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REGROUPING
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WHERE ARE YOU HIDING... where are you hiding... where are you hiding...?
The wind rushed in cold waves around their trembling bodies. It was a harsh juxtaposition to the warmth of the mafia boss’ study. The dark of the night had settled in around them almost an hour before, leaving them prey for all its evils. Once again, they had been tied and gagged, but the bindings this time were feeble, made for them to be able to break free.
Griffin had already set to work struggling against his. A swift flash of blue light appeared at his fingertips, splitting the fibres of the rope behind his back. His finger danced over her wrists. When freed, her hand automatically drifted to the slice at her cheek. The blood had solidified into hardened crystals, embedded into her skin. Soft skin marred by a thin slit of rocks and left exceptionally cold. Savara imagined they’d glow red in a lighter setting, but wondered, as a tear slid around those menacing gemstones, if they’d ever come off.
“Griffin,” she whispered through the dark. “What happened back there?”
He dropped to her eye level, holding a small orb between them. His brow was creased again. “You bound your soul,” he grumbled. “You have no idea what you’ve gotten yourself into.”
It was the first time she’d encountered such a thing as a soul bond. Nothing about it sounded pleasant, only definitive, but she’d agreed at that moment because she needed Jasper safe—definitively so. “He had Jasper and Sebastian, I had to get us out—”
“Souls are not things to be messed with, Savara. Especially not to be bound.”
“I understand that but—”
“No,” he interrupted. “You don’t. When you bind a soul, you are obligated to fulfil whatever promise was made.” He pulled her to stand. “Since you didn’t specify your part of the promise, it’s up to him to release you.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means, if we get out of this, we have a whole other set of problems.”
A crease appeared between her brows. Her mess wasn’t going to have an easy fix. Maybe she had precipitated her decision, but it didn’t make sense to lose sleep over it now. Besides, if she couldn’t control her own soul, who’s to say anyone else would be able to either? What mattered now was finding Jasper and Sebastian and getting back to camp safely before anyone or anything else got their hands on them.
“Where do you think we are?”
“Maybe a few miles from camp,” he said, gazing up at the stars. “Not more than two hours walk.” He positioned his hand in a rigid praying motion at his chest before opening his fingers in an elegant twist. A ball of light appeared before him, matching the colour of the stars above. “We should head east before daybreak.”
But Savara had turned away from him, looking off into a deeper part of the darkened wood. A low whimpering sound drifted in on the breeze that sent a chill through her spine. Despite the deathly stillness of the hollow night, Savara sensed a slow heartbeat rippling through the air somewhere nearby.
“Griffin, there’s something out there.” It called to her the same way the wolf had in Griffin’s memory. Anguish reached out for something to hold, and the thing inside her reached back.
“Savara, it’s not safe,” he whispered, paying close attention to the shadows shifting on the ground beneath them, but she’d already gone.
There was something familiar about this anguish. Hints of pity and fear. She pressed on. Past another tree beyond a large bush in the centre of a darkened clearing, she found them. Beaten, bruised, and bound to each other, sitting back-to-back in a bucket of water that had turned both of their skins an icy shade of blue.
“Jasper!” she cried and raced towards them.
He lifted his head. His swollen cheek forced his left eye closed, but his right eye sparkled as it settled on her. “Sav,” he whispered. “Where have you been? And what happened to your face?” Jasper’s brow crinkled where it could at the sight of the bloodied gems on her cheek.
“Don’t worry about my face,” she replied, covering the slice with her fingers. Savara knew she’d never get used to feeling hard rocks in place of soft skin. “You should see your own,” she added nervously.
His breath was uneasy. A purple bruise bloomed from beneath the rips in his soaking shirt. She realised they’d been tortured. Her trembling fingers hastened over the knots, but the ropes had swollen under the water. Her lip quivered again. All of this... is my fault, she thought, unable to meet his good eye.
“Griffin,” she called tentatively into the dark. “Help.” Her voice was weak. The cry had barely left her lips, but it was enough for Griffin to come running. He moved her out of the way and, twisting the ball of light into a glowing knife once more, he set to work on their ropes. “Why the water?”
