Among Monsters

by Quinn Blackbird

  Should I expect a beast, I wonder? Or will my test be much more complicated than a wild animal bent on destroying me?

  A few paces ahead, Silver pauses at the mushy bank of a parchment-thin stream—but like no stream I have ever seen before. The gentle water passes in a glittering blur of flower-petal-pink, as though it blushes at the beautiful sight of Silver. Some fronds from the draping willow trees have fallen onto the stream, and shifted from stardust-blue to a faint rose colour.

  I come up to Silver’s side and eye the pale-pink cascading surface of the stream.

  “Can we drink from it?” I ask, my mouth suddenly parched like a stone desert, lost somewhere out there in the forgotten isles of the world.

  “It is safe,” is all he says before he slips off his satchel strap from his chest. The bag hits the mushy stream-bed with a gentle thud.

  He flicks the cigarette into the stream, and I hear the faint sizzle before it disappears, lost in the pink hues.

  “There is a flask in there,” he adds with a curt glance to the satchel.

  Guess I’ll get my own water, then.

  I crouch at the satchel and unbuckle it with trembling fingers. I pause for a stolen heartbeat, then lift my hands up in the moonlight wedging through the thick fronds of the willow trees.

  “I need my bag,” I tell him.

  Silver throws a fleeting look down at me before he unhooks the strap from his chest, and lets the bag fall to my side. I riffle through it, the tremble of my fingers biting harder as the seconds pass me. I fish out the last of my remedy—one pinkie-sized bottle and a small phial. Each have just a few drops left in them.

  Silver’s face turns to me. He wears an unreadable mask as I down what’s left of my remedy, then toss the empty bottles back into my bag.

  “That’s the last of it,” I say as I buckle up my bag, then move onto the satchel. “I hope you have some way of keeping me alive without it.”

  Silver doesn’t answer.

  A leather-bound flask sits at the top of his bag. I pull it out. As I unscrew the lid and inch closer to the pink glimmer of the stream, I look up at him. He runs me over with his distant gaze.

  “You do have another way to keep me alive, don't you?” I ask and plunge the flask into the stream, beneath the pink leafy surface. “I won’t last another day without my remedy.”

  “I told you,” he says, tone bored and tedious, “I will be your remedy.”

  I shake my head and mutter under my breath, “What does that even mean?”

  “You’re a useless girl.”

  I throw a glare up at his smooth, stony profile. “Pardon me?”

  Silver’s brow knits together as he studies me. The shadows above his jawline deepen. “What?”

  “Do not speak to me that way,” I hiss at him.

  “I did not speak to you any way.” He pauses, his face shuttering, then he looks around the trees circling us. “What did you hear?”

  “Good for nothing. A waste of privilege if there ever was one.”

  My mouth falls open. The familiar sound of father’s voice snakes around my heart and clenches, tight.

  “Father,” I whisper, then push up from the stream bank. The flask spills fresh water all over my hands. “He is here—he has found me.”

  Silver’s eyes narrow on me. “He is not here.”

  “All I wanted was two healthy children. I never prayed for a boy—only for health. And I’m rewarded with you.”

  Despite no breeze running over me, the trees rustle in perfect sync, as if carrying a melody together.

  A shudder seizes my spine and my shoulders tense. “Don’t you hear him?”

  “It is the Woods whispering to you,” Silver tells me, and he drags his gaze around the trees. “Already, this place wants to drive you mad.” He looks at me. “What do you hear?”

  “My father,” I snip.

  “But what does he say?” Silver presses, an urgent current to his tone.

  I side-eye him. His ashen eyes are flecked with steely glints as he watches me.

  “I pray for the day your sickness takes you, as it should have done when you were in your mother’s womb.”

  “Nothing I haven’t heard before,” I say, guarded.

  If Silver can’t hear how the trees are taunting me, then I decide he doesn’t need to know exactly what they are saying. It’s no secret that I’m pushed out by my family, but I don’t feel the need to bare the details of my life to him. I’m no fool. To an aniel like him, my hidden pains are weapons that can be used against me. And I still haven’t decided yet whether I trust him.

