rían’s voice. “Aveen, stop.”
Tears spilled from my sightless eyes.
Warm hands caressed my cheeks. “I’m here.”
“I can’t see. I can’t see.” My confession became a desperate plea. “Help me. I can’t see you.”
His thumbs came over my eyes, wiping my tears. “I’m right here.”
His hands warmed. Soothed. Healed.
“Open your eyes.”
I blinked. Light and color, blurry at first, slowly resolved into the most beautiful face I’d ever seen. Rían brushed the hair back from my sticky cheeks, brow furrowed and eyes black as midnight.
Behind him, an onyx river flowed like a vicious gash in the land. Dark stones and silty sand littered the opposite shore, marking the start of a forest of wicked black trees.The only movement beyond the wall of soulless black came from stacks of stark white bones floating along the slithering, onyx earth.
The Black Forest lurked in the background, a shadowy beast, waiting. Watching. Ready to devour.
And I had almost been its next victim.
31
Rían shifted his dagger,using it on the thick ropes around my hands until they fell away. Raw red welts and cuts marred the tender skin. Rían lifted me as if I weighed no more than a child. I curled into his embrace, replacing the dead air in my lungs with his spicy cinnamon scent. We evanesced to the castle gates. Burying my head in his chest, I wished I could hide from the whispering Danú in the courtyard.
When I opened my eyes again, we were in the parlor. Tadhg and Ruairi launched from the settee, surrounding me in a protective immortal circle.
Tadhg’s green eyes narrowed. “What happened?”
“I found her tied up in the forest, shrieking like a feckin’ banshee.”
“They took me.” It was all I could think. All I could say. “They took me to the Forest.” They wanted to bring me across that cursed river and leave me for dead. They wanted me dead. I’d never hurt anyone, and those people had wanted medead.
Ruairi’s mammoth hand came to rest on my shoulder. “Who took ye?”
I flinched. I couldn’t help it. Ruairi’s brow furrowed. “He looked like you. I thought he was you. I wouldn’t have gone if I’d known. If I’d seen his eyes.”
“What color?” Tadhg asked, gripping the back of his neck.
“Black.” As soulless as those trees growing in the Forest.
Tadhg’s gaze flicked to a stone-faced Rían before returning to me. “You said ‘they.’ How many were there?”
“Two. A man and a woman.”