warmly against him. He’d been about to bed her, to bury himself in her. His body still wanted to. Arousal thrummed in his blood.
Not a witch. Never a witch.
Harkeld opened his eyes and stared up at the glittering stars. There was no wind, no wailing coming from the sandstone, no—
He stiffened. What was that?
Harkeld held his breath, listening. He heard the sound of men breathing in their sleep, the soft crunch of sand as the sentries paced, and then at the edge of his hearing...a faint scream?
He pushed up on one elbow. One of the sentries heard the movement. Starlight glinted on the man’s cheek as he turned his head. “Sire?”
“Did you hear that?” Harkeld asked in a low voice.
“Hear what?”
He didn’t answer, just listened, his ears straining. The faint sound came again. “That,” he said. “Screaming.”
“It’s just the wind, sire.”
The sentry was right—he knew that—but his subconscious told him there was danger out there, that something prowled in the darkness, that the distant screams came from a man’s throat, not wind blowing through holes bored in rock.
Next I’ll be believing in ghosts.
Harkeld shook his head angrily and lay back down. He pulled the blankets tightly around himself and shut his eyes.
THEY SET OFF before dawn. No one said anything, but Innis was aware of a change in the soldiers’ mood. They loaded the packhorses with efficiency, but there was an edge of suppressed excitement as they worked, a quiet, grim eagerness. Captain Ditmer’s party was less than ten miles ahead. Today they’d engage him and his men in battle.
And kill them.
She set her jaw and mounted, bringing her horse alongside Prince Harkeld’s.
The canyon seemed particularly gray this morning, the pre-dawn light leaching the sandstone of color. Even when the sky above their heads had lightened to a pale blue, the grayness persisted. Shadows seemed to cling to them all, man and beast.
The first puff of a dry breeze blew along the canyon from the desert. In its wake came a wail from the cliffs. Innis repressed a shiver and looked around her. Dawn was past, and yet shadows still shrouded the canyon—
The moment of insight was sharp. Fool, they’re not ordinary shadows. It was the curse she was seeing, lying over them all, cloaking face and form more heavily than it had before.
Innis dropped back slightly from her place beside Prince Harkeld and caught Dareus’s eye. A moment later he cantered up alongside her. “Do you see them?” she asked in low voice. “The curse shadows? They’re darker.”
Dareus glanced around. His eyes narrowed.
Innis touched her heels to her horse’s flanks, coming abreast of Prince Harkeld again. The wailing rose around them, and with it, her uneasiness.
“We must halt!” Dareus called out.
Prince Tomas reined his horse, slowing it. “What?”
“The curse,” Dareus said tersely. “Something’s happening.”
Tomas shouted a command. His voice echoed off the walls, blending with another keening wail.
The soldiers ahead of them halted.
Prince Tomas swung around to face Dareus. “What do you mean, happening?”
“The curse,” Dareus said. “Something’s changed.”
“Changed? How?”
“I don’t know.” Dareus dismounted.
“What are you doing?” Prince Tomas demanded.
“Checking the water.”
Innis jumped down from her horse and followed with the princes. They scrambled over the boulders of the dry riverbed after Dareus.
“You think the curse is in the water here?” Prince Tomas asked, his voice slightly higher than normal.
“It shouldn’t be. Not yet.” Dareus reached the trickling river. “Ivek created the curse to rise in the east and pass across the land until it set in the west, like the sun.”
Tomas nodded. “That’s what the stories say.”
Dareus dropped down on one knee and scooped water in his cupped hands.
They crowded close—the princes, Gerit and Cora, herself—and watched as Dareus looked intently at the water. He raised it to his face, almost as if he smelled it.
“Well?” Prince Tomas asked. “Is it cursed?”
Dareus shook his head. “No. The water’s fine.” He opened his hands, letting the water splash to the ground, and turned his head, still crouched on one knee, scanning the canyon. “But something has changed. And not for the better.”
“You’re certain about the water?”
“Yes.” Dareus stood, his face set in a frown.
“Perhaps the curse is stronger here because we’re nearing one of the anchor stones,” Innis said.
“Perhaps. But I don’t like it. It’s...dangerous.”
Innis followed his gaze, seeing the dark veil of the curse resting heavily on them all.
“It’s not right,” Dareus muttered under his breath.
Movement caught her eye: a hawk arrowing downward. Petrus, from its pale breast.
The hawk swept low over the dry riverbed, alighted on a