Elide lunged for the overhang of thick roots as the wing beats neared, the forest silent as a graveyard. Stones and sticks ripped at her bare hands, her knees banging on the rocky dirt as she pressed herself into the hillside and peered at the canopy through the latticework of roots.
One beat—then another not even a heartbeat after. Synced enough that anyone in the forest might think it was only an echo, but Elide knew: two witches.
She’d picked up enough in her time in Morath to know the Ironteeth were under orders to keep their numbers hidden. They’d fly in perfect, mirrored formation, so listening ears might only report one wyvern.
But these two, whoever they were, were sloppy. Or as sloppy as one of the immortal, lethal witches could be. Lower-level coven members, perhaps. Out on a scouting mission.
Or hunting for someone, a small, petrified voice whispered in her head.
Elide pressed harder into the soil, roots digging into her back as she monitored the canopy.
And there. The blur of a swift-moving, massive shape gliding right above the canopy, rattling the leaves. A leathery, membranous wing, its edge tipped in a curved, poison-slick talon, flashed in the sunlight.
Rarely—so rarely—were they ever out in daylight. Whatever they hunted—it had to be important.
Elide didn’t dare breathe too loudly until those wing beats faded, sailing due north.
Toward the Ferian Gap—where Manon had mentioned the second half of the host was camped.
Elide only moved when the forest’s buzzing and chittering resumed. Staying still for so long had caused her muscles to cramp, and she groaned as she stretched out her legs, then her arms, then rolled her shoulders.
Endless—this journey was endless. She’d give anything for a safe roof over her head. And a hot meal. Maybe seeking them out, if only for a night, was worth the risk.
Picking her way along the bone-dry streambed, Elide made it two steps before that sense-that-was-not-a-sense twanged again, as if a warm, female hand had gripped her shoulder to stop.
The tangled wood murmured with life. But she could feel it—feel something out there.
Not witches or wyverns or beasts. But someone—someone was watching her.
Someone was following her.
Elide casually unsheathed the fighting knife Manon had given her upon leaving this miserable forest.
She wished the witch had taught her how to kill.
Lorcan Salvaterre had been running from those gods-damned beasts for two days now.
He didn’t blame them. The witches had been pissed when he’d snuck into their forest camp in the dead of night, slaughtered three of their sentinels without them or their mounts noticing, and dragged a fourth into the trees for questioning.
It had taken him two hours to get the Yellowlegs witch to break, hidden so deep down the throat of a cave that even her screams had been contained. Two hours, and then she was singing for him.
Twin witch armies now stood poised to take the continent: one in Morath, one in the Ferian Gap. The Yellowlegs knew nothing of what power Duke Perrington wielded—knew nothing of what Lorcan hunted: the other two Wyrdkeys, the siblings to the one he wore on a long chain around his neck. Three slivers of stone cleaved from an unholy Wyrdgate, each key capable of tremendous and terrible power. And when all three Wyrdkeys were united … they could open that gate between worlds. Destroy those worlds—or summon their armies. And far, far worse.
Lorcan had granted the witch the gift of a swift death.
Her sisters had been hunting him since.
Crouched in a thicket tucked into the side of a steep slope, Lorcan watched the girl ease from the roots. He’d been hiding here first, listening to the clamor of her clumsy approach, and had watched her stumble and limp when she finally heard what swept toward them.
She was delicately built, small enough that he might have thought her barely past her first bleed were it not for the full breasts beneath her close-fitting leathers.
Those clothes had snared his interest immediately. The Yellowlegs had been wearing similar ones—all the witches had. Yet this girl was human.
And when she turned in his direction, those dark eyes scanned the forest with an assessment that was too old, too practiced, to belong to a child. At least eighteen—maybe older. Her pale face was dirty, gaunt. She’d likely been out here for a while, struggling to find food. And the knife she palmed shook enough to suggest she likely had no idea what to do with it.
Lorcan remained hidden, watching her scan the hills, the stream, the canopy.
She knew he was out there, somehow.