Page 100 of Of Vows and War: Special Edition
“Don’t worry, chosen one, not even you can be good at everything,” Stassi taunted as she ran a single finger down Sterling’s chest, stopping at the growing bulge in his trousers. Eternity above, she wasshameless. And rude.
“You will get it eventually,” Bellamy reassured against my hair as he kissed the top of my head. “Just give it a few hundred years.”
At the group’s laughter, I crossed my arms and scowled. “Fine, you all want to be rude? Then just know that I will be practicing on each of you.”
“Practicing what? Portaling or something else?” Noe asked in alarm. I flashed her a devious grin in return, practically thrumming with revenge.
“That is for me to know and for you to hopefully not die from.” With that, she giggled and let her shadows pour around us.
No less than ten minutes later, we were crouched behind a group of blackened bushes, watching as a herd of what looked like at least eighty navalom seemed to convene. The creatures were not anything like I thought they would be. They were barely corporeal, the white of their bodies nearly transparent. Rather than stepping onto the ground as they moved, they practically levitated. It was a haunting sight.
I recalled Winona once telling me that they were not fighters, but as they hummed there, I thought they might prove stronger than we anticipated.
“Let me guess, you want to kill them all?” Sterling whispered at my side. The poor thing was shaking, his fear of what was to come almost adorable.
“It would make things quite a bit easier,” Stassi said from his other side. She had pulled her hair back, readying for a fight. There was no denying how beautiful she was, but that only served to further aggravate me. She was so much like Padon. Full of herself and irritating.
“We need your memories, which means they all need to live so Ash can go through each of their minds,” Genevieve added.
“A tragedy seeing as I was hoping we would have time for breakfast.”
Noe looked at me from down our line, whining, “Did you smell those muffins? My stomach is growling just thinking about them.”
“No muffins, we need to focus so we can be swift with this,” Bellamy chided. My stomach growled in response, making me moan back.
“Gods forbid we solve anything without murder,” Sterling grumbled.
“If I get lucky on my first try then I can grab the memories, shatter their minds, and we can be back in time to eat the muffins hot,” I said, practically bouncing on my feet where I crouched.
“Smart!” Noe offered me a thumbs up.
“No muffins!” Bellamy hissed.
“I feel like I should tell you that I ate those muffins before we left,” Henry whispered. I turned on him, gasping in offense.
“All of them? You menace!”
“Focus!” Bellamy’s tone had grown irritated, which was my cue to scoff and acquiesce. At my submission, Bellamy leaned down and offered me a quick kiss to my lips before jumping out and lighting his body in black fire.
The others took that as permission to move, each of them charging into the group. Despite my desire to be quick with this, I found myself turning towards Sterling, wanting to keep him safe. Stassi was on his other side, and the two of us made unintentional eye contact.
Please keep him safe.
My mental voice was nearly a whisper, soft and nonthreatening as it met her unprotected mind.
With my life.
Sighing, I nodded at her and left the pair, Sterling’s eyes wide as he watched me go.
An afriktor had once told me that my magic did not work the same on the creatures of this forest. When I lifted my hands and willed all of the navalom to sleep with no success, I found that it was similar to the terrifying creature I had come across last year. Similar to Wrath. I would have to learn and work around their strange minds, but for now, I was going to be forced to simply fight.
So I did. Charging into the fray, I slashed through their odd legs, finding that they did somehow bleed. Black blood poured onto the dead grass, not burning anyone’s skin like the fetch’s did. Just as Wrath had said. The memory sent a pang of pain through my chest. Nothing new. Pain had long since been an unwelcome companion in my life.
My screams were met with navalom after navalom falling to the ground from nonfatal wounds. I sliced and parried, not wanting them to touch me. Soon, we had all stood, panting, before dozens of injured memory-eaters. Winona, our brilliantcreature specialist, had been right—these beasts were not fighters.
Bending down, I touched my hand to one of them, its icy skin sending a chill down my spine. “I will need more time than I thought. They are similar to the afriktors. It is not as simple as entering their minds.”
Everyone around me groaned in disappointment, but they each sat down, all of us on edge while here in this forest. Anything could come at us, and who knew if we would win the next fight so easily?
