Wraithblade (The Wraithblade Saga Book 1), page 11
“I need a hot meal and a bed,” Ethan said with a heavy sigh as he dried his face with his shirt hem. “I suspect you do too, Connor.”
“Maybe in a minute.”
Ethan nodded. “Whenever you're ready.”
Without another word, he climbed up the ladder and disappeared into the house. Meanwhile, Wesley joined his mother in herding his sisters away from the lake.
And just like that, Connor was alone—sort of. Through the chaos and chatter all around him, the racket staining the quiet day, he couldn't quite understand why they trusted him. A stranger. True, he had saved the girls’ lives, but he was a stranger, nonetheless.
When the girls switched from splashing water to slinging mud from the lakebed, Wesley and Kiera turned their backs on him to pry the two apart. Connor ran a hand through his hair and slipped into the forest, even though he didn’t know where he was going.
As always, he had no direction. He simply kept moving.
He walked until he couldn't hear the chatter anymore, until the thunder of the waterfall faded entirely. Truth be told, he didn’t have an idea of what he wanted to find out here. A moment of silence, maybe, or a second to be truly alone. A chance to decide what to do next.
As he paused by an oak, a sharp pain shot through his stomach as it rumbled. Despite the near-constant fistfuls of dried venison Ethan had given him along the walk, his gut had never stopped complaining. No amount of food seemed to be enough. No amount of water, either. With everything the couple had given him already, he didn't exactly want to ask for more.
It didn't seem right.
A jolt of pain hit him hard in the chest, like a dagger through the heart. He groaned and cursed under his breath. The twinge flared again, so he lifted his shirt to examine the scar on his sternum. It glowed green, pulsing with magic he didn’t understand yet.
So many questions. So few answers.
And a ghoul lurking somewhere in the forest.
His ear twitched as the soft crunch of footsteps on the ground floated past. A pause between each step suggested an adult with a longer gait trailed after him. He'd been walking with Ethan all day, and the stocky man’s stride had more of a weight to it, with a bit of a rumble to each step. Kiera’s gait was more of a light patter, with a soft shuffle to the heel.
Wesley, then. Apparently, the boy had followed him out here.
Connor crossed his arms and sat on a nearby log, flattening his back against the nearest tree as he took a moment to breathe in the evening.
He leaned his head against the trunk as a small creature scampered through the decaying leaves. A squirrel hopped onto the other end of the log, its tiny fangs protruding past its lips as its head tilted with curiosity.
Great. One of these damned things.
Connor groaned, resting his temple on one finger as he watched it, waiting to see what it would try to steal from him. These little monsters were always running around, snickering and stealing what they could from anyone in the woods, but they rarely worked alone. If this one wanted his attention, another one likely crept through the woods nearby to swipe something from his pocket.
He tilted his head ever so slightly, watching his periphery for signs of movement. Sure enough, a small creature with matted brown fur inched its way down the trunk behind him.
These little bastards.
He shook his head in annoyance and scoped out the forest as he waited for them to do something stupid. In this stretch of the woods, the diverse trees packed closely together. Oaks, elms, maples, a few birches and a willow here or there gave the stretch of woodland plenty of spaces for small game to hide, as well as plenty of nuts and shrubs for them to scavenge. Where small game lived, predators roamed, and that meant he would have decent hunts here.
As dusk settled into the forest, he scanned the growing shadows for possible warrens or dens. With this much game, the blightwolves likely hunted here, too.
The squirrels inched closer, getting comfortable as he kept tabs on them both. As the one in his periphery neared the flask at his waist, it reached out for the thin rope securing it to his belt loop.
Nope.
Connor grabbed the fanged squirrel by the scruff of its neck and tossed it toward its friend on the other end of the log.
In an instant, they both snarled at him, chittering angrily as they complained and whined at being caught. With a final hiss, they scampered away, kicking up leaves as they ran.
