Breath of Dragons (A Pandoran Novel) (41 page)

A pause. "Just a thought, Rook, but you might wanna just throw your dagger. You're terrible with a bow."

I glowered up at him and Alex tried to take a step around me, but I held out my arm to hold him back. The look in his eyes almost incinerated me on the spot. It wasn't that I didn't understand his anger—I did. But if Thad died, I wouldn't learn the truth.

"Pull back your hood," I said to Thad. I wanted to see his face. I wanted to see what was written there when he told his story.

And there was that small piece inside of me that really just wanted to see him.

"You're sure V isn't gonna loose an arrow?" he asked.

I looked over at Vera, who still had the bow strung, taut. She wouldn't release it unless I asked her to, so I decided to just leave her that way. I looked back up at Thad. "She won't. Start talking."

"Should I come down there first?" he asked.

"No. You can say whatever you have to say from up there." I folded my arms over my chest, eyes fastened on him. Alex had his sword drawn and he stood behind me, but a little to the side—just in case he needed to throw me out of the way.

Slowly, Thad reached up, grabbed the edges of his hood and pulled it back. Moonlight illuminated his all-too-familiar face, and my heart squeezed a little. Even from here I could see a certain vulnerability in his usual charm that made me instantly want to trust him.

Just like his father.

Maybe this was a mistake. Maybe I should've made him keep his hood on, because seeing his face clouded my mind. I couldn't seem to find any direction and my head was a swirl of blurred memories. He had filled some of the brightest moments of my life, yet he had also been the cause of the darkest. I wanted to cling to the dark to help my heart accept the man Thad had become, but the light kept poking holes right through it, reminding me of who he had been and who he
could
be. Hope could be a very dangerous thing, because it might shine so brightly as to blind a person from the deep, dark truth.

I had to be careful; I couldn't be taken by Thad again.

"Where did you want me to start, Rook?" Thad asked.

"You can start by not calling me Rook," I said.

"Princess?" Thad asked.

I put my hands on my hips. "You have ten seconds to start talking before I give Vera the go-ahead."

Thad folded his arms and grunted. "Some thanks I get…"

"Ten," I said.

"Ten what?" Thad asked.

"Nine."

"Okay, okay!" Thad raked a hand through his hair. "Hellfire, Rook. I mean Princess. I mean…gah! What in the seven territories am I supposed to call you? Your highness…?"

I held up eight fingers. "Quit stalling."

Thad huffed something unflattering about princesses while throwing his hands down at his side. "Look. If you're wanting me to give you a good reason not to kill me right now, I don't have one. Did I just save your life? Yes. Do I intend to hand you over to my father? No. I'm here because I've been following you ever since you landed on Pendel, and I've been trying to find a way to reveal myself without simultaneously getting myself killed. I know I deserve it. I know I deserve to be punished and tortured for the rest of my life for what I've done. So you wanna know why I'm here? I'll tell you why I'm here. I'm here because I didn't expect it to hurt so much and I can't do it anymore." The words had tumbled out fast, and when he stopped speaking, he dragged his hands over his face, keeping them there like he was physically trying to hold his composure together.

I noticed Vera had lowered her arrow a fraction. Alex, however, stood perfectly still beside me, his eyes fixed on Thad, and there was a shrewdness to Alex's features that showed me a rare side of him: the killer side.

And then there was Thad, standing up there all alone with his face in his hands like if he blocked out the world, maybe the world wouldn't see him. I could feel his pain, even from down here, and it was a raw and acidic torment that ate away at his insides.

When Thad finally pulled his hands away, he had a wild and desperate look about him. "Roo—Daria…" He sighed. He sounded empty and deflated. "
Cousin
."

I swallowed, biting the insides of my cheeks to draw the pain from my chest.

