Page 2 of Dream Reaper

The pain lanced through her side again.

No. She was worse off than he was and wouldn’t make it a dozen yards into the trees. She needed to bide her time, wait for exactly the right moment when he was distracted but she still had enough energy to escape.

What’s the point?

Her thoughts betrayed her before she’d even had a chance to imagine how she might make a break for it. Those whisperings were right. After all, her entire life she had seemed doomed to fail at whatever she set her hand to. She’d failed to harness her own magic; failed to heal the prince; failed to keep her little brother out of trouble…

Escaping Talos would probably turn into another disappointment in a long, dismal list of failures.

She stared down at her feet as she stumbled across the uneven ground.

Something stirred ahead of them in the forest. Ava snapped her head up and stared down the serpentine trail. The undergrowth grew tighter around them, ferns and ivy brushing against her on both sides as thorns and branches tore at her arms and unbound hair.

Had she imagined it?

She stumbled several more feet, straining to listen to the sounds of the forest, but it was difficult to hear anything over her own ragged breaths.

There. There it was again.

A haunting moan echoed between the trunks of the trees. She slowed her pace, looking frantically around her to discover the source of the sound.

Talos shoved her again. “You really have a death wish, witch.”

She forced her trembling legs to move again but kept her hearing focused on the forest around them. There was something out there, something behind the hissing of the wind through the creaking branches of the trees. Something low and nearly inaudible…

They weren’t alone.

“Something’s out there,” she rasped, stubbornly slowing her pace yet again. “Can’t you hear it?”

This time he stopped with her, one hand latching onto her elbow and squeezing hard enough that his fingers would leave bruises. But he said nothing, his breathing stilling as he too tried to listen to the whispers of the forest.

“I don’t hear anything but the wind.” He shook her arm so hard it yanked a moan from her compressed lips.

“No. Not the wind! Something else, something⁠—”

A blade hissed out of a sheath and pressed against the small of her back. “Keep. Moving.”

Biting back a curse, she forced one foot to move forward, then the other. She didn’t want to continue down this path, toward that…whatever that was lying in wait for her up ahead.

Every fiber of her being screamed for her to go back, her senses overwhelmed and too highly tuned. The stench of mold began to smell like the decay of a corpse. The hiss of the wind became a ghostly voice warning her away. The thorns tearing at her exposed arms became claws and teeth…

She was going to die. Whatever lay ahead of them might be worse than the dark elf driving her from behind. And what was she?

Nothing. I’m a healer who couldn’t even ply my own trade.

She’d failed at saving her prince and would fail at saving herself.

Worthless. She was worthless…

The trail cut abruptly to the west, the ground dropping away into a ravine too deep for her to see the bottom.

Ava didn’t hesitate or even think about what she was doing. She plunged off the trail and skidded down into the darkness of the ravine. She didn’t care if Talos killed her. She would not follow that trail blindly to her fate, like a lamb led to slaughter.

She’d rather die on the run.

So, she ran, arms held in front of her face as she slid down the ravine, dodging narrow tree trunks that angled toward the sky at awkward angles.

Behind her, Talos bellowed a vile curse. As soon as her feet hit the dank water at the base of the ravine, she changed direction and cut to the south, following the curve of the ravine. The glow from her bonds lit the forest in a sickly blue hue, lighting the way in front of her.