“Sebastian,” Griffin replied. “They’ve kept his hands under water so he can’t conjure. It’s lowered their body temperatures as well.” Griffin shook his unconscious friend. “What have they done to him?”
“They beat him up pretty bad,” Jasper replied, falling into Savara’s arms.
Griffin was right, he was freezing. How long have they been out here? Savara helped him out of his shirt, cringing when she spied what looked like burn marks across his back. At least the icy water would’ve soothed the burn, she thought. She draped her cloak over Jasper for warmth, taking his tattered shirt over to a patch of grass at the edge of the clearing.
“What happened?” asked Griffin through gritted teeth as he rested Sebastian on the mostly dry ground.
“We walked into a part of town that was more shack and shanty than town. We found a man selling medicines and potions. Sebastian got what he needed, but the old man must have ratted us out to the mafia, because the next thing we knew, we were being bagged and burned and tossed into a cart.”
“Do you know who did this to you?”
“I’m not sure, but we ended up in a camp of some kind.” Jasper reached into his pocket and pulled out his old, faithful glasses. The ones with the beautiful black rims that she hadn’t realised she missed. He winced as he settled them on the bridge of his partially swollen nose and tried his best to recount everything that had happened. “There were other people like Sebastian, but they were kept in cages. I didn’t catch all of what they were saying, some spoke a different language, a dialect of some kind, and the ones doing the translating had such a heavy accent I couldn’t make out much.” Griffin swore under his breath, but Jasper continued. “From what I did understand, they were being shipped off somewhere, and it sounded like they were being forced into a fight.”
“What kind of fight?” Griffin urged.
“I’m not sure exactly, but it’s going to be big. They talked about leaders from other parts of the world, and they kept mentioning these... living shadows? Great big red eyes and smoky bodies.” He gulped. “Whatever it is that they have planned, it’s happening soon. They said something about a month’s journey east.”
“A month east? That would take them into the Harri provinces.” Griffin frowned. “You said these people were like Sebastian? You mean, they could control fire?”
Jasper nodded. “But only the ones in cages. The others seemed normal—like me,” he corrected himself. “Except for their leader. He wore these thick, leather gloves, which I thought was weird given the heat of the place, but he took them off once when he was talking to Sebastian.” Jasper’s voice went quiet as he stared over at the scorch marks on Sebastian’s back. “He had lightning in his fingers.”
Griffin maintained a straight face, but Savara sensed the breath hitch in his lungs. Whoever the man with lightning in his fingers was, he and Griffin were already acquainted.
As Griffin tended to Sebastian’s wounds, Jasper turned to Savara, shivering under the cloak. “Sav, you don’t think those things exist, do you?”
Savara knew there might be something to the stories, even if she hadn’t encountered any herself. Between castles that guarded themselves and animals that talked, she doubted there was anything this world didn’t have to offer. Jasper was all hope. Innocent hope. She didn’t want to be the one to break him, but she couldn’t let him go out thinking there was nothing to fear. She shrugged and turned back to the bushes, wringing the shirt out with trembling fingers. I don’t know what to think anymore.
Another hollow gust of wind rounded her shoulders. The hairs on the back of her neck stood up. She had almost forgotten the thing that had called her over in the first place. When she first saw Jasper and Sebastian, she wondered if it might have been them, but this thing was darker. Infinitely so. Something that wore suffering like tattoos permanently inked deep into the skin. She sensed it again—the anguish, the pain. Whatever it was lay just beyond the bushes. Its presence was overwhelming and—to her surprise—almost human.
“Sav, are you okay?” Jasper stuttered.
She turned back to the group. Sebastian was slowly coming to, and Griffin was worried about how they were going to make it back in the condition they were in, but for the most part, everyone was well. Alive, more like it. Still, the tug of the strange presence called to her. She was too focused on it to notice the curling shadows beneath her feet.
The forest grew cold. The twinkling stars above them disappeared, one by one, plunged into a sea of black. The presence in the bushes disappeared but the voice from her nightmares rang loud and clear in her ears as it hissed, I’ve found you.
No one knew which came first: the shadows or the scream.
