A long ways after, a rough voice grunted on the path and metal clashed against metal. I crept forward slowly.
Four flipped a soldier over his shoulder and hissed as one of the blunted arrows hit his thigh. The shot came from near me, and the soldier looped an arm around Four’s ankles. I moved through my side of the woods as quiet as I could.
Four sent the soldier running with a quick jab and a threat. The archer rose from their hiding spot, and I kicked the back of their knees. Collapsing into the path, they dropped their bow and scrambled away from me. Four stepped on their sleeve.
“Stop.” He glanced at me, mask twitching with his smile. “Fancy meeting you here.”
“Thought a stroll would be nice.” I knelt over the soldier, hooked an arm around their throat, and squeezed till they went limp. “It’s been refreshing.”
“Refreshing?” Four nodded to the cut on my side. “You good?”
“Great.” I pressed harder on my wound and gritted my teeth. “Real good. How’re you?”
“Better than you.” He leaned around me, eyes focused over my shoulder. A throwing knife slid into his palm. “Duck.”
I sat down hard. An arrow tore through the leaves where I’d been, and Four threw his knife across the path.
The patter of fleeing feet sounded behind me.
“How long it take you to learn that?” I nodded to the knife in his hand. It wasn’t at all like one of mine, too long and thin to be of much use up close.
He helped me to my feet. “How long it take you to learn how to fight?”
“Not long.” I grinned at Four’s snort. “The moment between me getting punched and them trying to hit me again.”
“My aunt threw knives and taught all the kids. Kept us too busy to get in trouble,” Four said. “I’m ready to be done with this if you are—side by side, run straight through with no stopping?”
Only carnival folks would think knife throwing wasn’t trouble.
“Sounds good.” I nodded and drew a knife. Better safe than sorry. “Let’s—”
A scream drowned me out, the sound bone-shatteringly loud and drawn out, raising the hairs on the back of my neck and gooseflesh on my arms. Four shuddered.
“Myr—Three?” He turned to where it had come from, but no second shout came. “Three!”
I grabbed his arm. “Hush! You’ll draw everyone here.”
“That was Three.” He shook me off and started running, his wide eyes and panicked breaths finally showing his age. “We know better than to scream.”
He vanished into the trees. Lady bless. I stomped after him, one hand holding my side and the other grasping a knife. If she knew not to scream, whatever had happened to her was enough to break that training. I squished through the mud, pushing branches aside. Red smeared across the wood.
If I was bleeding that much, I was done for. I touched my side—no fresh blood.
Sweat rolled down the back of my neck. Four’s frantic calls faded in the distance, and I took a step back. A steady drip splattered against the ground.
I looked up.
Eighteen
An empty face stared back at me, skin gone and bones bare.
“You’re not real,” I whispered, hands flying to my neck. The damp was sweat. There was no blood. There was no body. My nails scraped down the back of my neck. “You’re a dream. A memory.”
Red stained my fingers.
I stumbled in the mud. Mud—water. There must be water nearby. That was it, had to be it. I was simply too thirsty to think straight, had lost too much blood, and my dreams were creeping into the day. I fell to my knees, sinking into the earth, and the farther I reached, the drier it got. There had to be water, a river, a pond. There had to be.
It wasn’t real. It was never real.
The drip rang in my ears, loud and clear as bells. I took a breath, hoping for the damp scent of earth and springs, but the metallic, salty taste of blood invaded my mouth. I tore my hands away from the underbrush and cloth came with them.
Three’s mask, torn as her flesh, hung from my hands. Strands of hair fluttered in the breeze.
I screamed.
The sound ripped from my throat, rattling out of my mouth, and a rushing filled my ears. Three was real, had been real, and this was real. The drops of blood crashed loud enough to deafen, and I dragged my gaze up. The mask fell from my hands.
Three hung from the branch like laundry left to dry, a stiletto knife sticking from the back of her neck.
I clawed my way up a tree. They were back, they were back. The shadows had found me, the only Nacean face they’d missed. Twigs ripped through my arms, bark splintered under my nails, and I clung to the sturdiest branch I could find, trembling among the leaves. They couldn’t climb. They never looked up. They wouldn’t find me.
A muffled, breathy word broke the shrill whine in my mind.
“Who?”
Three! Three, Three. Lady, I didn’t know her name, but she wasn’t theirs to take and tear and play at. She’d such brown eyes.
Staring.
“Who is that?”
I tried to breathe and couldn’t, air catching in my throat. My hands shook till they blurred. I pressed my palms into my eyes.
My tree trembled. The shadow moved beneath me, nothing rasping over bark, clawing for my skin.
“Who are you?” the blackness muttered.
They couldn’t have me.
A shriek cut through the haze—overpowering the rushing in my ears and dripping burned into my mind.
The others. I’d forgotten the others. They didn’t know what the shadows were like, what they really were, how to stay clear of them. No one deserved this death.
Four sobbed, one hand fluttering around Three’s face and the other clenching her mask. He screamed and screamed and screamed, and I was sure the sound would never stop.
“Climb.” The word died in my throat, buried under breaths I couldn’t take and the taste of blood. I sucked in a deep gulp of air and shimmied down the trunk. “You have to climb.”
Four looked up. My feet hit the ground, slipping in the mud.
Black claws curled around his shoulders and dragged him back. He howled, the sound filling my head. Three’s mask hit the ground.
The noise died.
I ran.
The others, all the others—Ruby and Emerald and Amethyst. The auditioners, the soldiers, Our Queen. The shadows would kill everyone.
They’d kill Elise.
I pumped my arms and legs harder, toes flying across the dirt. Darkness rushed past the corners of my eyes as I ran—rustling in the deadfall, twisting behind trunks, shifting from real shadow to real shadow. I forced each breath through my nose till it burned and ached, and, Lady, no one deserved this.
I’d not been strong enough to outrun them then, but I could now.
I skidded round a bend in the path. Ruby stood in the center of it, expressionless mask staring down at me. I rammed into him, running too fast to stop, and we went tumbling. His hands closed around my shoulders, trying to keep us upright. My elbow cracked against his metal face.
“Shadows!” I crawled to my feet.
Ruby groaned, adjusting his mask.