Fate of the Vulture: An Epic Dark Fantasy (Reapers of Veltuur Book 3) by Jessaca Willis

Author:Jessaca Willis [Willis, Jessaca]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Jessaca Willis
Published: 2020-10-25T16:00:00+00:00

Awareness is a strange, dreamy thing. I feel heavy, sunken into the bottom of a gray ocean of nothing. Sound is muffled beneath the swaying waters. But as I start to rise to the surface, as I float back into my body, I start to discern a voice.

“Acari?” a man asks, concern edging his tone. “Acari! Are you with me?”

My eyelids flutter open. Branches weave through the blue skies above me. I stare through them, beyond them, unaware of where I am, how I got there, or why I’m most certainly lying on my back in the dirt and not floating out at sea.

A bearded man leans into my view. “Flightless bird, when did you become so reckless and brave?” And with a quirk of his lips, Borgravid adds for good measure, “My king.”

Weakly, I smile back at him, realizing my face isn’t too swollen to do so anymore. In fact, none of me seems to be. My elbows are still a little stiff, but I bring my hands up to my cheeks, to the eyes that had become so puffy that they had completely closed, and find that my face feels normal again.

“I’m…I’m okay,” I utter, breathless. “I survived. How did I—how did I survive?”

Borgravid grabs my forearm and helps me up to sitting. “Once the whisper wasps were dead, your crow fazed you to Veltuur, just in time apparently because when he brought you back, you were healed. I wish I could say the same for the rest of us.”

As Borgravid indicates to the others, I notice the bulge of his cheek, the awkward way he’s elevating his ballooned hand. I glance over my shoulder to the rest of our party to find them kneeling and scattered throughout the woods. There are fewer than there should be, even though I only saw the one woman taken by the Wraiths. The rest I assume—almost half of our group—must’ve made it all the way to the harbor, just as they were told. Those who remain here have suffered greatly, some worse than others, but all at alarming levels. Faces reddened and oozing with poison.

“We need to get everyone to a healer,” I say to Borgravid.

But before he can respond with what I’m sure will be a protest to send the others to a healer while he helps me stay on our path, a voice calls out from the trees.

“Very interesting sacrifice, Reaper King.”

She draws our attention to her like moths drawn to flame. At first glance, I mistake her for a child, so small beside the bushes from where she emerges. But she carries herself with the grace and poise of a queen, and the closer she approaches, the better able I am to tell that the green drapery cascading down her back that I mistook for a cape is actually a pair of wings.

She is no queen, but a divinity.

“S-Sungema…” I stutter, searching the trees for my father-crow. “What are you…”

It’s then that I remember who was with her the last time I saw her.

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