Page 39 of Of Nine So Bold

Of what? I would burn this forest and everything in it would…

Oh.

Then everyone here would burn too.

I shook my head hard, fighting the vestiges of the crooning. There had to be a solution. I was the demon. I would find a way.

“Hold,dammit.” Valeria’s voice was strained. “Look for… for a way out of…”

But the humans weren’t listening to their commander, and they were only making things worse. Stumbling away from their horses, they staggered toward the very trees I intended to burn as if they were being pulled by tethers.

“Stay… stay put!” Dex barked, his tight grip on the reins blanching his light-brown knuckles to the color of bone. “Dammit, Byron, can you?—”

“It’s everywhere.” The redheaded giant grunted and shook his head in pain. “I can’t?—”

“Jakob!” Valeria shouted.

A brown-haired human stretched up for the nearest of the putrescent apples dangling from a tree. With an enraptured expression, he plucked the fruit.

“Don’t,” Valeria gasped, her voice weakening. “That’s an order?—”

The man sank his teeth into the apple’s red flesh, while all around him, other humans plucked fruits to do the same.

Bliss took up residence on their faces.

“You’ll want this, General.” Jakob approached her, extending the bitten apple.

Valeria shuddered, but her hand rose as if it wasn’t under her control.

The man smiled. “Take a bite. Do it. You?—”

Clay grabbed the reins from her, yanking the horse into a retreat before Valeria could grasp the fruit. “Get that fucking thing away from us,” he rasped.

“But you don’t understand,” Jakob protested kindly, undeterred. “You’ll want this. You?—”

A shudder suddenly coursed through his entire body. For a moment, he froze, overcome by a stillness so profound it was like he’d become a painting of a man.

But then his smile grew, stretching to the limits of his muscles and skin. A giddy chuckle escaped him, the sound utterly deranged. His gaze slid upward, finding me.

Finding my princess.

Darkness swirled through his eyes like ink in milk. When he spoke, it wasn’t his voice but a woman’s. “I see you, Gwyneira.”

Like a wild animal, Jakob sprang into the nearest tree and scrambled upward. His eyes never left my treluria. His mouth never stopped grinning madly.

I beat my wings, lifting higher in the air.

Or trying to.

Suddenly, it was as if I was fighting my way through sludge. Like the crooning sound that even now still twisted on the air was dulling my reactions.

But not his—nor those below him.

The humans who’d bitten apples spun, their mouths pulled wide in rictus-like snarls. They lunged at the giants and the other humans.

We… we need to help…the broken one’s voice was muted like he was fighting to speak through suffocating cotton.

I fought to beat my wings harder, but I could barely move. Below me, horses went down, knocked over by assailants who were ruthlessly determined to grab their riders. Dex tumbled away, rolling as he hit the dirt and barely managing to draw his sword when he rose. Nearby, Casimir and the shadow mutt shifted to smoke and tried to rush through the group, fighting desperately to drive the feral humans back.

---