Page 63 of Once the Skies Fade

“And you really are a conceited little shit, aren’t you? Always assuming it’s about you,” he said. The toughness in his voice hung on as shakily as the left hand dangling at his side. The vines tracked his movement.

I shrugged lightly and added a smirk for good measure.

“It usually is about me. The assumption saves time,” I said. “Though usually I’m facing opponents with at least some skill. Imean, that blade you tossed was off by a whole meter. Aric, is it?”

He didn’t answer, just continued to sneer at me as though I hadn’t said anything.

Someone moved off to my left, their footsteps quiet, but still quite noticeable. I kept my focus firmly on Aric. Or Fritz. Whoever he was didn’t appear to have any weapons on him, an assumption further confirmed by the way the forest kept its distance from him—ready to strike, but waiting, watching.

“So what now?” I asked. “You gave up your only weapons. Were you planning to sort this out with our bare hands? Like civilized fae?”

The attack rudely came before I’d even finished my question, but I still managed to draw my blade in time to meet the steel of the other male’s dagger as he lunged for me. He snarled, yanking his arm back and dodging a vine that rushed at his arm. Having missed its target, the plant brushed past my shoulder and quickly swung around, but instead of going after my attacker, it shot off behind me.

I risked a look over my shoulder to see the vine already coiled around Oryn’s legs, pinning them together at the ankles and pulling his feet out from under him. He groaned in pain when his back slammed into the dirt, but with a sharp crack his head thwacked hard against a tree root, silencing him.

The vine started to drag him away, but I leaped toward it, drawing my dagger in the process, and sliced through the plant. Oryn lay still. One hand rested lifelessly on his chest while the other was slowly being pulled under the leaves carpeting the ground, as if the forest was truly trying to consume him.

“Get him, Fritz!” The unarmed man—that would be Aric, then—shouted as he continued to move among the trees to keep the forest from latching on to him.

Fritz bobbed and weaved around me, looking more like a desperate male bird during mating season than a fearsome adversary. I remained still and angled my head as I watched him, pivoting as he circled. Even the forest seemed to be watching him with amusement rather than attacking him, as if even these enchanted trees no longer viewed him as a threat.

I craned my neck to look around his dancing form and caught Aric’s attention.

“Seriously?”

With a growl rivaling that of a baby bear, Fritz charged, slashing at me with one hand. I dodged that strike easily––his second, though, nicked my arm just above the elbow. Fritz kept up his dance, narrowly avoiding the forest’s efforts to subdue him. I dove away from the next swipe of his blade, drawing one of my own daggers as I dropped to the ground and rolled myself into his path. The swift slash of my weapon only caught the back of one ankle, but severing that single tendon was enough to halt him long enough for the vines to seize him.

Two of them immediately caught his arms at the wrists and hauled them in opposite directions so that his body formed aT.He howled in pain as the plants slowly pulled his limbs, but a third vine dropped from the forest’s canopy and looped around his neck several times, silencing him as it squeezed.

I’d seen a lot of death during the war, and witnessed a couple gruesome scenes when the humans had started attacking the fae on our roads in Emeryn, but even I had to look away, bile rushing to my throat, when the vines ripped Fritz apart. I cringed with each heavy thud as pieces of him fell to the forest floor.

“What the fuck,” Aric muttered over and over to himself. He had stopped moving, his hands resting on his knees as he leaned over, seemingly trying not to retch. He didn’t seem to notice the forest closing in on him.

“Aric,” I said, slowly rising to my feet and moving toward him. “You need to keep moving.”

He didn’t seem to hear me, his eyes fixed on the chunks of his friend strewn about.

“Move, Aric,” I warned, louder this time. His eyes slid to mine slowly, but still the encroaching danger didn’t register on his face. “Move!”

This final shout finally snapped him out of his stupor, but he acted too late. He’d barely straightened up, his foot in mid-stride, when a vine plunged into his back, its end—armed with multiple sharp thorns—shooting out of his chest. His gaze locked on mine before the light in his eyes dimmed. His head lolled to one side before falling forward. When the vine retreated, Aric crumpled to his knees before his lifeless body fell forward, his head making a sickening thunk as it hit the ground.

Fuck.

I pressed my hand to my chest where the black vial lay hidden and thanked the stars I had found it when I did. How did the queen and her general expect any of us to survive this wicked place? I had to admit, though, this was an efficient way to diminish the pool of suitors.

Maybe too efficient,I thought, eying the two dead males lying in front of me.

Shit, Oryn!

Remembering my friend, I whirled around. His arm was now mostly buried by mud and leaves and small tendrils from the deadly vines. I dropped beside him, relieved when I caught the faint, but thready, sound of his pulse. My knuckles scraped against the sharp grooves of the root he’d struck as I reached behind his head, but I barely registered the discomfort as my hand slipped into the thick and sticky mess of blood coating his hair.

“Better to just leave him,” said a voice, flat and emotionless, from somewhere to my right.

Gritting my teeth, I cleared my throat as I met the cold eyes of Graham. “He’s not dead.”

“Not yet, but he will be soon.” He stalked around me, clicking his tongue and shaking his head when he looked past me to the fallen males. “Looks like you’ve had some excitement here.”

“Sorry you missed it,” I quipped.

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