Page 313 of Commanding Scythe and Sky
“It’s not as effective, but air will do in a pinch.”
Jason grinned. “Brilliant.”
“You can only feel helpless for so long,” Magnolia said, as though the reasoning were obvious.
“Okay. We have a plan. Anything from the shadows?”
The flickering light cast harsh lines across Magnolia’s eyes as she shook her head.
“Onward, then. Mags, keep prodding ahead just in case. Gentlemen, we need to clear this before darkness hits.”
“Hasn’t it already?” Rika squeaked, not bothering to conceal her terror.
“This is the thicket during daylight,” Jason cautioned, sending the girls’ eyes wide.
With one last fortifying breath, we plunged into the murky gray.
The ghostly wail of shifting branches amplified the deeper we trudged down the path. Night threatened to render us blind, and every creak and snap in the wind drove my heart faster. Brody, Jason, and I shortened our strides to keep from dragging the healers, but we’d found a rhythm, moving through the scraggly shrubs in tandem and putting miles behind us. When the path narrowed, I took point alone, the girls sandwiched between me and my brothers-in-arms.
The longer we walked, the worse my gut twisted. There was no way to tell whether we were making headway, not with our shields fatiguing by the hour.
Worse, we couldn’t communicate mind-to-mind in this hell—more of Koa’s dark magic, no doubt. The reapers’ ability to block our connection was bad enough. Only God knew what a mentalist could do. It was a reality I’d avoided confronting, one that tightened my grip on my blade as I imagined Ally spending nearly five fucking months trying to reach us and finding nothing. My little shadow, trapped in illusions as warped as the energy here.
The girls had started singing a while back, probably to give us something real to follow. Madness was clearly this man’s forte, because only Magnolia’s ribbons kept me from believing every branch and trunk had already passed us once. Emaciated and gray, the trees looked sucked dry. Gaping maws and hollow eyes stared back as even my shields flickered beneath the strain of holding them for endless hours.
Still, we forged deeper, hacking at branches whenever the path narrowed too far.
Desperation fed every swing of my blade. I chopped through the gnarled fingers reaching for us, clearing as much room as I could so the girls could slip through unmolested.
A thick silence settled between us, my ears straining for any sign of danger or movement. I closed my eyes. My gifts pulled me… left.
“Wait!” Mags barked, and I glanced back just long enough to see her hastily tie a ribbon to the tree, marking where we turned.
The moment she faced me, I swung again and again. Branches snapped and fell at my feet. Others tore across my skin, thin lines of searing pain across my face and arms reminding me I was here. Alive. Fighting my way toward home.
Then my blade descended and met less resistance. We stumbled forward, nearly off-kilter as we spilled into open air.
Straightening, I whirled, eyes widening as I took in… the demarcation line. Rhiannon’s haggard jungle to our left. Koa’s blight of thorns to the right.
There.
In the path ahead stood the Grayshell flag.
Hours. An entire breadth of daylight. And we’d gone in an enormous fucking circle.
Cerulean eyes met mine. A guttural growl rumbled up Jason’s throat. “Fuck this tosser.”
SIXTY-TWO
DESTINY BECKONS
MAGNOLIA
Our second attempt to plunge through the thicket amounted to the same result.
The third was no better. Even Aren fell susceptible to the hallucinations, starting with a thick fog that stung like nettles. Fatigue had rendered our shields obsolete, apparently. When we stumbled out not twenty feet from where we’d started, he growled an order at Brody and Jason to make camp, disentangled himself from the rope, and marched down the demarcation line muttering, “I’ll be back.”
Darkness settled around my shoulders like a welcome blanket, draping itself between me and the horrors of the thicket.
