CHAPTER 13

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"I think we should talk."

Hain stepped over the bushes rising from the peaty earth and scowled. Twice now Lilith had mentioned a 'need to talk', and twice now he'd shut her down.

"There's nothing to talk about."

Hain could almost taste the lie. There was something to talk about. Many, many somethings, starting with Lilith's hitherto unknown talent for walking through solid stone, and ending with how she'd called off a Cat who had, until she'd appeared, been ready to eat him.

Except, he couldn't. Not now. Not while his feelings were running so hot. Not while the sense of betrayal sat so deep inside his bones.

Rumors had followed Lilith since the day she'd passed through Echo's gates, the whispers trailing her like shadows from the gutter pubs in the lowliest part of the haven to the Regent's Court in the Keep.

Cursed.

Abomination.

Demon.

But not from Hain. Never from Hain. Because he was different. Because he'd never believe them. Not that she was evil, and not that she was a demon. No matter what, he'd never let his mind go there.

Now things felt different, his faith in his friend shaken. Lilith had literally walked them through two feet of solid stone with nothing more than a giggle and a promise to explain later. He wanted to trust her. To believe that it really was nothing. But no matter how hard he tried to shoehorn the event inside a mundane explanation, the thing just wouldn't fit.

"Hoxew wouldn't have done anything to hurt you," she said. "And you saw how he ran off when I told him to."

Hain's cheeks flushed crimson as he remembered the inky splotches dotting his vision in those moments before he'd fainted. Still, he said nothing.

"Isn't that proof?" she said. "Can't you see that you weren't in any danger?"

"I don't know, Lilith." Hain paused, thinking through his next words. "I need some time to think about it."

He heard Lilith huff from behind him, but she said say nothing more. The conversation seemed to die there, but Hain knew this wasn't the end of it. He needed to think.

Hain turned his attention back to the wood around him, and felt his resentment toward her recede a bit at the sight of it.

Trees stood thick around them, their moss-clad trunks stretching to the canopy like the frozen legs of giants, while a wet miasma of decay mingled with the dry tang of evergreens. Birdsong echoed all around them, mournful as lost love.

The look of this place, he thought as wonder bloomed in his chest. This wasn't the Godless of his boyhood–the forest he grew up fearing. Nightmares ruled that place. Nightmares borne from the Faith's fear of the Cats. Their fear of things like Lilith.

But this place–magic lived here. Hain was sure of it. Life bubbled everywhere. Every surface. Every breath of air filling the space between the trees.

Magic, he thought. Untamed. Free from the Faithful, and the Bishop, and their god. That god who accused. That god who hated. That god who'd set the rules of this world, and tailored them to his will, only so that Hain could be born into condemnation for merely existing.

That god who hated Lilith. That god who'd allowed her parents to abandon her in the Godless for reasons only known to him. That god who'd allowed the Cats to find her. To take her in. To raise her. Only to send her back as Homage to the humans who'd forsaken her, so she might silence the drums of war between Echo and the Clans.

If the Faithful saw the place now, as he saw it, would they still dump their scorn upon her? Would they see her as loathsome, cut from that same fabric cloaking the Godless of their minds? Would they still call her a demon?

Hain could have laughed. Of course they would. Because they couldn't see beyond anything the Bishop told them to see.

He stopped beside a fallen tree, its body wrapped in a funeral shroud of green moss and cream capped mushrooms. He was tired, the pack feeling as though it had gained a few pounds since they'd started that morning, and the springy moss looked inviting.

"Break time," he said, pointing to the tree. "And I call that spot."

Lilith's face turned away from him toward the canopy. "We should keep on for a bit more."

Hain eased one strap from the painful groove carved in his shoulder. His face still ached from where he'd struck the stone, and his hands stung as well. The burns had grown bright as fire since they'd crawled through the underhaven.

"Come on. You said you wanted to talk."

Lilith shook her head, but her eyes didn't pull away from the canopy. "There's a better stopping point soon."

Hain frowned at her. "What's wrong with this place?"

"It's not right." Lilith's voice was low. "I keep thinking that I hear something in the trees."

"Maybe a creek?" he said, half out of wishful thinking. He longed to plunge his hot palms in icy water. "Want to go check it out?"

"Something else." She turned away from the canopy, and Hain could see the worry on her face. "Do you hear the birds?"

Hain thought the water would do more for his hands than birds, but he listened all the same, and realized a moment later what she meant.

The birds had gone quiet.

"We're going." Lilith gestured to the pack hanging halfway off his back. "Put that back on."

Hain slid the strap back up onto his shoulder, wincing at the sting.

Lilith seemed to read the pain written on his face. "You alright?"

