Page 99 of Crown of Hearts
A few seconds later, the familiar sound of her scream sent me barrelling forwards. It wasn’t long before I realised why.
A white mist started creeping up like it was being exhaled by the trees.Damn.With our shortcut, I hadn’t thought about how close we were to the centre of the forest. The last time, Elara made the group of us run for our lives when we got this close.
I had to find her before she got hurt.
My horse was tempted to turn away from the haze, but I pushed it onwards, until the mist surrounded us.
* * *
The forest was quiet in the middle of the mist.
I woke up alone on the leafy forest floor, with my horse gone. The mist itself was so thick and heavy that I could barely see around myself.
I exhaled with a cough, wondering what kind of mist it was. Based on the myth Elara had told me, it trapped men in this part of the woods until they died. I’d never seen anything like this in my life, and while my instincts warned me to be terrified, I wasn’t dead yet.
“Lara!” Calling out her name seemed like the sensible thing to do, but there was no response.
I had no idea which direction I’d come from, and I was starting to understand all the more why she had warned us against the mist during our previous visit to Everness. One truly had no sense of direction. I couldn’t see the sky to tell where the sun was and get my bearings.
I shifted my position, my limbs sore from what I suspected was falling off my horse.
I froze at the sound of a growl. Though I couldn’t see anything, I could sense something coming towards me.
Fingers digging into the ground, I quickly pushed myself into a standing position.
As the growl grew louder, a wolf emerged from the mist. It looked similar to the one I’d encountered the day we entered Everness for the first time, but this one was larger, deadlier. This was no normal wolf. This was a beast of the forest.
A male scream erupted in the distance, causing both of us to look in that direction, before the wolf turned its attention back to me.
I stood my ground while the wolf continued its approach. It sniffed the air. There was blood on my hand. I must have scraped it when I fell. My mind felt fuzzy and disoriented.
The wolf looked into my eyes as if it was searching for something. As if it was more than just animal. And then, to my surprise, it walked away, disappearing into the mist as if it had never been there at all.
I blew out a breath.
Elara.
I called out her name but there was no response. Only the vastness of the thick mist and the echo of my voice. And so I ran. Surely it couldn’t last for ever. It had to end. There had to be a way out. “Elara!”
I ran until my legs started to ache, the mist creating its own maze. It was blinding, consuming. Something ran into me, knocking the air out of my chest. My arms reached forwards instinctively. She smelled sweet. Elara jerked in surprise.
“Cai.”
“Are you hurt?”
“No.” She let out a breath. “I don’t know which way is out.”
I didn’t care. In that moment, I only cared that she was unharmed. Holding her by the shoulders, I breathed heavily. Too much had happened in too little time.
“I thought I’d lost you.”
She met my gaze, her eyes filled with fear. “I’m sorry. I didn’t... I couldn’t—” She struggled to find the words.
“We need to find a way out.” Later, I told myself. Later there would be time to process and discuss everything, but first we needed to get out alive. I took hold of her hand and turned, going back in the direction I’d come from. Or at least, what I thought was the direction I’d come from.
We walked in silence, her hand in mine. It may have only been a few minutes, but it felt like hours had passed. The mist finally began to fade, and we stepped back into the light of the forest.
“We’re out.” Elara’s tone suggested she almost didn’t believe it. She continued looking around her, as if half expecting the fog to creep up on us again. “I didn’t think we were going to get out.”
