Page 93 of Curse of Thorns
“Shhhh,” he purrs. “You’ll wake the dead, honey.”
I roll my eyes. “The dead are very much awake.”
He smiles.
“You have some explaining to do,” I say, sitting back down next to my fire. I cross my arms dramatically. But I do still have a lot of questions. I start with the simplest first. “How can you enter this forest but the others can’t?”
“Oh, they can but they choose not to. Wraiths are not admirers of this place. And those spirits do not have sufficient motivation to find you. Otherwise, they’d be here. By morning, they’ll forget you were ever here, to begin with.”
I shake my head. Those are the mindless wraiths he’d mentioned. The ones with no hope left, that don’t remember who they are or have any desires of their own anymore. They wander aimlessly.
They only attacked me because we brought attention to ourselves, and they desire to kill any living being in their lands. Except...
“They said things to me. Called to me by name...”
The wraith stills but doesn’t speak. I absently pick at the pebbles on the ground beside the fire.
“There has been a message floating through the Schorchedlands for weeks now. Every wraith knows to look for you. That is why they followed you and not your lover. You are the priority.”
I swallow.
“Then, wouldn’t they come after me, even if it were uncomfortable? If there’s a bounty on my head...”
“Not these wraiths. But others, yes. And it isn’t on your head. No, the Night Terror made it very clear that she wants you alive. You alive and Rev dead.”
I cover my mouth with my hand. “The Night Bringer still wants him dead.”
“Yes,” the wraith whispers. “He’s always wanted him dead. But you are more important, and Rev is your weakness. He kept him alive, often against his pet, the Luminescent Court King’s desires, so that he’d be able to use him against you.”
I nod. Not even caring that it’s been working. All of it. He plopped it in my mind that Rev was in trouble, and I immediately came running, exactly where he wanted me.
“Why does he want me here?”
The wraith wafts for a moment, his bottom half swaying in the wind, then he spins and sits beside me. “Let me tell you a story,” he says, then he points into the woods over my shoulder. “The forest shows me what I desire too. A few of our desires are the same. A powerful Shadow Court stronghold. A strong queen able to build it back up into a mighty force. Those are things I could still see come to fruition. Things I could still make happen, through you.”
I bite my lip. I do want those things too, but they are so far away now. How I could even think to hope for it?
“But the forest usually shows me darker desires. The ones I’ve lost forever. It shows me what will never be.”
I look into the woods and ignore the lovely young couple dancing fluidly and find a rocking chair. A lovely young female rocks a baby in her arms.
“That is my son,” the wraith says. “History will tell you that he did not live past his sixth birthday.”
I swallow. “I’m sorry.”
“But that is a lie. You see, I was forced to give him up.”
I suck in a breath as the image changes, the boy grows into a child running through the Whisperwood. “Why?”
“I was the king of the Shadow Court, and my child was too strong.”
My mouth falls open.
“If I hadn’t sent him away to live as my cousin’s son, he would have been taken from me. My own father would have killed him, if given the chance.”
I shake my head, not understanding.
“My father had been High King, the last Shadow Court High Ruler. And during his time, there was a war. Again, history will lie to you and tell you that the High King tried to use his powerful court to keep power longer than his one hundred years. They’d tell you it was a civil war, court against court. But that is a falsehood. Our opponent was a pair of ancient beings. These beings are old and powerful, nearly unbeatable. They have their own stories and histories that go back millennia. We can’t even pretend to know enough about them to understand who they are or where they come from, or even what they want. But I know them to be two of the most evil creatures ever to walk our realm.”