The crunch of footsteps grew louder, and Wesley finally appeared from behind a tree. As he leaned against the trunk, the lanky boy crossed his arms and watched the squirrels dart into the underbrush. “I hate those rotten things.”
“Everyone does.” Connor closed his eyes and leaned his head against the tree behind him. “I came out here to be alone.”
“Yeah, don't we all?” the kid said, laughing.
Yet, he didn't budge.
“You've been around your little sisters too long,” Connor said dryly, the corner of his mouth twitching as he suppressed a grin.
“You’re probably right,” Wesley admitted. “Oddly enough, personal space is a luxury out here.”
For a moment, neither of them spoke, and Connor simply enjoyed the quiet forest. He strained his ear, listening for the twitter of birds and any other signs of life around him. Nothing new caught his attention, so he focused instead on his steady breath.
The boy shifted his weight, and a small crack shattered the silence as he stepped on something. Connor peered through his half-closed eyes to see a few pieces of bark fall to the ground at Wesley’s feet.
His ear twitched as more bark fell, his hearing sensitive and attuned to the forest. With his newly enhanced senses, he now picked up what would’ve before gone unnoticed.
These new skills fascinated at him, but as much as he enjoyed the power, he hadn’t yet been told the cost. Though he had little experience with magic, plenty of folksongs warned of how deals with the dead rarely ended well.
Necromancy was illegal for a reason.
“You're decent at covering your tracks,” Connor said, breaking the silence as he rubbed his eyes. “You missed a few of Fiona's prints in the mud, though.”
“I knew it,” Wesley muttered, shaking his head in disappointment. “I hate missing things.”
Connor shrugged. “It happens. You'll get better.”
“Maybe.” The kid bit the inside of his cheek as he pulled out a coin from his pocket.
The copper metal caught the low light lingering in the forest, flashing briefly as Wesley flipped it absently through his fingers. His eyes glossed over as he played with it, and the flashing pulse of sunlight across the metal sang along his knuckles as the coin slipped in and out of his palm with practiced ease. With a slight twist of his hand, the coin disappeared and seconds later reappeared in his other palm.
“Now, there’s a neat trick.” Connor leaned one elbow on his knee, watching the show.
“What? This?” Wesley lifted the coin, pressed between his thumb and pointer finger, before he continued flipping it along his knuckles. With a shrug, he sat on the other end of the log. “It's just something to keep my hands occupied.”
“You'd make a good thief,” Connor said with a wry grin.
Wesley laughed. “Don't give me ideas. Mother would kill me.”
The kid slipped the coin into his pocket and stretched, his joints cracking as he leaned into it. His sleeves slid down his arms with the motion, and the green glimmer of something familiar burned along the kid’s forearm.
An augmentation.
A jolt of concern shot through Connor. No boy in the middle of the woods could afford an augmentation.
It seemed the Finns had hidden more than he realized. Perhaps they weren’t too trusting, after all.
Perhaps he had been.
Without a word, he grabbed Wesley's arm and lifted the sleeve as the kid froze beneath his grip. Wesley stared at him with wide eyes, barely breathing, but he wisely didn't fight.
Sure enough, the green outline of an augmentation smoldered on Wesley’s pale arm, the design reminiscent of a tangled knot. The lines glimmered, their dazzling light faded to almost nothing.
Its magic was almost gone, but the boy had an augmentation nonetheless.
“What the hell is this?” Connor asked, glaring at the kid as he pointed to the ink. “What magic does it give you? Tell me!”
“It's just for my eyesight.” Wesley’s voice cracked with fear as he tugged on Connor's tight grip. “I can't see a thing without it. This terrifying woman near Bradford redoes it every three years.” His voice trembled as he stared up at Connor, and he didn’t break eye contact.
Commoners drank potions. Only the wealthy wore augmentations.
“What did she call it?” Connor pressed, glaring at the kid, jaw tense. “What potion did she use?”
A test.
Connor knew the answer from his time with Beck Arbor, and only because the old man needed a sip every morning to maintain his ability to see. If Wesley was lying to him, he’d know in an instant.
