Page 96 of Slaying the Shadow Prince
‘Pa…’ Drue’s throat constricted.
‘Is he a good man, Drue?’ Fendran asked. ‘This Warsword of yours?’
Drue’s cheeks flamed, but her father’s question remained, stark and honest. He waited, and the moment stretched between them.
‘Yes,’ she said at last. ‘He is a good man.’
As they travelled further south,the air grew colder. Drue rejoined the front of the company and rode between Talemir and Adrienne, with Talemir subtly guiding them across the darkening, overgrown lands.
Drue could feel it in him now: when he sensed the wisps of darkness she couldn’t see.
Thankfully, no one questioned how exactly they were navigating towards the lair, though from the watchful expression on Wilder’s face, the younger Warsword was suspicious, his brow etched into a scowl as Talemir finally brought them to a stop at the edge of an eerie forest.
‘It’s beyond here,’ Talemir told them, eyeing the outer line of trees with trepidation.
Drue realised with a start just how warm her cuff was against her wrist.
‘How do you know?’ Wilder asked instantly.
‘Call it a hunch.’
‘You’ve never been one for hunches, Tal. What’s going on?’
Drue watched the exchange with an inward grimace. She didn’t know how long Talemir could keep his secret, or if he even should, when it came to his protégé. Wilder had clearly realised something was amiss, and he was clearly unhappy to be out of the loop.
But Talemir didn’t respond. Instead, he turned to Adrienne and Drue. ‘We should go ahead of the forces, figure out what we’re dealing with.’
Drue agreed. ‘When we know, we can send Terrence back with a message and further instruction.’
Upon hearing his name, the hawk flew to her, landing deftly on her shoulder and remaining there.
Adrienne seemed to weigh up her options, fiddling with her reins as she did. ‘Alright,’ she said at last. ‘We go ahead.’
The general left her orders with Baledor and took the lead into the woods.
The forest was colossal and gloomy. Climbing vines hung from every tree, strangling the trunks and blocking out the light from the canopy. A collection of thorny bushes dominated the ground, as though they had been planted there to deter anyone from entering. Even in Naarva, wildlife still thrived in the pockets of flora, but here… there were no sounds of rummaging critters, no birds calling in the distance. A forest that would naturally hum with the chaotic orchestra of nature was silent, deathly so.
Drue and her companions were quiet as they urged their horses into the dense thicket, the beasts uneasy beneath them. Drue could hardly blame them; her skin crawled with every passing moment, the sensation intensifying as they travelled deeper into the woods.
Talemir was tense beside her, his jaw clenched.
What could he feel? What could he sense beyond the strangling vines?
Time slowed and warped in the suffocating density of the forest. Drue had no idea how long they rode between the trees – it could have been an hour; it could have been five – but all the while she felt unsettled, the hair on her nape standing up.
She heard Talemir’s intake of breath before she actually saw it herself, bringing her mare to an abrupt halt: the end of the forest and the edge of a jagged cliff. They had reached the southernmost point of Naarva. Past the mainland was a brief stretch of dark water, and then… the midrealms island that housed the Scarlet Tower. It belonged to no single kingdom, but the worst of all of them inhabited it. She could see the peak of its turret amid the heavy clouds.
Drue sucked in a breath of her own.
For beyond that lay the Veil. A towering, impenetrable wall of mist, the very defence that the shadow wraiths were rumoured to have broken through.
But there was no sign of the monsters themselves. Nothing.
‘I don’t understand,’ she breathed. ‘I expected a camp, a lair…’
Wordlessly, Talemir pointed down.
Terrence dug his claws into Drue’s shoulder as she peered over the edge of the cliff, only to have the air stolen from her lungs again.
