Page 77 of Crown of Darkness
If that thing reaches out for me again—
Sweat presses a clammy hand down my spine. I know what they say about her. The Morai called her the Devourer, and even they—as monstrous as they were—feared her.
But this isEris.
And she’s alone and helpless right now, and as much as I don’t want to go near the bed, she’s my friend.
I’ve been alone before. Ever since I turned twelve, if I’m being honest.
So I force myself to haul the chair next to her bed, and I sit there and, while I don’t dare touch her, I tell her that I’m here.
And that I’m staying.
* * *
It’s nearly dawnwhen I slowly lean forward on the bed and rest my head on my arms. Every inch of me aches as if something big and gnarly has taken bloody, invisible bites of me, but the wounds no longer feel raw.
I’m healing.
Just tired.
“So tired,” someone says.
And as something tinkles and falls to the coverlet, I swear I sense a man’s hand caress the back of my neck before he pushes me down into sleep.
I dream of spiders crawling all over my skin.
And a forest where I’m running, always running….
And somewhere ahead of me, a baby cries.
“Not that way,” whispers a voice.
We explode into a different forest, but this one is green and verdant and somehowalive. It’s like no other forest I’ve ever seen, for there are ferns and soft fronds of barely formed plants that thicken the undergrowth. There’s a hint of the untouched about this forest, as if we’re so far from the nearest civilization that it’s forgotten what a city looks like.
Sunset falls, bringing with it a thousand shining stars as we creep through the trees. Plants part before me, as if to welcome me.
Ahead of us, voices chant in unison.
There’s laughter. Smoke from a fire. And children squealing as they chase each other through the ferns.
We walk among the camp, unseen and unknown, and though there’s a hand in mine, leading me, I find it impossible to turn and look at my companion.
The creatures wear ragged deer pelts and simple homespun smocks. Stubby horns peek through their hair, and I catch a glimpse of hooves and tails on some of them. One even wears a set of bat-like wings. Some of them have swept gold dust along the angle of their cheekbones and painted thin black lines along the bridge of their noses, sweeping it across their foreheads.
All of them have black eyes.
No pupil. No iris.
Just bottomless depths.
I don’t know if there are different clans depending on their animalistic features, though I notice the ones with horns seem to linger together, and the little children leaping through the forest on hooves seem all of a kind.
And through it all, the creatures I know as demi-fey weave like little drunk glistening fireflies.
The otherkin.
I feel breathless. They no longer exist now except in stories or in the features I sometimes see bred into unseelie faces. When my kind fled through the stars and arrived in this land, these were the beings that lived in what we now call Arcaedia.
