Reign of Shadows

  She nodded and those lips of hers—so loose and soft and appealing—grabbed all of my attention. I gave in and dropped my forehead against hers. I breathed in deeply, filling my lungs with her.

  My blood pumped thickly through my veins. She sucked in a breath, her only reaction to our sudden closeness.

  My lips rested at the corner of her mouth, not quite touching. I only needed to turn slightly, and our mouths would meet. A shudder passed through me.

  I flexed my hands, my fingers spearing through her satiny hair. Her forehead felt smooth and warm against my own. Her breath, sweet and minty, crashed against my lips.

  My heart heaved painfully as I lifted my head to look down at her again, denying myself what I wanted to do. Kissing her, tasting her lips. The wonder in her expression was an invitation even she wasn’t conscious of.

  My fingers grazed her cheeks before falling at my sides.

  “Why did you do that?” she murmured.

  “Do what?”

  “Touch me . . . like that.”

  I shook my head. There had been a girl or two since Bethan. No names. Shadowed faces. Quick encounters to escape the numbness. We clung to each other in the dark and moved on. Luna was not like them.

  “I don’t know,” I replied.

  I turned away, disappearing into the thick press of trees, quickly pushing away the thought of silky hair and soft skin and the kiss we almost had.

  I slid back into my normal role, slinking through trees, setting my boots down carefully, choosing each step with calculation.

  They were still there, their voices snatches of muted sound. As a group, they didn’t move with the most stealth, but they weren’t walking around with torches, so they possessed some deliberation.

  I pulled an arrow from my quiver and nocked it. They were approaching. I crouched low behind a tree and waited, slowing my breath until my own heartbeat filled my ears.

  I smelled them before they came into view, the rotting stink of them like a carcass left out to the elements too long. The filthy bunch stepped into view: four men and two females. Blood and dirt covered them. Their hair was matted nests. Their clothes hung off them in tattered scraps. The bony joints of their skeletal bodies peeked out like gnarled branches.

  One of the men was entirely naked, but he strolled along indifferently to the fact. He raked his fingers up and down his already bloodied arms, gouging them raw.

  A man walked at the helm holding a battle-ax that looked as if it had never been cleaned. Blood and bits of debris clung to the blade’s edge. An older boy trailed behind him, feverishly picking at his gums until crimson coated his teeth.

  I knew something was off before I even spotted the dead bats two of them carried, slung over their shoulders as they walked. One girl pulled at her hair, ripping chunks from her scalp. Raw patches, oozing blood, peeked out through the tangled snarls. These people were demented.

  My lip curled, and I instantly knew.

  Bat fever.

  I’d heard of it afflicting those who hunted and ate from the surplus of bats populating the land. The people of Relhok had always been warned against it. In fact, anyone caught hunting bats was instantly banished. It curbed the impulse among the hungriest. No one wanted to leave the safety of the walled city of Relhok. No one but me.

  But out here people were desperate and hungry enough. There was no coming back from bat fever. It poisoned the blood and addled the brain. I began to inch back—until the dig of a blade at the back of my neck stopped me.

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  I WAITED IN the familiar dark, feeling its inky weight on my pores. The Outside was a pulsing heartbeat. Even when it was quiet, the stillness held its breath, waiting for the inevitable to happen. I expelled a silent breath, emptying my lungs.

  Up to this point, my life had been waiting. Waiting to go Outside. Waiting for Perla to grant whatever small dose of freedom. Waiting for my life to begin.

  I believed him when he promised to come back, but what if he couldn’t? What if something happened to him? How long should I wait, hoping he would return, before giving up and accepting that I was on my own out here? As much as I believed I could survive on my own if I had to . . . I didn’t want to.

  I was done waiting.

  Bending, I picked up the bag he left and draped it over my shoulder. In my other hand, I freed my sword, deciding to have it at the ready.

  I started in the direction Fowler took, moving cautiously in the strange terrain, following the distant sounds of people, clenching the hilt of my sword in my hand as I wove between trees.

  The voices grew louder, overlapping. I was close now, so I stopped and listened, wary of getting any closer to the group. I thought I would have come across Fowler by now. Their foul, putrid odor draped heavily over the already thick air. I covered my mouth with one hand to stifle the impulse to retch.

  I itched to distance myself. Fowler had to be nearby. Unless he had circled back and I missed him.

  I frowned at the thought that I might have missed him. I concentrated on the angry voices, pinpointing their exact direction, marking each one of them as I hovered impatiently. Sivo taught me the importance of assessing my surroundings and never rushing in. Sometimes we would sit on the balcony and he would have me count the dwellers we heard.

  “Thief! You should have found your own bats and not tried to take ours,” one voice rang out with so much venom that I took an automatic step back.

  Bats?

  “Now you’re going to suffer. Thieves always pay. We make you pay. Ask the others.”

  Someone laughed wildly in the group. “Can’t ask the others ’cause we made them pay! Nasty, nasty thieves! They had to pay! And now so will you.”

  “I’m not after your bats.” It was Fowler’s voice.

  I started to step forward, ready to call out to him, but then stopped, setting my foot back down slowly.