  Silver considers me. “Keep your secrets,” he says darkly. “The Woods will reveal them to me sooner or later.”

  He bends for the bags and pulls the straps over his chest.

  Looking back at me, he steps over the narrow stream onto the other mushy bank that sludges around his boots. Once on the other side, he extends his hand to me. “Do you trust me enough to let me help you?” There’s a mocking undercurrent to his tone.

  My jaw sets as I pull the flask cord over my shoulder. I take his hand and, the moment our naked fingers touch, a tightened breath spears through me. He helps me onto the other side of the stream.

  I keep my head bowed to hide the faint blush on my cheeks from him.

  Silver walks ahead, and I shadow him closely along the narrow packed-dirt trail. For a long while, we walk in silence.

  On the other side of the stream, I hear no more of my father. His voice doesn’t taunt me from the trees anymore. Now, there is just silence. No chirps of birds to trill in the air or rustles of the trees to sway around me. I hear nothing.

  Dead silence.

  The trail winds us around and around thick, midnight-blue trunks, so much that it almost feels we are walking in circles. And I suppose we are, until we meet my test. That brings a thought to mind—

  “Was my father’s voice the test?” I scurry to catch up to his side.

  Silver keeps his gaze ahead. “That was a mere trick of the Woods.”

  “So not a test,” I mutter and look down at the toes of my muddy boots sticking out from the brown-stained hem of my once-lovely dress. Perhaps for this journey, I should have packed my older dresses, the ones I wouldn’t care so much about ruining.

  All thoughts of dresses are smacked from my mind as Silver stops besides me. His muscles tense in a ripple under his shirt, and his jaw sets, tight. It’s only now that I realise the silence has broken in the wood. The trees rustle around us, the faint rush of a stream carries in the air, and the soft sound of footsteps on dirt snares out at me.

  I trace Silver’s gaze ahead to the end of the trail and my heart stops for a beat in my chest. The whisper of my voice carries away on the rustle of the trees; “Who is that?”

  A man walks down the trail towards us. He moves with the grace of a divine beast or a God, almost slinking. As he moves, he slips in and out the gushes of moonlight that cascade down on the path, and the closer he gets, the better I see his heart-stopping beauty.

  My mouth floods at the sight of him, and I feel my tummy rinse.

  I’ve never seen such a beautiful man before. Not even among the aniels or Gods. The pallor of his skin is reminiscent of marble. His tousled hair is ink-black, and his face is made up of all sharp lines and haunted passion. And though he wears a simple pair of trousers and an untucked white shirt, my heart constricts as though I’m in the divine presence of a God.

  “Silver?” I whisper at his silence. The jumping heartbeats in my chest leap up to my throat and choke my voice. “You can see him too?”

  The man stops a few paces in front of us.

  His sea-blue eyes cut through the dusky air like blades, and I’m forced to tense my legs to stop myself from literally swooning at him. A hazy bubble swells around me, and suddenly all I want to do is run to him.

  His pale-pink lips twitch as he rests his gaze on me. And when he speaks, his voice is a haunting drawl, the sound of his voice like
the songs of the seas and the whispers of the trees; “I have waited so long for you, Keela.”

  7.

  He knows my name.

  Not only that, this beautiful, heart-stealing man has been waiting for me. Me, of all people.

  And the longer I’m blessed with gazing at him, the more I realise he truly is the epitome of male beauty. As much as I fear Koal, I can’t deny he is a dark and handsome creature, and though I am all too aware of the truth of Silver’s nature, he is a pale beauty in his own right, a mirror image of his God. And this stranger is a cross of them both, absorbing both of their beauty, but maintaining a softness of his own that floods me with an eternal ache.

  I just know, looking at him, that he loves me.

  The urge to fall at his feet overwhelms me, because I know—like I know that he loves me—he will lift me up from the wood floor, hold me in his arms, stroke strands of hair out of my face, and whisper that everything is going to be ok.

  The stranger lifts his hand and holds it out. The sapphire-blue of his eyes cuts through me. “Come to me, Keela.”

