He was a little surprised she agreed that easily. “Good.”
“But I want it on the record that I think this is a bad idea,” she hastily added. He imagined that her jaw was set as she glared at him. “It might be your worst one yet, which is saying something.”
There was his grumpy bodyguard.
He chuckled, drawing her closer to him. “Noted. So should we…”
She smacked his arm. “Quiet, Prince. If we want to survive this day, we need to hope that whatever’s out there doesn’t hear us.”
Biting his lip, he stopped himself from pointing out that she was being much louder than him. After all, he was getting his way. Pushing her further didn’t seem wise.
Nodding, he released her wrist and turned slightly so his side lined up with hers. His pack was on the ground, and his foot still ached from where he’d hurt it earlier, but he’d never admit it.
Besides, between the kiss and the resulting conversation with Vivienne, the pain was barely noticeable.
They fell into silence, and minutes became hours.
Long ago, when he’d been sick, Marius had grown accustomed to sleeping in short intervals. He used to wake at every sound, and he’d trained himself to fall asleep instantly. That skill came in handy now as he slept on his feet, gathering as much strength as he could.
Wails rose and fell in an eerie symphony of dark, shadowy death. Each was more discordant than the last.
The inky shadows seemed to ebb and flow as though they were alive.
Stranger than all that was the air. The temperature should’ve warmed as the day crept on. Ipotha wasn’t as cold as the Northern Kingdom. Sweat should have been dripping down Marius’s back by midday, making him regret wearing his cloak and many layers.
That didn’t happen. The temperature dropped.
White clouds frosted the shadows in front of them. The air chilled.
Every hour, it grew colder.
On Marius’s twentieth birthday, in a rare moment of freedom, Luna and Sebastian took him to the Black Sea. The three of them had skated on the obsidian ice from dusk to dawn, exploring the frozen expanse of the tip of the Northern Kingdom. The air up north had been so cold that breathing had been like inhaling shards of ice determined to rip his lungs apart from the inside out.
This felt just like that.
Marius shivered, biting back the urge to clatter his teeth. His foot was still throbbing, but he ignored the pain.
The arch’s warning echoed through his mind.
Beware, beware, beware.
He’d forgotten about it for a time, but now it seemed more important than ever.
The wails crescendoed, coming closer and closer.
What kind of creature sounded like that?
Marius was equally excited and terrified to find out. He tightened his grip on his daggers, refusing the call of his magic to walk the silver planes. He needed to stay with Vivienne.
He felt a sense of responsibility towards the vampire, and he wouldn’t let anything happen to her. She was his bodyguard, but he was the reason they were on this expedition, with the dangerous sun a few feet away.
He wouldn’t let her down.
By the time evening approached, the wails were so close that they were like clanging cymbals in his ears. They came at scattered intervals, a few quick bursts of alternating screams and wails followed by long lulls of silence.
They were in one such lull now.
The waiting was worse than the screaming. Marius’s heart raced in his chest, and the hairs on his neck and arms prickled.