Page 59 of A Touch of Poison
But that wasn’t the only reason my shoulders grew tighter the further we rode. Something else ate at me. Something wrong. Something ahead.
Half a mile on, we found another marking.
It made my teeth grind. “The patrol who’s meant to mind this area is going to get a personal visit when they next report to Tenebris. These things are running wild.”
“How do they keep them back?” Kat shot me another look, chewing her lip.
“Wards. They’re kept stocked with powerful wardstones. They should fucking use them. We embedded them in the wall between here and Albion,” I added. “It’s to keep our monsters in as much as to keep humans out.”
“Why not just kill them all?”
“We tried that at first. It didn’t go well. For each one of them we took down, at least two of us died, and with our numbers depleted after the wars…” I shook my head, suppressing a shudder. “Better to sacrifice this area of land rather than more lives.”
Then I saw myself in the disorientating double vision that always came when both parts of me reunited. One riding. One walking from an outcrop of rock.
It was like looking in a mirror—his tight movements echoed my own agitation, and when I shifted my attention to his view, I could see how rigidly I sat on my stag. This feeling of dread wasn’t just about bringing Kat out of the city or taking her into Horror territory.
It was something else. Something older. Something deeper.
I merged back with my other self, not feeling any stronger for it.
When we reached a copse outside Innesol, that something else hollowed out my insides and I understood.
A ruined tower rose at the centre of the town, but I knew what it had once looked like before its mortar had crumbled and its roof had caved in.
I had been here before.
22
Bastian
“Bastian? What’s wrong?”
I shook my head and dismounted. Words were suddenly impossible.
As she landed, she stared up at me. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost. You’ve gone the colour of one, too.”
We left the stags in the copse, and I managed to give them the instruction to stay before entering the ruined town.
My bones itched so much I could’ve scratched off my skin as I surveyed the road and saw both crumbled walls and pristine buildings, tall and proud. Homes. Shops. Schools. They’d even had two theatres and a gallery.
I could see it all as it had been then, and the centuries old ruin it was now.
But I wasn’t centuries old. I couldn’t have seen it.
Yet Iremembered.
We crouched behind a half-fallen wall, and I scraped my fingers through my hair, giving it a tug to clear my mind. When I peered out again, I saw only the ruins.
A main road led to the town’s centre. Where we huddled now was the old school. I refused to look at our feet in case I found broken toys.
Elthea’s note said the house with the box was further into the town.
“Ready?”
Kat looked back at me with her eyebrows pinched together and lips thin. Now we were away from the stags, she’d removed her gloves, and her fingers twisted together. The stain covered them completely. “Iam. Are you?”
I ignored her question and led the way out onto the main road.