"Not really," he said. "This pack is starting to kill my back, and my hands–"

Before Hain could finish, Lilith seized him by the shoulders and dragged him to the ground. Hain's mouth opened to protest, but Lilith's hand shot out and sealed itself over his lips. Her hand was an iron lock.

"Quiet!"

They lay close, nearly nose to nose amongst the brush, Lilith's breath hot on his cheeks. Even in the wispy light Hain could see intensity carved into her features.

Time dragged as the two of them laid there, still as headstones. Ancient trees creaked, their crowns caught in the wind skimming over the canopy. Hain shut his eyes, tuning his ears to whatever sound had tripped the alarm in her senses.

Then, Hain sneezed.

He opened his eyes, and found hers boring into him. Lilith let go of his mouth, and her fingers pinched his nostrils. Her mouth moved silently around words that were impossible to misinterpret.

Shut up.

Later on he wondered if it had been the dirt that had brought on the sneeze, or the dusty moss that had before looked so soft and inviting, but now seemed like the worst kind of Judas. Whatever the culprit, it had gotten in his nose, and he knew no amount of pressure from Lilith's pinching fingers could stave off the tickle taking root within his nostrils.

He sneezed again.

Crack!

The sound of splitting wood rent the air, and the ground shook with a labored thud.

A tree fell, he realized in the instant it happened. Nothing else would have been so loud, like lightning tearing at the night.

Hain felt Lilith's breath stop, and he realized he was holding his own as well. Their eyes met, the certainty of shared terror passing silently between them.

The sound pulled away like waves rolling back from the beach, leaving a void that Hain's mind clogged with images of something big enough to fell one of the ancient trees. He strained to listen to the Godless, but no sound came. No pounding hooves. No giant's feet. Silence hung about the place, quiet as the swoosh of the reaper's cloak.

It could have been nothing, he thought. Just a rotted trunk dragged down by its own weight. Otherwise there'd have been something to hear, wouldn't there? Creatures big enough to take down trees didn't whisper through the undergrowth.

Then, it came. A vast shadow that drowned the day.

Just clouds passing over the sun, he told himself, but he knew at once it was a lie. The darkness stood so thick he might have clutched a fist full from the air. So cold it seemed to steal even the memory of sunshine. And then he felt Lilith's body go stiff against him, and he knew at once that she felt it too.

Fear. Loss. Despair.

I am the darkness in this place.

The words emerged from everywhere at once, wedging cracks in his soul that flooded it with numb oblivion.

I am the seer of the feeble. The taker of life.

The voice was dry as ash in a funeral pyre. Hain forced his eyes shut. It was talking to him. It knew him.

It's not real, he thought. Couldn't be real.

I am the night which takes the day.

Just in my mind, he thought, even as something inside him moaned for the thing's embrace.

I am the release from this woeful life.

His heart tore at the words. Did he want that? He thought he might. Oblivion must have been better than this.

Embrace me. Embrace me and find solace.

Hain's chest throbbed with desperate longing. Pain, and fear had been his constant companions for so long. Hain the unloved, ignored by his father's brother. Hain the coward, who'd sacrificed the Boy to save himself. He knew himself then–the pale shade beside the shining light of his cousin. Unworthy of Aedan, his only love. Fatherless. Orphaned. Bastard.

Come unto me and know oblivion.

The words latched to the sorrow in Hain's mind, tugging it toward the darkness, toward the slobbering hunger at the thing's core. As it pulled, Hain's mind felt stretched and thin, like threads of honey dangling from a spoon. Images of a dozen snapping jaws within that thing flashed behind his eyes, each starving mouth all teeth and tongues and swollen lips. Hain felt a new fear seize him at the sight, and he knew then that if the thing took what it wanted from him, that the whole of his mind would go with it. His body would wither on the floor of the Godless.

And so he fought it. He pulled, and the thing's grip on him slithered back for a beat before drawing tighter still. Hain felt his mind slip another inch, but he didn't give in. He scrabbled against it, tugging and nearly rending his consciousness in half with the effort, unwilling to give himself over to the darkness. But the thing was too strong, its need too deep, and Hain felt cold worm up his legs as he began to lose control.

But then, something pulled at Hain's attention. A buzzing feeling near his waist, like a tuning fork held against bone. With one hand he reached down to where he felt it, his fingers settling upon the leather pouch at his waist, to where the ring La Doña had given him still lived. In the moment when his fingers brushed the lump in the leather he felt his mind break free, the darkness's grip snapping like string drawn too taut. Strength poured into him until he felt as though his skin might burst apart with the force of it.

With that, the thing was gone.

Hain heaved in a breath. His eyes flew open, and they met Lilith's–wild with fear, the white of one painted scarlet with a burst vein. She held him there, and he shut his eyes as tears crested over the bridge of his nose to spill onto the ground. And the Godless drank them.

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