Page 20 of First Light

It wasn’t dawn though, but the dim light of a midwinter day in the northern latitude. She looked up but couldn’t see the sun anywhere.

Duncan’s hand released its pressure, and she saw his shoulders start to relax. “They wanted you,” he murmured. “That was strange.”

“Strange?” Carys’s mind was racing. “Duncan, what the hell was that?”

“Shhhh.”

The path widened, and Duncan pulled her to stand beside them. The trees were thinning, and Dru stopped just before another fallen log. He turned and faced them, and Carys gasped.

He had scratches on his neck and jaw, welling with something that looked like glycerin. The wounds marred the unearthly beauty he’d worn when he entered the forest. Even more, there were dark marks on his forehead and his neck, swirling blue sigils that matched the color of his eyes.

He caught Carys’s expression and smiled. “Not what you remember, Carys Morgan?”

Dru walked past them, brushing against Carys’s shoulder on the path before he walked back toward the forest. “Duncan Murray, our bargain is complete.”

“This portion of it anyway.”

Dru halted, turned, and his eyes landed on Carys. “Are you sure there isn’t anything you need from me, Carys Morgan?”

With the shadows behind him and the light coming from over her shoulder, the swirling sigils on his forehead were even clearer, as was the heavy water dripping from his wounds.

No. Not water. She narrowed her eyes, examining the scratches. In the dim near-dawn light that shone on Dru’s face, she saw the truth. The wounds were weeping with a silvery liquid the consistency of blood.

Because it was blood.

Dru had silver blood.

“What are?—”

“No.” Duncan squeezed her hand. “Don’t ask him.”

The strange man’s eyes pulled her in. “Finish the question, Carys Morgan.”

She shook her head, her rational mind battling with the reality she saw in front of her. “Thank?—”

“No.” Duncan spun her around to face him. “Remember what you know. Remember what you’ve read. You’re not in your books anymore, Carys. Never thank them. Nevereverthank someone here.” He turned to Dru. “We are grateful that our passage through the gate was safe.”

She looked over her shoulder at the rolling hills below the precipice where they were standing. The forest was behind them, and beyond the trees was a gently undulating land threaded with hedgerows, streams, and rocky outcrops. It was a patchwork of deep green, blue, and a grey so dark it was nearly black. It looked like the landscape she’d seen around Duncan’s house, but there were no power lines. No signs of human habitation.

There was no sign of civilization anywhere.

She turned her head to Dru, who was waiting for her to speak, and she thought about every fairy tale she’d ever read, every superstition her father had ever thrown her way, and every warning from her mother that had never made sense before this moment.

She nodded slightly and thought carefully about her words. “It was good to meet you, Dru.”

Dru smiled wider, and his blue eyes danced again. “It was my pleasure, Carys Morgan. Welcome to the Shadowlands.”

CHAPTER SIX

They walked along a narrow path down the hill and over a few streams that rippled along with the land. The dark forest fell back in the distance behind them, and when Carys looked over her shoulder, the grabbing hands and noisy chaos of their passage felt farther and farther away. The dreamlike melancholy that had pressed down on her as they walked through the darkness lifted, and she felt more like herself again.

“You said that was a gate.” She looked at Duncan’s back. “A gate between what?”

“The Brightlands and the Shadowlands,” he said. “Between our home and Lachlan’s. Quiet now.”

Carys held on to the million questions that were jumping in her mind as she focused on the path they were hiking.

The hills evened out as they walked down the slope from the dark forest and through a thinner stand of trees. The path switched back and forth, and the undergrowth grew thinner. Hawthorn, ash, and oak mingled together, their discarded foliage leaving a golden-brown carpet between the trees while moss dripped from bare branchesoverhead. Verdant green blanketed tangled tree roots that reached up from the forest floor.

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