Page 52 of The Girl in the Forest

“Because we know.”

“We see.”

“You cannot trust him.”

“You should not be with him.”

Each time they spoke, the veils swirled even though their heads never moved, and a chaotic heat bloomed and burned across my skin. “Why can’t I trust him?”

“He will use you.”

“Destroy you.”

“You can’t know that,” I rasped.

“We have the gift of sight,” one said, while her sister added, “This is what dread lords do.”

And the cavern walls shimmered.

CHAPTER 14

Noa

Images appeared like those I’d seen from the watchtower. Faint, shadowy at first, then coming into clear focus.

I was standing at the top of a blackened hill.

Overhead was a clear blue sky. An autumn sky.

But below, armies charged across a valley. Fell back. Regrouped and charged again. Weapons clashed with dull, tolling sounds. Bodies disappeared beneath torn and bloody flags. Men heaved last breaths. Lethal wounds pulsed. The weakest were slaughtered first amidst cheers of sick triumph.

My heart thundered as men faced storming gray creatures. Different creatures from what I’d ever seen. Creatures who stood upright, fast and vicious, more beast than man, ripping limbs from bodies.

Then I saw the pigs like those I’d killed, charging, grunting. I recognized the corrupted forms I’d thought were nymphs. And there—mounted on a rampant black horse, was a dread lord.

His pennant waved in the air—a flag, carried by another man. When that man fell, the pennant was retrieved by a third. Blades flashed. Shields and spears. Color bobbed and swayed through the melee, following the dread lord on the horse. Everywhere, there was madness.

But forming the front lines, with their hands out, were the failles. The daughters of the queens, and their daughter’s daughters.

Syphoning energy from the ground, the air… the dying.

Their mouths were open. Their clothes were mud-spattered. Light streamed from their fingers in whipping waves—red, gold, stark white. Deadly energy, destroying in great swaths.

The grotesque creatures stumbled back. The ground parted. A jagged crevasse opened and bodies tumbled before the land caved in on itself. Then an eerie silence, broken by the shrieking of the birds. The moans of the dying. The cheers of terrified victory.

But the battle broke too many failles. Their bodies lay abandoned on the field, the silver streaks in their hair slowly turning red—

A sob escaped my clenched lips.

“Enough,” I choked.

“It will not end,” the witches said. “The dread lords do not change. They are cursed with the sin of the kings.”

“Illusions.” But I could not look away.

The witches began their eerie chant again.

“Do not stay with him… he will claim your sigil…

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