“Eye—eyebr—uh, damn it,” the kid muttered, trying to tug his arm out of Connor’s grip. “Eyebright! That’s it, the Eyebright charm.”
The boy didn’t flinch. He didn’t cower, despite the fearful warble in his voice. More importantly, he’d held Connor’s gaze and hadn’t looked away.
He’d told the truth, then.
Connor released his grip on Wesley’s arm and took a step back, his attention drifting again to the augmentation as the sleeve covered it once more. Even a common augmentation like an Eyebright charm could cost major coin, more than a family in the woods should’ve been able to afford without heavy debt. Yet, Wesley had spoken of it so casually, as if it were normal.
Besides, augmentations needed to be done every two years, not every three. To go an entire year without it meant the family truly stretched their budget.
Connor shook his head, disappointed in himself. He kept looking for ways the Finns might’ve been scamming him, but it seemed like they were just good people.
A strange thing to find out here in this lawless wood.
“Sorry, kid,” he said with a heavy sigh. “I won’t do that again.”
“Thank the Fates,” Wesley muttered. “You’re scary as hell.”
Connor shrugged and sat again on the log.
Wesley, however, stood out of reach and watched him with wide eyes. Connor set one foot on the dead tree and propped his elbow against his knee as he held Wesley’s intense stare.
“Go ahead,” Connor eventually said. “Ask.”
Wesley shook his head and sat on the log. He leaned forward and rested his elbows on his knees as he absently picked at the skin around his nail. The hoot of an owl cut through the sleeping forest as Connor waited for the inevitable questions.
It seemed like children always had questions.
“All those bodies,” Wesley eventually muttered, his voice quiet and distant. “Mother tried to shield me from it, but I need to see these things. I need to know what the world is really like. I'm a grown man.”
“Practically a grown man,” Connor corrected. “You're only what, fifteen?”
“Seventeen.” The boy frowned, his eyes narrowing with the scowl.
Connor rubbed the stubble on his jaw, momentarily lost in the memory bloodstained grass baking in the sun. “You don’t need to see that kind of gore yet.”
A smile pulled on the edge of Wesley’s mouth, and his frown faded away. “You sound like my dad.”
“He's not wrong.”
“Yeah, well, that doesn't change the fact that something terrible happened yesterday.” Wesley stood and paced across the dirt. “Mother said lots of men came through. Twelve of them, and one escaped.”
Ten soldiers. One nobleman. One king.
Connor frowned. “Yes, one got away.”
The important one. The one who had answers.
“We don't get a lot of visitors out here,” Wesley continued, squaring his shoulders as he gestured to the trees around them. “Which makes me wonder where you came from. Why you stopped to help us at all. Why you came with us here, only to disappear into the woods the second you arrived.”
Connor didn't respond. He didn't need to.
“Are you going to leave?” Wesley asked.
“If you all don’t give me a moment alone, I damn well might.”
Wesley frowned. “I’m serious.”
“So am I, kid.”
The young man crossed his arms, and his boots shuffled through the dead leaves as he paced beside the log.
Connor rubbed his eyes. “Why? Is that what you want? For me to leave?”
“Hell, no. A fighter like you? Of course we want you to stay. But that's why you came out here, right? To dart off and not come back?”
Connor adjusted in his seat, leaning forward as he held Wesley's eye. “What would it matter if I did? I'm just a drifter, kid. I'm a nobody.”
“You're not a nobody to us,” Wesley said quietly, unable to look Connor in the eye this time.
“Seems like a bit much,” he admitted. “You all just met me.”
The kid shrugged. “We would also be dead without you.”
Huh.
Fair point.
Wesley finally looked Connor in the eye again. “Father and I came back as you were limping into the ruins. If you hadn't been there, the soldiers would’ve seen us, and we would’ve died trying to protect the family. You saved our lives, Connor, all of us. There's a gratitude for that sort of thing that doesn't go away.” He paused. “A respect that doesn't die.”
