Page 2 of Shade of Ruin

A waste in a world that’s starving. Sad in a world that doesn’t have enough laughter. The dying wolf looks up at me as I run my hand over its head. My bloody fingers do their best to bring comfort to it.

“It’s okay,” I whisper. “Don’t fight it. Just let go and find better woods to run in.” I move my fingers over his ear, not really knowing if it’s bringing him comfort or terrifying him. I can’t just walk away.

The wolf shakes for a moment, his muscles tensing one last time, and this time, his chest doesn’t rise again. I give the still-living wolf one glance as she stands over the deer, still crouched and ready to fight if need be.

“Keep it,” I say. I take a deep breath and let it out softly. “I hope it was worth it.”

The wolf growls, but she knows that nothing good will come of trying to fight with me. I take another deep breath and scoop up the wolf, throwing it over my shoulder. He’s lighter than I’d thought he’d be. They really are starving.

I give a nod to the female and walk backward away from her until the trees separate us. It’s only then that I notice the two pups crawling out of the brush behind the she-wolf. Starving with pups barely big enough to leave the den. Now there’s one less provider.

Damn this forsaken world. If you listen to the old men’s stories in the tavern, you’d think that wolves never attacked humans when they were young men. If this same situation had happened, the wolves wouldn’t have even tried to take the deer, much less attack me for food.

The world has changed. In the last thirty years, the world has shifted. Monsters walk the woods and make the wolves look cuddly. There are fewer and fewer animals born each year, and so many of them arewrong. Deformed. Scales instead of fur or fur instead of scales. Three or five legs instead of four. Or they’re born with bones that won’t support them.

Something happened in the last thirty years, and the world didn’t just shift. It’s begun to die. There’s nothing to be doneabout it. How could anyone fix something like that? It’s a problem that kings and mages… andFaehave to deal with.

Maybe someone should pray to the Shade for that. Or maybe even he can’t fix something of that magnitude.

There’s only one thing that’s for sure. The world is dying, and the only thing I can do is try not to die alongside it.

Chapter 2

One cloak was given to my House. Darkness given form. Power for the powerless. For one who will change the fate of himself and the many. The Shadowed Cloak will be the undoing of kingdoms, but according to Calyr, it is the final piece.

~Vyran the Black, A History of Magic and Dragons

My back aches fromhauling the wolf all the way home. My clothes, hands, and face are covered in its blood, and I’m still furious. I’d wanted the deer. Fresh venison for dinner sounded wonderful.

The sun blazes down on the world, but a swift breeze flows through the clearing around the house I’ve lived in since I was eight. The bright sunlight and cooling wind are a stark difference from the dark staleness under the oppressive forest. Long grass in the clearing rasps against my legs as I walk through thickpatches. My eyes linger on the house that I live in with my aunt, uncle, and cousin.

“Such a waste,” I mutter for the hundredth time in the past hour. All I’m left with is a pelt and the knowledge that the wolves around Blackgrove are hungrier than any summer I remember. There’s half a rabbit left in the cellar. It’s enough to make a stew, but rabbit flavored broth isn’t the same as venison steaks.

It’s not for lack of skill or trying that we keep running low on meat. Everyone in Blackgrove knows I’m the best hunter this side of the river, and I spend nearly all day in these woods. The villagers may clutch at their iron nails and move to the other side of the street when they see me, but no one disagrees with who the best hunter in the village is.

There simply isn’t enough game anymore.

I’ve heard people talk about the Fae moving through our woods, and at least part of me wonders if that’s what’s happened to all the animals. Yet, no people have gone missing lately, so I doubt it’s the Fae. Vesta taught me that they’ll eat humans as readily as they’d eat a deer.

In a village the size of Blackgrove, I was lucky to have a tutor as knowledgeable as Vesta. She taught me to be the hunter I am, but she also taught me about the world beyond Blackgrove. Especially when it came to the Immortal races collectively known as the Fae.

The Fae aren’t all one species. There are dozens or even hundreds of types of them. From the hobgoblins to the pixies to the High Fae, all of them are dangerous, and I’d prefer they stay in Draenyth, far away from Blackgrove.

Vesta taught me that they wield dangerous magic. Some can fly and others can light the world on fire. Some can lure me in with their songs and others are impossible to see until their claws and teeth are already in me.

Luckily, all I had to deal with today were wolves. If it had been Fae, I’d be dead.

When I get back to the townhouse, I’m surprised to I hear my cousin Hazel through an open window. She’s singing as she occasionally does in the middle of the day, but why is she home right now? I had expected her to be in town with Aunt Prudence until evening.

I try to relax, knowing how my best friend will react when she sees me. My cousin Hazel is the only person in the world who cares whether I live or die. After my father disappeared, I didn’t have anyone other than Vesta. Vesta made sure that my Uncle Trevor and Aunt Prudence took me in. I’d bet my bottom dollar they finally agreed because of the monthly income they receive from my father’s estate more than anything else.

Hazel isn’t like her parents, though. She’s… she’s my only friend. The only person who sees me as something more than “the Wyrdling”. A Wyrdling is anyone with half Fae-blood running in their veins. I can’t do any magic, so I’m obviously not a Wyrdling, but that doesn’t change how the other people in Blackgrove treat me.

My aunt and uncle certainly think that Fae blood runs in my veins and haven’t hid their belief that I’m “dangerous” and “strange” just like my mother. She abandoned my father and me as soon as I could survive without her. The villagers say she was Fae, but I don’t believe it one bit. I wouldn’t need to be afraid of running into Fae in the woods if I were one of them.

I huff just thinking about it. I’m not any more dangerous than a soldier who’s trained with a spear, and I’m not any stranger than anyone who’s spent their life in the forest instead of around people.

It’s better this way, though. I stay in the forests, away from most of the other people in the village, and Aunt Prudence and Uncle Trevor leave me alone. They don’t have to deal with theirWyrdling ward. I don’t have to deal with all the villagers that think I’m so dangerous.

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