Page 30 of Lady Knight and the Thief

“Do you think the things that go bump in the night and live in the darkest trenches of the Wylds leave bodies in disgraced, neatly stacked in piles to be discovered?”

Cypress ran her teeth along her bottom lip. “No.”

“Then the logical conclusion is…” Torren trailed off, waiting for Cypress’s answer.

Rather than admit that he could be right, Cypress turned to survey the ruined village once more. The idea that people she knew, likely saw daily, participating in these raids was preposterous. She knew the Guard and nearly every soul within the Keep.

If something like this were sanctioned by the crown, they would be reporting back to the Keep frequently.

The wind screamed through the trees, ripping strands of her hair free from its braid. The air smelled clean, not brimming with hopelessness and despair, but the fresh breeze still carried a sense of foreboding.

“We should leave this place,” she muttered, shifting in her saddle, while her gaze darted across the horizon, the coming shadow of night.

“Aye, we should, Lass, but I thought you didn’t believe in superstitions.”

“I don’t need to believe in superstitions to know when it is unwise to linger in a place like this.”

Torren nodded. “Fair enough. Fair enough, Lass,”

Cypress urged her horse forward, and down the twisting road. She and Torren left the last ruined house behind them, the cover of night chasing their heels.

Beyond the village, the trees seemed to swallow the road. Endless verdant branches bowed over their heads. The canopy of leaves was like a moving puzzle, each limb of the tree swaying with the wind. The leaves danced together, but never met.

And the silence within the trees was almost as bad as the eerie silence within the village.

It was as if all life within the forest had paused. The birds stopped singing, the insects stopped buzzing. Utter and complete silence was met with the thunder of horse hooves eating at the distance between Cypress and Torren’s safe haven for the night.

Either the creatures of the forest were wary of Cypress and Torren wandering into their midst, or… something else lurked within the dark trees. Something that made the birds be silent.

“We need to make camp, full dark will be upon us soon,” Torren said, storm gray eyes sweeping back and forth on the edge of the trees.

Cypress nodded her agreement.

“I don’t believe we are alone,” she said in a hush, keeping pace with his horse as she likewise kept a leery eye on the treeline.

“We haven’t beenalonein quite some time, Lass,” Torren remarked, then directed his horse to the right.

“That’s not comforting,” Cypress said, following his path.

“It wasn’t supposed to be,” Torren replied without glancing back at her, head still swiveling back and forth as he led them further into the trees.

“So how do you keep finding these Faerie rings?” She asked while ducking under a low-hanging branch laden with palm-sized nuts hidden under a woody shell. Cypress plucked a few from another branch as she passed. The nuts would be good as a snack once cracked and sectioned into bite-sized pieces.

Torren chuckled. “The rings tend to find me more than I find them.”

She scoffed, rolling her eyes at his back. “You realize that makes no sense?”

“Sure it does, Lass.”

Rather than respond, as Cypress had discovered, Torren and she could bicker and argue back and forth about practically nothing forhourson end, she stayed quiet.

Just as she was about to mention that a particular set of trees looked suspiciously ring-shaped, Torren turned in the opposite direction, and a step later, the thick trees in a perfect circle enveloped Cypress and her horse.

Torren was already walking around the perimeter of the circle, murmuring in a language Cypress couldn’t place, when she dismounted her horse.

“What was following us?”

“Don’t think for a moment that just because we’re within this ring that it’s not still out there, Lass.”