Connor sat with that for a moment, unfamiliar with the weight that came with this sort of esteem. He wasn't used to people giving a damn about him, and he wasn't sure if he liked it.
Wesley scratched the back of his head. “Look, supper will be ready in a few minutes. You should come eat.”
With that, the kid left without another word. His boots crunched along the leaves as he retreated to the house.
As the footsteps faded, blissful silence settled once more into the woods, and the flutter of wings through the canopy stirred up the approaching night. Even with all the death from yesterday, life went on.
The world always went on, no matter who died.
As Connor sat against the tree, still as a stone, a horned boar meandered around the trunks. It snorted as its snout brushed along the ground, kicking aside dirt in its hunt for mushrooms.
It flinched when it saw him and froze in place, waiting to see what he would do.
For a moment, they simply watched each other, two threats sizing each other up in a lonely forest. A boar like this could’ve impaled a man with horn and tusk alike, but Connor had his swords. If the animal was foolish enough to attack him, it would become dinner.
When he didn't move, it slowly returned to its hunt, pausing now and then to look at him with distrust—tense and ready to bolt.
With a sigh, Connor leaned his head against the trunk. His stomach growled, and something Wesley had said rang again through his mind.
There's a gratitude for that sort of thing that doesn't go away.
He frowned and stretched out his fingers, lost in thought as the final daylight faded.
It’s a respect that doesn't die.
Chapter Twelve
Connor
The ghoul waited in the ancient forest.
Connor could feel it.
In the pitch-black darkness of the cold spring night, he surveyed the local woods not far from Ethan's decrepit cabin in the trees. Long after a hearty meal and an awkward conversation about a past he didn’t want to share with them, he crouched in the shadows.
Waiting.
Listening for the old ghost’s voice in his head. Preparing for the now-familiar rush of winter air despite the blossoming spring.
It was out here. He knew it.
His bones ached, much as they had in the field when the specter attacked him. The hairs on his neck stood on end, the weight of someone’s stare heavy on his conscience as he hunted a demon.
He’d come out here, far from the house, to save the Finns from its wrath when he finally found it. Good people like that didn’t need the nightmares this thing would’ve given them.
The night wind barreled through the canopy, and several dried leaves tumbled across his boots. The warm scent of cinnamon and bark caught on the air, the Ancient Woods’ fragrance the same no matter how far north or south he had ventured in it—moss, grass, maple sap, and a hint of carrot. Only yesterday, the scents had all mingled together in a nameless cologne, but now he could decipher each unique component.
Yesterday, he had shivered in the cold, clutching a coat to his body to keep himself warm. Tonight as the same wind howled, he knelt by a tree with calm determination, immune to the chilly air.
Magic, no question. Now, he needed to understand its limits and the consequences that lay ahead.
To do that, he had to hunt the ghoul—though he suspected it also hunted him.
With a fresh gale through the leaves, the mood of the forest abruptly shifted. The sensation carried a sense of familiarity with it, of danger, much as it had by the ruins when a greater threat than Otmund had loomed behind Connor.
Heavy.
Somber.
Deadly.
He rolled his weight to the balls of his feet, his attention shifting behind him as a shadow darted between the trees. He strained his eyes in the darkness, his newly heightened vision effortlessly adapting to the low light. The silhouettes of the nearby oaks sharpened as the forest revealed itself to him.
In a flash of black smoke, the ghoul appeared where before there had been only empty air. Framed by two towering trees, the specter hovered before him, and the vacant sockets of its skeletal face stared into his very soul.
Connor went painfully still—not out of fear, but to strategize. It had killed the guard by the ruins with ease. It was not to be trifled with, and though it could’ve killed him by now, it had chosen not to.
He needed to keep this brief truce of theirs alive.
Its bony teeth glowed in the low light, and its dark hood covered much of its exposed skull. The tattered cloak billowed around the beast as the white bone of its hands reached for the black sword tied to its waist.