  I could go to him. Koal can’t hunt me in the Wild Woods. I could take the stranger’s hand and live with him here, for as long as I live.

  I don't hesitate. In a heartbeat, I’m staggering towards him, an ache twisting in my chest. I make it two steps before Silver’s hand snatches my wrist in a vice-like grip, and he yanks me back.

  I stumble to his side and throw a wild, accusing glare up at him. “What are you doing?” I shout at him, my shrill tone disturbing the trees. They sway violently around us, mirroring the fury that climbs up me. “Release me—I have to go to him!”

  Silver’s eyes gleam bright like ashy flames. He only tightens his hold on me. “This is your test,” he warns.

  “No, no, it isn't!” Shaking my head, I pull at his fingers, trying to pry them off my wrist. “You don't understand. This is it—all I’ve ever wanted. And he’s been waiting for me.”

  “Keela,” the stranger’s smooth voice snakes around me.

  I pause my struggle and, heart in my throat, turn to look at him. The sweetness of his smile—a smile just for me—spears delightful agony through my body.

  “Come to me. Let me love you.” His fingers flex, outstretched for me. “Let me care for you in all your suffering. I only ask one thing of you in return.”

  “Anything.” The word spills out of me in a hurry. “I would do anything for you. Just name it, and it’s yours.”

  Silver digs his nails into my skin. “Kee, this isn’t real. You are under his spell.” His voice is a low hiss of pure venom. “If you go to him, he will kill you.”

  I shake my head with so much vigour that my neck aches. “Silver, please, let me go to him. You don't understand, I need him. I need him.”

  Tears cling to my voice. They spill down my blotchy cheeks, choking me in my throat, but Silver doesn't take his hand away from my wrist.

  “Do it, my love.” The stranger’s sea-blue eyes are like anchors to me. “All I ask in return is your total devotion. You must deny him, the one who hides desire in your heart. Deny him, and become mine.”

  Silver owns no desire inside of me. In this moment, all that I feel for him is hatred and anger, as pure as the blood rushing through me. He keeps me trapped with him, steals me away from my one true love.

  Silver’s voice mutters at my side; “I’m flattered, Kee.”

  “I deny you,” I hiss at Silver. “I don't want you! I want him, I want only him—”

  Silver’s hand lifts from my wrist. I choke on a gasp, a fleeting moment that’s all I need to turn to the stranger. But before I can take a step towards him and his beautiful smiling face and patiently outstretched hand, Silver’s hands snatch my cheeks and he yanks me against him.

  His mouth comes crashing down on mine.

  In that heartbeat before our lips touch, I reach my hands up to gouge out his eyes and claw at his face, I twist my mouth to shout against him how much I despise him—but then our lips touch, and everything dissolves around me. That bubble of overwhelming love and desire I have for the stranger fades into an echo. It still clutches me, holds my heart in its grip, but it has turned cold and bitter. And now, I’m overcome by the sensations I really feel.

  Kissing breaks the spell...

  Gingerly, I rest my hands on Silver’s broad shoulders. My mouth parts against his. He dips his cold tongue into my mouth, flooding me with a shiver, and he holds me tighter to him.

  This is real. The agonising ache that fills me, no delight or pleasure in the kiss that steals my every shred of being. Pure torture, knowing that this aniel will never feel a crumb of anything for me and that, despite that, I can’t protect myself from him.

  Hands still clutching my cheeks, Silver dissolves our kiss and draws back enough to gaze down at me. The stupor still slackens my face as I blink up at him.

  I look at him, really look at him, and I see the true magick of his beauty.

  Silver glows. His hard, smooth skin gleams like moonlight, the magick of an aniel. Pearlescent hair falls over his face and he looks just as he is—hand crafted from marble. The heated burn of his eyes betray him, and in my heart I wonder if he felt that kiss as much as I did.

  “Now look at him,” Silver mutters against my glossy lips.

  I loosen a shuddered breath as Silver lets his hands slip down my cheeks to lightly hold my waist. I turn to look at the stranger.