"Once I was old enough, my pops sent me to the Academia because he wanted me to get close to you," Thad continued. "To
all
of you, and I did. It was easy, though Del Can't took a little work because he's naturally so skeptical. But you…" Thad was squinting at me. "You were alone and hurting, and I…I took advantage of that. But then you showed me what it was like to have family—
real
family. Not the kind that held expectation over your head like some giant anvil; not the kind that threatened and bribed you with their love and support. No, you cared for me openly and freely…unconditionally, but I didn't realize what that meant to me until I saw the look on your face when I…" He closed his eyes and took a slow breath. "I know I can't ever erase what I've done, and I'm not asking you to forgive me." He opened his eyes again and looked down at me, and I had the strangest notion that it was just him and me talking with no one else around. "I'm asking you for a second chance."

His words were met with silence.

Alex's sword arm had gone slack at his side, and he was now watching me, his face a blank. Vera, too, had lowered her aim to the face of the ravine, her eyes darting between Thad and me, waiting.

The facts were that I was tired, and starving, and we couldn't go back to Nyhavn—not to mention that strange corpse creature we'd run into. And without horses, we still had a long trek before we reached Karth. A trek I didn't want to make on foot with danger like that around. But Thad was up there with a horse. Maybe he'd salvaged a few more. "How many rideable horses are up there?" I asked.

Thad looked a little surprised by what sounded like a total change of subject. In a way, it was. I couldn't really process my feelings toward him at the moment.

"Uh…" He looked over his shoulder. "Well, there's mine and one more eating grass about four hundred yards away. Why?"

I looked back at Alex, and he immediately understood.

His eyes searched mine. "Are you sure?"

I nodded. "I believe him, Alex," I whispered so that only Alex could hear me.

Alex wiped a hand across his brow with a weariness on his face that went deeper than a lack of sleep. "I know you do."

"But it's not just about that," I continued. "We need the horses, and we need to find somewhere safe to stay for the night. I'm exhausted, and I don't want to reach Karth on only two hours of sleep."

Alex's jaw clenched as he looked up at the edge of the ravine to where Thad stood, waiting.

"So?" Vera said impatiently. "Do I shoot him or not?"

I shook my head. "Not tonight. Thad…" I looked back up at Thad. "We're coming up."

Thad didn't say anything, but his relief rammed into me with the force of a ten-foot wave. I was starting for the cliff when I remembered something. Correcting my steps, I walked back to where Rakken lay, his dark eyes open and vacant. The left side of his face was smeared in blood and black clots, and an arrow stuck straight up from his chest as if it had pinned him to the ground. My stomach turned. I had seen too much death.

Gingerly, I sifted through Rakken's cloak and felt around his waist until I found my dagger that he'd stolen from me. I took it and shoved it back in its sheath, and I was removing two more blades from Rakken's waist when I heard the most nightmarish sound echoing from farther down the ravine. It was layered with inhuman tones, discordant and shrill, and in my horror, I realized I'd heard the sound before. Just last night, in fact. On the beach.

I froze and snapped my head up to look at the others. Alex and Vera looked just as worried.

"That sounded like…" Vera started, eyes wide.

"I know," I said.

Alex looked between us. "Last night?" he asked me.

I nodded, and the three of us gazed back down the ravine. There wasn't much to see, though, because the ravine narrowed as it stretched on, and the floor became completely hidden in shadow.

"Do you know where this ravine goes?" Alex asked me, since I had been the one who had exhaustively studied the map of Pendel.

The layout of the land came to the forefront of my mind in a shocking amount of detail. I could see Nyhavn and the small hills beyond, and a ravine that narrowed into a black line, snaking like a river until it led to… "A crypt," I whispered, my heart picking up speed. "It's a centuries-old burial site filled with catacombs."

Alex stared openly at me. "The
map
told you all of that?"

"No, the map called it Hall of the Dead, but the name triggered a memory from a book I'd read at the castle. But the book didn't say anything about—"

"I don't mean to be pushy, princess," Vera interrupted, her arrow now pointed down the ravine, "but you
might
want to save your history lesson for later so that we can get the blazes out of here."

As if to emphasize the point, that horrible scream sounded again, bouncing off the walls of the ravine. And it sounded closer.

"Uh, Rook…?" Thad said from above. "Please don't tell me this is what you had in mind for my punishment."

