Page 43 of Curse of Darkness
Every ounce of my being wants to look down.
I catch a glimpse of dark water nearly fifty feet below me. The surface of the lake is so smooth it looks like a black mirror, and there’s something ominous about that thought.
I suck in a sharp gasp, my fingers instinctively curling around hers.
Gravel rains over me as Finn skids to a halt beside us, reaching down. “Got you!”
Together they haul me back over the edge, Finn curling his fist in my pack and yanking me higher.
I collapse on the ground, my entire body shaking.
“Wolves,” I gasp.
Finn sits back, breathing hard. “Fuck. I thought you were gone for a second.” He rubs his mouth and casts a dark look back up the hill. “They won’t come any farther. We passed the marker.”
The alpha growls above us, prowling back and forth on the top of a rock as if he’d love to come and play, but this stone plinth marks the edge of his territory.
Eris pushes to her feet, resting her hands on her knees as she gasps for breath. “Are you okay, Vi?”
Now that the thrill of the moment is over, everything is starting to hurt.
“You’re bleeding,” Finn mutters, flipping up the edge of my shirt.
“Gravel rash.” I wince and cup my arm across my body. The skin on my elbow is a distant memory, and every inch of my right side feels like it just made love to sandpaper. “I’m fine.”
“You’re not fine,” Finn snaps.
I grab his hand. “Fine, Finn. Maybe not up to dancing a jig right now, but it’s not going to affect me.”
Finn mutters something unintelligible as he tugs a small pot of something from his pack and then dabs a clear gel on the worst of my wounds. My gifts of healing don’t extend to myself, and the others have no such magic.
“Ouch!”
Unscrewing the top of a water canteen, Finn offers it to me. I drink deeply, then climb to my feet and pass it to Eris.
“Do I even want to know why those wolves stopped?” Or what might scare them enough to make them forsake the thought of three easy meals?
“This is the Lake of Silence,” Finn says. “The rune on that stone belongs to Kato. Nothing will cross the barrier. Not even a bird. Didn’t you feel it?”
It felt like a static shock at the time, but now, as I look around, I realize it was more of an… absence.
Nothing moves around us. Not even the wind.
There’s no sound. No birds. Not even the drift of the wolves howling. It’s like this world exists within a bubble and nothing can penetrate it.
“We made the lake.” The oppressiveabsencehighlights the quietness of my voice.We made the lake, which means the island’s not far ahead.When we set out from Ceres, I was so focused on getting Thiago’s soul back that I didn’t comprehend what that would mean.
We’re here.
We’re so close.
And now I have to bargain with the God of the Dead; the Guardian to the gates of the Underworld.
* * *
There’sa boat waiting at the edge of the lake, tied to a rickety old dock.
“Can we trust it?” I murmur.
