Page 10 of Terragnata and the Heir of the Earth

“You don’t have to say anything now. Let’s get you cleaned up. You’ll sleep with me tonight,” she said, clearing her throat, ready to push forward as she always did. I felt my broken heart swell with appreciation for my resilient friend.

“Gia, I can’t. There are more of them, different ones. I lost them in the forest, but… I think they’ll keep coming. If I go to your house, I put your whole family in danger. I put you in danger. After everything, I can’t. I can’t,” I whispered.

“What do you mean, more?” She furrowed her brow. “Who are they? What did they look like? How did you lose them?”

“I have no idea. One acted like she knew me, but I’ve never seen any of them before… I fought one of them off and then ran straight here.”

“Foughtone of them off?” I nodded and Gia’s brows pinched together. “How on earth would you know how to do that?”

“I don’t know. It all happened so fast.” I shook my head.

“If you don’t stay here, where will you go, Terra? Are you planning to live in the forest for the rest of your life?” she asked, a sharpness creeping into her tone. “Do you really want to leave the only people you have left? And what about Mav?”

“There are questions I need answered,” I mumbled, a thrumming pain starting up in my head from hours of crying. “The man said a queen was looking for me and he mentioned something called… the Rexi. Maybe, maybe I could take one of your father’s maps, and then just a bit of food, and I could head to the Great Library in Lahar. I’ve heard it has books about all sorts of things. Maybe I could find—” I whipped my head to the forest. “Did you hear that?”

Gia’s eyes focused on the blackness, and she sniffed the air but said nothing.

“It sounded like someone stepping on a twig,” I added, my gaze following the direction in which Gia looked. And then a slice of pain seared my mind, turning everything black.

CHAPTER FIVE

NEW CHAINS

Ifound my wrists and ankles chained outward to stakes in the forest ground when I awoke, twilight unfurling around me.

The events of the last few days roared back, dread punching me in the gut with such intensity I had to choke a cry down.

Dead. My family. Gone. Not a nightmare.

And Gia?

Against all instinct, I stilled my breathing, coaxing it into the rhythmic sound of someone asleep. I recognized the group from the cottage earlier bustling around, but I didn’t think anyone noticed I woke.

If Gia was still alive, I would find her. I would not lose her. Could not.

“I told you we should have just leveled her right away,” a male voice said, somewhat hushed, somewhat familiar. “Her magic might be dormant, and her memories gone, but she is still the Earth Daughter.”

A soft snort came from one of the younger females. “Me thinks someone es jest a wee bet embarrassed that he almost lost a testicle teh an untrained nineteen-year-old human,” shesaid, extending the word human as if to add insult to injury. Her accent was thick, sharp.

“You and I both know she is many things, but human, and untrained for that matter, are not any of them,” the male replied with more bite than before. That word again,human. I knew his voice now—it belonged to the man I fought in the woods.

“Ezren, Leiya, silence. Both of you,” a third voice said. “I was clear: no magic upon initial contact. The poor girl just had her family slaughtered by that maniac. She deserved us to come to her in peace and at leasttrythe easy way.”

“So what now, then?” another voice asked.

“We will attempt the cleansing. Regardless if it is successful or not, it will be her decision whether to stay or go.”

I opened my eyes, panic at this ‘cleansing’ overriding my plan to eavesdrop. The male called Ezren turned to me first. There they were, emeralds on fire. Again, my mind went blank under his searing stare. It felt as if those eyes could burn me from the inside out. He blinked, pulling me back to the present moment and the state of my body. My hair was a matted tangle of mud, my body still slathered in filth. I turned my face away, heat rushing to my cheeks. “What did you do with Gia?” I demanded, refocusing on the important facts that I was kidnapped, in chains, and my best friend was nowhere to be seen.

“She is safe,” the older woman, Jana, replied. “No harm came to her—nor to any of the other humans in your village. We simply calmed her mind and told her to go home and back to bed.”

I weighed her words. She seemed genuine, but then again, she was also a kidnapper.

“Why have you taken me?” I rasped, panic bubbling as I pulled on the chains with little effort. I was well and truly trapped with these strangers. “What have I done to be your prisoner?”

“Terra, we are here to help you, truly. I swear on the lives of those I love. If you cooperate, we will unchain you and explain everything.”

I detected no deception, but these were the words of a captor. And I didn’t have many loved one’s lives to swear on anymore. “Who the hell are you people? And what is a cleansing?”

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