Page 5 of Daman
“A man?”
I nodded. “I…” Well, I couldn’t exactly tell Lycus I had fallen off the ridge. I had no injuries to show for it. I didn’t understand the reason why I healed so quickly, but my friend certainly wouldn’t believe me. “I got lost in the wood and found a cave.”
“You? Lost in the wood? You lie.” Lycus poked my cheek again. “Tell me about this man.”
“He had a scar on his face.”
“A warrior?”
“Perhaps.”
Lycus curled up beside me in the grass. “What else?”
“He was…” The harder I tried to remember, the more distorted my memory became, like when I first woke from a vivid dream. The longer I was awake, the further away the pieces drifted.
“He was what?”
“I don’t remember.”
The following day, I returned to the ridge and carefully climbed down to where I’d found the cave. But it was gone. I scaled the perimeter and came across a stream and burrows in the trees. But no cave. No man with a scar. Perhaps I’d dreamed him after all.
Several days later, everything changed.
The Roman legionaries came to Dacia.
Our army had been on campaign for a while, but the enemy broke through our lines. Chaos ensued. Some townspeople frantically fled to the mountainside. Others barricaded themselves inside their homes. A few took their own lives when it became clear we would become captives in our lands.
“An eagle flies for the land beyond the forest.”
The man’s warning. Had it only been a dream? If so, how had I known?
“Daman!” Lycus cried as he shoved his face against my chest.
We were huddled together on our pallet as the life we knew came crashing down around us. I wrapped my arms around him and tried to stay brave. Tears burned behind my eyes as the smell of smoke came from town, carried by the wind all the way to our home in the forest. Commotion sounded outside.
The front door burst open, and an enemy soldier appeared.
“Stay back!” I jumped to my feet, putting myself between him and Lycus. My only weapon was a makeshift dagger I had made using a piece of metal the blacksmith had discarded.
“Where is it?” the soldier asked in a deep, raspy voice that sent chills down my spine. “I smell the key’s essence. Its power.”
Key?
“Leave!” I exclaimed, slicing at the air in warning.
The soldier bared his teeth and charged forward. As he reached for me, I sliced the skin of his forearm. It didn’t faze him. He grabbed me by the front of my tunic and lifted me into the air. My heart thumped hard, pounding throughout my entire body.
Something was wrong with his eyes.
They were pitch-black.
“Your blood,” he said, yanking me closer and smelling me. “Blood of the dishonored. The cursed.”
“The cursed?” I was too frightened to move.
A grin stretched his lips. There was something unnatural about it. “I know your father. He commands an army of darkness.”
“My father?” I had never met him.