The three of us scrambled up the ravine, following the diffuse glow of moonlight. My heart pounded and my palms sweat because I knew what was down that ravine, and this time it sounded like there was more than just the one.

Once I reached the lip of the ravine, Thad reached out a hand to help. I was too frightened to deny him. He pulled me to my feet, gave me a once-over, then reached out to give Alex a hand. Alex didn't refuse him, either, and Vera had just climbed over the ledge when I saw the first signs of movement down in the ravine.

A white body moved with the predatory gait of a cat, stopping beside Rakken's dead body. It crouched there, the moonlight giving an eerie glow to its gray bones and muscle. I exchanged a horrified glance with Vera; it was the exact creature we'd fought last night. Had it come all the way from the tombs?

More of the creatures slowly crept out of the shadows, surveying the fresh death on the floor of the ravine. My heart beat so loudly in my chest that I was afraid they might hear it. There were five of them down there, huddled around one of the bodies. And then they reached forward, with long, spindly arms and fingers, and they started
eating
the body. Alex grabbed my sweaty hand, pulling me slowly away from the gruesome sight. We all moved steadily and lightly so as not to draw their attention to us. Just a few more steps and we'd be completely out of sight and near one of the horses. And then my boot crunched on something.

Heads snapped up, and five pairs glowing blue eyes narrowed at us.

Chapter 20

Second Chances

F
or a split second I was paralyzed in fear, my feet bolted to the ground. And then the monsters snarled and leapt up from their dinner, right as Alex jerked me from my momentary stupor. And we sprinted.

Alex leapt in the saddle of the nearest horse and I climbed on after him, wrapping my arms tightly around his waist, while Vera and Thad sprinted to the other horse, which was, as Thad had said earlier, enjoying a nice meal of tall, green grass. Alex dug his heels hard into our horse, and with a loud whinny, it took off at a gallop, completely spooked. Thad shoved two fingers in his mouth and let out a loud whistle. The other horse looked up and trotted closer so that Thad and Vera could mount, which is also when I saw those
things
clambering over the lip of the ravine. And once they surfaced, they ran straight at us, leaping and bounding with strides at least three times that of any normal human being.

Our horses thundered over the hillside, throwing clumps of earth in our wake, but the corpses sprinted swiftly after us, white bodies gliding easily across the landscape. For a long and terrible moment, I thought the corpses were going to catch up.

"Spirits, Rook!" Thad yelled. "Why can't you make enemies with a bunny or something?"

Vera strung a black arrow and loosed it; it split through the air and landed in one of the corpses. The corpse staggered back a step from force of impact, but then continued forward as though nothing had happened, running with a black arrow sticking out of its chest.

"Poison doesn't work, either," Vera shouted.

"Can you make that fire again?" Alex yelled at me over his shoulder.

"I'll try," I said, though just as I was starting to reach into myself, the corpses slowed their running until they stood there, white and cadaverous like ghosts in the distance, and then turned, dropped on all fours, and padded back to the ravine.

Why had they given up so quickly? Were they tied to a certain location, and was there a limit to how far they could go? It still didn't explain the rogue corpse that had found us on the beach.

Satisfied they were gone for good, I pulled my mind away from the source of power in my gut and exhaled a slow breath. "They're gone," I said, sagging against Alex.

The others' relief was palpable, but we still kept a flying pace until we were well out of range of the ravine. We eventually slowed, and I cinched my arms around Alex, pressing my body to his broad back, drawing security from his warmth and strength. With him I felt safe—I'd always felt safe. And now that my adrenaline was waning, exhaustion began to set in. I was so tired, and the rhythmic pulsing of horse hooves was slowly lulling me to sleep. I didn't know how Alex was still awake.

"Thaddeus." Alex's voice cut sharply through the night, startling me a little.

Thad brought his and Vera's horse to a slow gallop beside us.

"Is there some place we could stop for the night?" Alex asked, though his tone suggested it took every ounce of willpower to ask Thad for help.

Thad gave me a cursory glance, then looked back at Alex. "I know a place. It's not much, but it's safe. If you trust me."

It was a test for Alex. I could hear it in Thad's voice—a silent wish that Alex would try.