  The air around him shivers, the way that the air warps above a fire or a hot road. I watch, stunned, as his face melts away, then takes a completely different shape. Now, he looks like just any ordinary man in the Capital, like Mikhael or a sailor passing through. At this fresh sight of him, my heart swells with the ache for a normal life.

  Silver is right. This is a trick—a test to lure me into what the Woods know I want. A deception as cold as the Frost Season.

  “Keela,” the stranger speaks my name like a prayer, his hand still outstretched. “Do not trust him. He is an aniel. You know what his kind are like, what they do to us vilas. Come to me—I can get us out of here. I can take us away to my cabin deep into the wood. There, we can have a life together. Don’t you see that? I can give you everything you need, if you just trust me.”

  I suck in a shivering breath that fills my chest and step away from Silver. His hands fall away from my waist.

  Looking at the now-ordinary man, I ball up my trembling hands at my sides. “I reject you,” I say, my voice a breathy whisper. “I reject you, stranger.”

  Silver mutters beside me, “It is not enough. You must show it.”

  I shoot a bewildered look at him. He watches the stranger, his teeth set so tightly that his jawline wears the shadows of definition, and his lashes lower over dangerously stormy eyes.

  Kissing breaks the spell...

  I throw myself at Silver.

  His eyebrows lift up as he catches me and my mouth latches onto his. Then he lets a slackened, bemused look take his face.

  I kiss him, but Silver just says against my mouth, “As much as I appreciate the gesture, it is still not enough.”

  I draw back from him. A frown wrinkles my face. “So what else can I do?”

  Silver slowly pushes me away from him. “That,” he starts, and cuts a gaze to the still stranger, “is a manifestation of what the Wild Woods think you want. Do you know why?”

  Mutely, I shake my head.

  Silver sighs. “Because it is what you have fooled yourself into believing you want. It is not what you truly feel.”

  What I truly feel...

  A wave of panic rolls through me. I have to confess my darker secret to the stranger, or at least to Silver, who is sure to break me into a thousand pieces if I tell him the truth.

  “I can’t,” I whisper and step back from him. “I can’t do that.”

  Silver’s face hardens into something grim. He slides his dark gaze to the stranger. “Then he will never let you leave, not until you either confess, or he tea
rs you to pieces and feasts on your heart.”

  I look at the ordinary man on the path. His hand has lowered to his side and a blackness has darkened his once-blue eyes. He watches me closely, an urgent excitement shivering the air that moulds to him.

  Silver says, “Only when you confess the truth will the Never-ending Path be found. Until then, you are trapped with him.”

  “And you?” I narrow my eyes on Silver.

  The silvery pools of his eyes shine at me. He frowns. “I am free to leave whenever I wish.”

  The urge to shove him seizes my hands. I ball them into fists. “We are both here,” I snap at him. “We both seek the Originals. So why is it that I am the only one being tested?”

  It could be just that Silver wants nothing from this wood. We have come here for me, after forging an agreement. But logic isn’t sinking into me right now, not when the nerves of confessing my truths are rising up in bitter anger within me.

  Silver tilts his head to the side as he studies me. His gaze sweeps over me, his mouth flattened into a line, and the shadows of his jawline sink deeper into his face. Fleetingly, I see the striking beauty of the stranger in him, and it makes it all the harder to come to terms with what I must do.

  “You are the seeker,” he tells me, a barbed edge to his voice. “You are the one who announced yourself and what you are searching for when we entered the Wild Woods. And so it is you who it answers.”

  I slew my narrowed gaze to the stranger.

  The air around him still shivers in melted waves and he mirrors Silver, his head cocked to the side, his lashes dipped low over the black pools of his eyes. He has given up on trying to lure me to him, and now he watches me with more intensity than the flames that burn a fire.

  I run my hands down my face. “I don't want to do this.”

  “You must.” Silver shrugs an uncaring gesture. “I will not wait with you here forever.”

  Dropping my hands to my sides with a slap, I glower up at him. “You know, you could have mentioned this when you told me about the test.”

  Silver looks perplexed. “Told you what?”