Page 70 of A Reign of Roses
Illuminating the skies bloodred and violent orange. The colors of daylight in Lumera. Panting, I ran deeper into the vale, my feet narrowly avoiding dried vines. When the rainless sky cracked bright with lightning, I only hurtled faster.
I almost missed the hiss that whipped through the trees.
“Hart?” I bit out through clenched teeth.Please.“It’s King Ravenwood. We need—”
But it wasn’t Hart.
I trained my eyes on the slithering creature, wriggling itself free from the parched ground. Hairy, like a boar; ridged tail, like an alligator. Bright yellow eyes, like all the beasts born from Lumera’s ruined earth.
My breaths came faster as I backed away from the snarling creature. I couldn’t put Arwen down. Somewhere, in some far-off corner of my mind, I knew that if I released her and killed this beast, when I returned to Arwen she might be dead.
But I couldn’t—wouldn’t—think like that.
Instead I roared at the thing as daybreak cast it in crimson shadows. Spittle flew from my lips as they curled back from my teeth. As my jaw ached. I bellowed again, the veins in my head bulging.
Screaming not just at the snarling, bug-eyed beast but at all the pain, all the suffering the woman I loved had been forced to endure.
The creature froze, observing me, before slithering away.
I could only drop to my knees. “She needs help,” I begged, bowing over Arwen and holding her to me tightly. Rocking us back and forth. “She needs—”
Her skin was too cold.
“You cannot leave me,” I commanded her pallid face, brushing my fingers across her cheeks and chin. “Do you hear me? Youcan’t.”
Her head only lolled lifelessly to the side.
I’d already lost her once. And then heartless fate had returned her to me, alive and warm, only to wrench her from me again? So she could diehere, shrouded in hot red sunlight, in this fucking barren valley of pitch-black skeleton trees because I couldn’t find a single soul for miles?
Despite the roiling, thrumming terror—I had to keep moving. When I stood and cast my eyes down to study Arwen, it was white powder that caught my attention, coating my knees and boots.
It was…chalk.
A boundary.
Awitch’sboundary.
I turned, something small and hopeful flapping inside my chest.I dragged Arwen in the other direction, past whatever boundary I’d knelt on and roared again, my voice a fraction of what it had been hours ago. “Is anyone there? Hart?”
Movement shook the distorted trees before me.
A dozen women emerged. Dirtied hands wrapped in protective linens and feathers in their hair. And with them, slowly, as if the fabric of space were opening itself up to reveal what had been there all along—men in armor and children and horses and wagons. Crude huts and blacksmith tables and cabins and fires roasting plucked hens. The scents and sounds and sights of an entire encampment, hidden in plain sight in the Dreaded Vale.
Hart’s clan. At last.
Any relief I might have felt was devoured by urgency. “Where is Hart Renwick?”
“Who are you?” the woman who had stepped forward asked. She was narrow and angular, like a praying mantis. “How did you find us?”
“This woman”—I jerked my chin toward Arwen’s lifeless body—“needshelp.She has a terrible wound. Her stomach, it’s—” My voice broke. “She needs a witch or a healing Fae. I’m the king of Onyx Kingdom and rightful heir to the throne of Lumera. I’m a friend to the rebel king. Please—”
“A wound like that…she is likely dead, King Ravenwood.”
“No. She’s true Fae.” Each word punched through gritted teeth. “You have totry—”
Before the lean woman could respond, the camp turned with the sound of lone heavy footfalls. Turned almost in union as a man emerged.
The man was soaked in blood. His chin, his half-open white shirt, his palms.