  “Yes, you are! Yes, you are! A nasty, nasty thief who must—”

  “Oh, he’s very pretty. Let’s keep him for a bit.”

  Feminine laughter followed this, and then several different treads shuffled over the ground. A sharp slap cracked the air. “Keep your hands off him. He’s not your pet, he’s a thief. Aren’t you a thief?” There was a thud and then Fowler grunted. They were hitting him. I jerked at a second thud, my hands opening and closing into fists at my sides. This time there was no grunt. It was as though Fowler was holding silent and taking it.

  “Everyone wants to take our bats for themselves. You can’t have them!” a shrill female voice accused, heedless of her volume. Another thud, another strike against Fowler. “You hear me?”

  I adjusted my weight on my feet uneasily, certain if any dwellers roamed nearby, they could hear her. None of her companions hushed her. Indeed, they all seemed as senseless as she was.

  “Why would I want to take yours?” Fowler’s voice was calm, but there was a thread of pain there from the blows he’d endured. “There are more than enough to hunt.”

  “Liar! Kill him! Kill the nasty thief!” My heart pounded faster, harder. She meant it. “They’re our kills. We hunted them. We shall have them, not you.”

  They ate the bats? One was never supposed to eat bat. Even before they became so monstrous in size, one did not eat bat. Even I knew that.

  A beat of silence stretched before a man said, “Kill him before he tries to steal our bats for himself.”

  One person in the group was scratching incessantly at something. I listened to the sound of his nails scoring flesh. I inhaled. The scent of blood and rotting meat turned my stomach. I wasn’t certain if the odor emanated from the bat corpses or the mad bat-eaters themselves.

  “On your knees!”

  There was a sound of struggle before the heavy thud of Fowler hitting dirt.

  “Now stay down.”

  “You don�
�t have to do this,” Fowler said, his voice still astonishingly calm.

  I was shaking now, my breath coming in quick pants.

  One of the others grunted. “Kill him, Cauly. Take the nasty thief’s head!”

  I shifted anxiously, stopping myself short of lunging forward. I couldn’t take on the entire group by myself. There were seven of them at least.

  The thought streaked across my mind that a pack of dwellers wouldn’t be so bad right now. The distraction could give Fowler a chance to break away. Even this crazed, motley group wouldn’t be so concerned with killing Fowler if they were fighting off dwellers.

  The solution was that simple, I realized. Fowler had only one chance. And as his fate was tied up in mine, the only chance I had, too.

  Opening my mouth, I did the one thing I had never done before. The one thing no one would ever dare do.

  I filled my lungs to capacity—until they burned—and screamed.

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  FEAR SLICKED THROUGH me as I stared at the filth-encrusted blade high above my head and tried to cling to some final thought that would give meaning to my life in these last moments.

  Everything slowed to a crawl. The man wielding the battle-ax grinned down at me with a rotten-toothed grin. They’d made short work of confiscating my weapons and shoving me to my knees in the middle of the group. The two women snatched hold of the two bat carcasses and eyed me with wild stares, shielding their kill as though I still posed a threat and might steal them.

  I didn’t want regrets in my final moments, but they slithered their way in nonetheless. Only it was not for Bethan or my father or the countless other failures littering my life. It was regret for Luna. For abandoning her.

  At first I thought the scream splitting my skull was the half-naked giant’s battle-ax cleaving open my head and ending it all. But it was an actual scream, full-bodied and shrill. It stretched and kept going and going. Even when the cries of dwellers went up in response, it was still there, an endless echo that I felt in my bones.

  Everyone froze for a moment before full-blown panic set in. I took advantage of the chaos and lunged, barreling into the man holding the battle-ax above my head.

  He fell with a grunt, the ax flying. I jumped to my feet and grabbed it. That terrible scream ended, but the eerie cries of dwellers had taken its place. They were coming.

  I went for the man who’d confiscated my weapons, grabbing my bow from his hand and wrestling the quiver from his shoulder. He started struggling once he realized what I was doing. I struck him in the face with the flat of the ax, cracking his nose open. Bone flashed and he went down, blood spurting.

  Everyone else scattered, fleeing in panic—except the two women, who played tug-of-war over their precious bats.

  Over the cacophony of dwellers’ cries, I crouched and retrieved my sword and knives from the man I felled. Tucking them into their sheaths, I stood and jogged into the undergrowth. I didn’t make it a few feet before a slight sound at my back had me whirling, bow ready and nocked. I very nearly released my arrow into Luna.

  Cursing, I lowered my arrow. “What are you doing here? I told you to stay put.” I didn’t give her time to answer. Grabbing her hand, I pulled her after me. Leaves rustled. The dragging steps of dwellers were all around us.

  “You’re welcome,” she snapped.

  I stopped for half a breath to look at her.

  Her dark gaze fixed on me in that uncanny way of hers. “That was you?”

  I pulled her through the woods, jerking to a stop occasionally, listening and dodging oncoming dwellers. She followed in her usual wraithlike silence, not even flinching when the first scream from one of the bat mad rang out over the air.

  I shouldn’t have felt relief, but I did. Every dweller homed in on that cry. Even if we weren’t so quiet, that scream was a beacon above everything else.

