Page 87 of Skalterra By Nightmare
I gulped and nodded.
Alone. In the woods. Without a light.
The scars on my palm itched.
“Is that panic I feel?” Ciarán’s voice asked. “Afraid of the dark, are we?”
Orla tried to say goodbye, but her words sounded far away and garbled. I managed to nod in response, unsure of what she said, and I focused on my breathing as the others left one by one.
I stood swaying in the grove. I could stay put. Galahad wouldn’t know, would he?
But I didn’t want any harm to come to Fana, and if that meant venturing into the forest, then dammit, I guess I was venturing into the forest.
“Tulyr, huh?” Ciarán sighed, and I punched a birch tree in frustration.
“That doesn’t help you. You don’t know where Tulyr is,” I snarled. “No one does. Galahad just said so.”
“No, but that only makes this more fun for me.”
“I’m so glad one of us gets to have fun.”
Low bushes crowded the forest floor, and I pushed my way through, trying to focus on the leaves of the undergrowth rather than the tree trunks that towered overhead.
“So. The dark.” The way he said it, I knew he was smiling.
“I don’t care about the dark.” I pushed through another thicket. Some creature howled in the distance. It sounded more like a coyote than a rotsbane, but my heart jumped into my throat.
“The woods? You did so well in them last week! What happened?”
Last week, when I’d fought Ciarán in the forest, I’d thought Skalterra was a dream. It hadn’t been real.
Now, the trees that threatened to swallow me felt all too vivid, and even though I knew if I let myself look up, I’d only see branches and trunks, another part of me feared I’d see my effigy swinging by its neck from the canopies, put there by Linsey and her friends.
I didn’t want to see any more bodies in trees, real or not.
The coyote howled again, and I stopped to hide against the paper-like bark of a birch.
“Blue?” Ciarán’s voice prodded.
“I’m fine,” I spat.
“I can help you.”
My fingernails scraped against bark as I curled my hands into fists against the tree.
“How?”
“Galahad’s grip on your consciousness is strong, I’ll give him that. I can’t take you away from him without your permission. But if you yield to me, if you take my magick, I can take control and reform you at my side.”
“What?” I looked up, half-expecting to see his orange eyes glowing at me from the shadows.
“You’ll be out of the woods, because you’ll be with me asmyNightmare.”
“Screw you.”
I marched deeper into the trees.
“It was just an offer, Blue.”
