Sympathy for the Demons (Promised to the Demons #1) - Lidiya Foxglove Page 0,68
bat. And it is true that losing my home left me vulnerable, which you took advantage of fair and square. But this isn't over. I'm going to look for Jenny and I will make her my wife."
"You'd better not lay a finger on her," I said. "She's not a prize in some game. And frankly, she already seems to like the idea of being my wife."
"I don't want to spend time arguing," Piers said. "If she's in Sinistral, every minute could be crucial."
"Yeah, let's go." I wasn't about to let Piers emerge the hero of the day. "Show me Jenny's path," I asked the forests.
Blink and you'd miss it, but a subtle, overgrown path revealed itself heading toward the darkest part of the forest.
"I am barred from Sinistral!" Variel pulled an arrow out of the fallen Ethereal.
"Yeah...and you might be in trouble here too after this mess," I said. "But what do you want me to do about it? If Jenny's in Sinistral, and you can't go there, we have to do it. She wouldn't have left in the first place if you hadn't been a voyeur."
"I am no voyeur."
Piers started forging down the path, ignoring us, and I waved Variel off and rushed after him. "I'm not sure you know what voyeur means, because that was the very definition!" I called over my shoulders as the brush quickly swallowed us up.
I huffed and quickly outpaced Piers on the path. He walked at a purposeful, steady pace that didn't change when I pulled ahead. He inspected the stump of his arm. Not a very clean wound, since Variel had bitten his hand off and the only medical attention he got was my best attempt at field medicine. He quietly cast his own healing spell, and then tried to tug his sleeve down over it. When that didn't work, he unfastened a middle button of his jacket and tucked it there. He didn't complain, and I buried any instinct to help.
To his credit, he kept his mouth shut. I guess he was smart enough to know what I'd do if he didn't. I felt a duty to my witch to make Piers' life hell, since he had been responsible for most of the bad things that happened to Hel and her brother Harris.
Worst of all, it began with Piers killing Harris' familiar. So I had a duty to my own people as well.
Maybe Piers could get 'lost' in the swamps of Sinistral...
He stopped to gather some mushrooms.
"Those are poisonous," I said.
"That's true," Piers said. "But when cooked, in small doses, they cure a number of diseases common in Sinistral. We must be at the edge of that world, for them to grow here. I've never actually seen them growing fresh before, since they don't normally grow in Etherium."
"I see." I was well versed in the flora and fauna of Ethereal forests, but this was new to me. The mushrooms had pure white caps with frilled edges and red streaks in the steams like veins that extended into the underside of the caps. "For blood borne diseases?" I guessed, because nature had a way of hinting at its purposes.
"Exactly," Piers said.
That was our only conversation for a good couple of hours as we passed fully into Sinistral, the realm of chaos—of shadows and fog and dangerous beasts.
It was certainly not a place on my bucket list.
We made it pretty far without incident, until we reached an outcropping on the path with a scenic view of a castle and its lonely surroundings. I didn't see any other sign of civilization in the misty, swampy landscape. Just one castle standing alone, with high towers keeping sentry over the paths that twisted through low dark trees in an endless marsh.
"Jenny came this way..." I said it with a sense of dread. Jenny was so small and inexperienced with magic. She could get lost out there and I might never find her.
Suddenly a murder of crows lived up to their plural name and swept out of the trees, swarming us.
Black wings were beating in my face, claws and beaks scratching me before I could even mount a response. I transformed and flew out of the cloud of crows. They immediately changed course to follow me, even the ones who were attacking Piers. I guess the sight of a foreign flying object was enticing to them. I zig-zagged through the trees, keeping ahead of them. My bat wings could make quick moves that birds couldn't replicate.