  I relieved Luna of our supply bag when I realized she was carrying it, and we continued, moving swiftly, striding at a hard pace even as the cries faded in the distance. I glanced at her several times, processing what she had done. Screaming like that had been bold and stupid and brilliant.

  She had saved my life.

  “Thank you,” I said, still holding her hand as I led her through the woods, unwilling to let go just yet. I adjusted my grip on her slim, cool fingers.

  “You’re welcome,” she replied.

  “I suppose you’re going to be insufferable now.”

  “Why? Because I saved your life—twice now—and proved I’m not such a complete burden?”

  “I never said you were a burden.” Precisely.

  “No. You just didn’t want to bring me with you.”

  “That’s because I work better alone.” At that reminder, I released her hand.

  “Except for tonight.”

  I sighed, closing my eyes in a hard blink, still seeing that ax descending toward me.

  Tonight I needed her.

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  FOWLER HANDED ME a piece of bread, his fingers grazing mine. I snatched my hand back, bringing the coarse-crusted bread to my mouth and tearing off a bite, comforted at once. The salty burst of flavor tasted of home, and a pang punched me in the chest.

  For so long I had yearned to be free of walls. It wasn’t supposed to be this ugly out here. People weren’t supposed to be so horrible.

  The back of my throat burned, and I gulped, trying to chase away the sensation. Perla had known. I swallowed back a bitter laugh. She had always known. She understood what we had and what I would be giving up.

  Frustration bubbled up in me, mingling with the bitter twist of other emotions. “I just wish—” I stopped. He didn’t care.

  “What?” His voice rang out impatiently, almost like he resented asking me.

  “I wish I had appreciated what I had,” I snapped.

  The gift of all those years with Sivo and Perla, when I had lived relatively safely, when I had been surrounded by love, brought fresh tears to my eyes.

  “Life is full of regrets. They’ll cripple you if you let them.”

  I laughed hoarsely. “It’s that easy for you? You can simply will all your regrets away?”

  As usual, he didn’t reply.

  “Tell me something, Fowler,” I added. “Are you not crippled?” Wasn’t being numb, an empty shell, a punishment in itself?

  “We aren’t talking about me.”

  “No. We never do that.”

  Sniffing, I blinked against the sudden sting in my eyes, taking another bite of bread and chewing faster, as if that would somehow stave off the regrets.

  So far my adventures had revealed only the ugliness of life.

  Except that moment with Fowler.

  The brief press of his face to mine when I had thought he might kiss me had been unexpected and wonderful. Even if he didn’t know why he had done it, he had. I had that.

  “It’s the last of Perla’s bread,” he said, his tone clearly suggesting I slow down stuffing my face.

  Cheeks burning, I covered my mouth with my fingers and slowed my chewing, trying to savor this last small bit of Perla.

  He shifted, his boot scuffing against the ground. I inhaled, catching a whiff of his spicy scent. I’d never smelled anything like him before and I didn’t think it was due to my lack of exposure to others. It was inherently him.

  I exhaled through my nose, enjoying the flavor of the dark, hearty bread on my tongue. “I’m going to miss it,” I murmured, turning the bread over in my fingers. “I could never make bread quite like her. Even when we reach Allu, I doubt I shall be able to replicate it.”

  I waited, hoping he would say something. A few words about the better future that waited me in Allu. But nothing. Silence.
He offered nothing that revealed he even thought I would reach Allu with him, which only seemed to confirm my suspicion that he thought I wasn’t going to make it there.

  I tore a small bite with my teeth and chewed slowly, reaching for my flask and washing the mouthful down with some water.

  He expelled a breath that wasn’t quite a gasp but close.

  “What? What is it?” I jerked, immediately thinking that some bat-crazed individual had found us.

  “Firebugs.”

  I straightened, alarmed. “Firebugs? What are those?” I was accustomed to bugs, but that didn’t mean I liked them. The world was teeming with them. They owned the night right alongside the dwellers.

  He hesitated. “Have you never heard of firebugs before?”

  I shook my head, trying not to feel so unworldly even if I was.

  “When I was a boy we used to trap them in jars. They’re small flying bugs and their bodies light up in the dark.”

  “They’re here now?” I asked, turning my face left and right nervously. “Will dwellers see them and be attracted to the light?”

  “They never bother with them. They’re not a food source, so they ignore them.”

  I relaxed somewhat, but still searched for evidence of these creatures that lit up like fire.

  Almost in response, I felt the brush of something soft against my cheek.

  “Oh,” I started, swatting at it, accustomed to swatting away insects.

  Either the same firebug or another one skimmed my nose and I swallowed back a startled yelp, nearly toppling over. I sensed them swarming all around me.

  “No, it’s fine.” He scooted closer, his bigger body dragging across the dirt and grass to sit beside me, so close his arm brushed my shoulder, so close I immediately felt his warmth radiating toward me.

  His presence beside me felt so solid and larger-than-life. I knew from memory that muscle and sinew roped tightly beneath his skin. There was not an ounce of fat to him anywhere. How could there be? Out here, living like this, there wasn’t excess to be had.