move under the cloud cover to hunt. But we are about to disappoint them.”
With several more leaps, they were safely within the jutting rise of rocks that began to ascend to the second peak, the trolls left far behind them.
Silvas set her on a flatter stone with lanky pale green brush clinging to some loose soil crumbling around it. Fishing out some dried meat from their supplies, he pressed it into her hands and gave her the waterskin. Diana scarfed it down, grateful for the nourishment, her hands trembling despite their current safety.
“Will they follow us over here?” she whispered.
He shook his head, his eyes narrowing as they fixed on a point behind her. “No. The strix’s nest will keep them away. Your nose isn’t strong enough to pick up the smell now, but you will as we get closer. The smell of rot, death, and the bite of magic is not something that you will miss.”
Diana turned her head so that she too looked up at the ascending slope of the peak. Her stomach bottomed out nervously. A thick gray mist clung to the stones as it appeared to roll down the slope of the mountain. The stones—what little she could see pushing out from the mist—appeared to be splashed with black in some places as if so many bodies bled out over them that it permanently stained the rock. As she stared, she watched the mist roll on itself. At times, with the shifting of a breeze, it seemed to coil back, exposing a portion of bare rock, but it never lasted. Within minutes it would roll back over the spot, and it never once dissipated.
With a particularly strong gust, she nearly gagged as a rank, sour smell filled her nose. It contained the sharp metallic scent of blood and of something unfamiliar, like the acidic bite of ozone after a storm.
“We are going there,” she murmured.
“Yes,” Silvas replied unhappily his eyes scanning over the mist, looking for any sign of weakness.
“Fuck.”
He turned an understanding look upon her, his lips flattened as they pressed tightly together. She could feel the coil of tension and the rush of hostility and apprehension that filled him when he looked once more upon the shrouded stone.
“Indeed.”
Chapter 24
Silvas hopped up on a narrow rocky ledge, his chest expanding as he scented the air. The pungent smell filled his nose unpleasantly, but he didn’t detect any movement from the strix. That wasn’t surprising. So long as they didn’t attract her attention, she was unlikely to emerge from her cave before sunset.
Diana glanced up at him quizzically, but he waved her on to keep to the more stable path as his eyes narrowed at the distant figures of the mountain trolls. They’d given up the pursuit and were ambling back to whatever cavern they were holing up in. It was peculiar. Normally mountain trolls would never come anywhere near the territory of such a dangerous being as the strix. Not even a mature female with a large harem would risk her family so recklessly. His ears tipped as he listened to the female howl miserably, his mouth turning down in sympathy.
His mate stilled as another louder howl pierced the air. “You feel sorry for them? They wanted to eat me,” she whispered furiously.
“I would never have allowed that. I would have killed them if I needed to. Truthfully, it probably would have been a kindness. I believe they are starving,” he replied as he dropped down once more to her side, satisfied that the trolls were retreating.
“Starving?” she murmured, her brow furrowing as he felt a soft tug on their bond. Despite her words, Diana had a compassionate heart, a rarity in his world. He found himself instinctively reaching for her, wanting to hold her close and lose himself in their bond. Instead, he nodded, keeping his attention on their surroundings, searching for any sign of danger.
“That would explain why they are risking a hunt under cloud cover in the daylight. Not to mention in a strix’s territory, of all places, where they could easily be killed in a territorial clash. As I said, normally they are scavengers, feeding on game brought down by predators, although they are known to eat copious amounts of fish in the lower mountain rivers.”
“Like bears, then,” she observed as if comparing them to a common predator made all the difference in the world.
Silvas found it charmingly naïve, but she wasn’t wrong when it came down to their roles in