Page 17 of The Bones of the Cursed

“I just wanted to say thank you…for not sending me back home.” I take a deep breath. “For letting me help find my brother.”

He stares at me, his face filled with a sense of utter shock. I don’t wait for a response; one isn’t really necessary. Hurrying to the tent squeezed between two others and only a handful of feet away from the campfire, I settle in next to Hannah. We are both exhausted and mentally drained. I lay on my back in my bedroll and close my eyes, listening to the hushed voices of the men outside our tent. Crickets chirp, embers crackle in the campfires, and the occasional howl rises in the distance. It should be calming, but there’s a part of me that can’t relax.

“Hannah?” I whisper her name in case she’s already asleep. All I get is a grunt in return to let me know she’s listening. “Do you think he’s still alive?”

I’ve done my best to avoid the negative thoughts, but without the scenery to distract—without Kailu’s looming presence to keep me preoccupied—they rush in. Hannah doesn’t answer right away. It’s silent so long that I wonder if she really did fall asleep, until I hear her let out a slow breath.

“I think he’s alive,” she says at last, though it comes out slow and quiet—as if she’s wary of daring the world to contradict her. “But if you want brutal honesty, I’m not sure what shape we’ll find him or any of the other soldiers in.”

I let out a shuddering breath. I want to be mad at her for voicing it, but it’s the same thought I’ve avoided all day. I turn over on my side and pray to the Gods to let sleep find me soon.

I run through the barren field. What used to be vibrant green and yellow stalks of corn now stand completely brown. Elion and I enter the forest right as the ground shakes in the distance. A black shadow slowly begins to fall across the land, as if chasing us. The ground shakes again, stronger this time, and the black keeps growing. We take off running back towards the field of our front yard. My eyes burn and water to the point my vision is blurry. Smoke plumes out of our house, the smell near-suffocating, making each breath burn down my throat. I pull my shirt up over my nose to offer some relief. The earth trembles beneath our feet again.

The silence is deafening. Not even the wind is blowing. It’s as if the world knows a disaster has happened. I’m not even sure what I’m looking at when Elion stops walking, his body frozen before me. The crunch of charred corn beneath my feet is the only sound as I stare at our once white farmhouse. Now engulfed in red and orange, flames spew out of the shattered windows. Elion stands before the front porch, turning to faceme, his expression filled with horror as if stuck in a silent scream.

My lips part, but no air enters my lungs. Maybe the smoke is killing me.

Maybe I wouldn’t even mind.

I step towards him, the crunching sound beneath my feet growing louder as I close the distance between myself and Elion. I glance down, but it is no longer cornstalks.Bones litter the ground, and my brother backs away from me with that look of fear still etched across his face. I try to reach him, but no matter how fast I walk, I can’t catch up. The burning house fades away, and I trip and fall into the sea of bones. They threaten to swallow me, somehow deeper than I imagined. They slip beneath my hands like marbles as I struggle to my knees, opening my mouth to call for my brother.

But when I look up, he’s gone.

I jolt awake, sweat dripping down my forehead and back, though at least Hannah is still asleep. Nightmares plague me constantly, but this one was different. This one felt worse, because no matter how much I wish it weren’t true, Elion is gone.

The campground is quiet as I slip from the tent and take a breath of the crisp night air, lifting my hair off my neck to cool the sweat dampening my shirt. All is quiet, but I look for the two soldiers on watch. One stands at the entrance to the valley where we entered earlier. The other is supposed to be standing watch at the border of the forest that blankets these horrific mountains, but I can’t see him.

The longer I stare, the more it begins to feel like the darkness is staring back. Just as I’m about to return to my tent, movement catches my eye. The soldier comes through the brush of theforest, and I immediately exhale a sigh of relief.

The feeling only lasts for a second, for with him comes a gust of wind. Carried on it is a metallic, coppery smell.

Blood.

A dripping sound comes from somewhere close by.

A large oak tree to the right of where I stand draws my attention, and everything in me freezes. The pounding of my heart is the only thing I can hear as I find the body hung from a low-lying branch, the horrific sight only a handful of feet away from me.

The body is completely destroyed, ripped apart like a rabid animal fed until all that was left was skin and bone. Shreds of clothing hang from the corpse. My blood runs cold as bile burns my throat.

When someone stops beside me, I nearly scream in surprise only to realize it’s Kailu. After hours spent sharing a saddle, I’d recognize his woodsy pine smell anywhere.

Kailu says nothing as he studies the scene. “He’s wearing a uniform,” he says at last.

I peek around his shoulder to look at the body again, noticing he’s right. The soldier who stepped from the treeline slowly moves toward us, his eyes catching moonlight in a distinctly animalistic way—not unlike that of a cat. A shiver slips down my spine before Kailu whispers, so quietly I almost miss it, “Return to your tent.” In the same breath, he slowly unsheathes his sword.

“What is it?” I whisper, even as I take a step backward, happy to do as he commands.

“A ghoul,” he says.

With every step back that I take, the ghoul’s smile grows wider, its eyes never leaving me. The thing flicks its gaze to the soldiers, then back to me before it turns and races into the forest.

- KAILU -

Blood pounds through my veins. Sixteen soldiers were here tonight and notoneheard anything while the ghoul attacked. The deafening silence is what woke me. The only sound was the hum of the wind. I had just begun gathering my weapons when I heard her leave the tent and take tentative footsteps past the sleeping soldiers. I knew the exact moment she realized something was amiss. She took a deep breath, but her erratic heartbeat was louder than any other sound.

The soldiers around me regroup, Siveral sending six after the ghoul. If we’re lucky, we might be able to catch the bastard.

“You all right, Kai?” says a voice right behind me.

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