“Sibba, let me help you,” Tola begged, standing with her.
But Sibba was already running out the door and through the yard, following the trail of smashed plants that Evenon had left in his wake as he ran to the woods. She heard nothing. Not Estrid calling her name or Aeris screaming at her from her perch on the thatched roof. She heard only the roar of blood in her ears. Felt only the rage burning hot in her veins.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Sibba
The forest swallowed Sibba quicker than she thought it should have. One moment, there had been moonlight and soft snowflakes on her shoulders, and then there was nothing but darkness and thick tree trunks and dried leaves crunching beneath her boots. She ran, ignoring the searing pain that had begun to radiate from her shoulder and down her arm. Evenon was quiet, but not quiet enough. She had hunted game on her own for years, able to track deer with steps as quiet as a breeze. Tall, gangly Evenon and the way he barreled through the forest just as his brother had was no challenge for her.
She paused to listen and catch her breath, heard a branch crack to her left, and changed course, moving deeper into the woods.
“Evenon!” she shouted, knowing of course that he would not answer but wanting him to know that she was aware he was there. She held her right arm close to her body, cradling it as she raced through the trees.
She followed his trail—cracked branches and depressed plants, a footprint in the mud—deep into the forest. It wasn't until the light became so scarce that she couldn't see a trail anymore that she remembered Tola's warning about the shadow-men in the ghost forest. It had seemed silly then but suddenly became very real. Sibba slowed to a stop, spinning in a small circle as she tried to regain her bearings. She touched a tree-trunk to see if there was moss growing on one side or the other, but the rough bark gave her no clues. The trees were nothing but shadows looming over her, the moon hidden by the thick canopy of leaves, if there was even a moon at all.
An eerie, unnatural silence surrounded her, like the darkness had weight to it that muffled the usual sounds of wildlife and rustling branches. She was no stranger to forests, but she had never felt anything like this. It felt sinister and angry, and it was pressing down on her, subduing her own rage, turning it into the cold sweat of fear.
Movement caught her attention out of the corner of her eyes, but when she turned her head, she found only the thickening darkness. Her breaths were too loud, the pounding of her heart deafening in the silence.
“Malstrom bitch.” The deep voice that rumbled like a crack of thunder around her was painfully familiar. Whipping around, she saw Gabel just an arm's reach away from her, blood dripping down his neck from a gash in his throat. A gash she had given him. She took a step back as he advanced, his movements jerky and strange.
“Gabe?” Another voice, this one corporeal and quiet, a disbelieving whisper. Over Gabel's shoulder, Evenon materialized. He was hunched over, his back against a tree and a hand to his stomach, but his face was surprisingly hopeful.
He had distracted the specter. Sibba took another step backward and stumbled, collapsing on top of something soft and cold, her hands landing on what could only be flesh. She scrambled to her knees and found herself looking down into her mother's unblinking blue eyes. She muffled a panicked scream with a hand over her mouth.
“Gabel,” Evenon was saying over and over, like a prayer. Sibba looked back at him. Gabel seemed to fade in and out of view, parts of him swirling with shadow before coming back into focus. What would happen when he reached Evenon? Would the shadows capture him and carry him to Malos? Would he be stuck in the draugnvithr forever?
“Sibba,” her mother said. “I'm so glad you’re home.” The voice was Darcey's but not Darcey's, just as the body had her shape but couldn't possibly be here. Sibba had buried it, had watched the dirt swallow Darcey’s body.
But the temptation was there just the same. To reach down and grasp her mother's fingers, to lift her into her arms and sob into her neck and apologize. The shadow image was as real as her mind wanted it to be. As she reached out a hand to caress her mother's face, it flickered in and out of focus, light to dark and then back again. It was brief, but it was enough. Shaking her head to clear her mind, Sibba leaped to her feet.
“Don't touch him,” she said to Evenon who still stood facing his brother, a hand tentatively outstretched. “Don't.”
That was when Evenon saw Darcey's body. He flinched noticeably, but it wasn't because of pain from his wound. It was because he recognized her, and his arrow in her neck. Here they were, two murderers and two mourners. They were both the victims and the perpetrators, but Sibba didn't feel vindicated, didn't feel like any of what she had gained was worth what she had lost.
Sibba couldn't stay there another minute, not with the shadows and certainly not with her mother's murderer. She wanted him dead, but she wanted out of the draugnvithr even more. So she ran. Unseen fingers raked through her hair and tugged at her cloak, but she would not—could not—let the shadows claim her. She would not live a half-life in the dark, waiting for Valdos to have mercy on her and claim her. She thought she heard Evenon stumbling along behind her, apparently having reached the same conclusion.
She had not gone far when a root caught her ankle and she fell. It was quiet again, that same heavy silence, only now it was broken by the creaking of branches overhead. What would it be this time? She rolled onto her back, resigning herself to face whatever the shadow-men had prepared for her this time. Above her, something moved, swaying in a non-existent breeze. She rose to a crouch, then stood and found herself eye level with a pair of scuffed brown boots. Her eyes traveled the length of the dangling body and alighted reluctantly on its face.
It was her brother Jary. But not the Jary of her childhood, the boy she had known when she'd left Ottar, though there was no mistaking his icy blue eyes. This was the young man, the one being held captive by Isgerd. All traces of youth had been chiseled away from this face, the round cheeks replaced by high cheekbones, the soft chin covered in a golden beard. A mean scar ran across one of his eyes. He looked so much like their father that Sibba could have mistaken him to be a younger version of Thorvald.