Forestborn by Elayne Audrey Becker

Author:Elayne Audrey Becker [Becker, Elayne Audrey]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781250752161
Google: 6hP6DwAAQBAJ
Amazon: 1250752167
Publisher: Tor Teen
Published: 2021-08-29T23:00:00+00:00

FIFTEEN

All three of us speak at once.

“What was—”

“Where did it—”

“Was that—”

“A person,” I breathe, feeling the air around me constrict. “It sounded like a person.”

My claim is met with silence. Muffled shouts sound in the distance, too far away to make out. My legs jerk forward.

“Wait a moment,” Weslyn warns, catching my arm and guiding me back to the group. Wind rips through the trees, blowing sodden leaves onto my skin. “We have no idea what’s going on, or how they might receive us. We need to figure out where we are. You cannot go charging off blindly.”

Another scream rends the air.

But I can.

I’m gone, boots pounding the earth like drums of war. There’s nothing to guide me but the cries echoing in my head and the snap judgment of where they had come from. Maneuvering through the forest would be far easier as a goshawk, but I don’t want to lose my pack. So I run, the movement pulling at my still-healing stomach. Swerving around the narrow trunks, leaping over arched roots, ducking under low-hanging branches.

It isn’t easy. The ground is slick from the rain, and I lose my footing on a descent more than once, slamming into patches of mottled brown-and-green leaves—adder’s tail. A short slide across the forest floor rips open one of my pant legs at the knee. Flecks of dirt lodge themselves in my hair and on my skin, and some sort of insect stings me sharply in the forearm. I yelp at the pain and smack the bug aside, taking the opportunity to glance behind. There’s no sign of Helos or Weslyn.

More shouting up ahead, much louder now than it was before. I slow to a more cautious pace as the signs of a struggle take shape—a low growl, a thumping noise, deep voices arcing high.

“It’s getting loose!”

“Cut its—”

Vicious snarling serrates the air, rough and wrinkled, like sandpaper in sound.

The blood rushes from my face.

Horrible sounds. Dying sounds. Strangled, choking, utterly agonized screeching. Pinpricks of pressure jut up against my skin, just beneath the surface, fighting to break through. Whiskers in my cheeks, then feathers all over. As if my body can’t decide which need is more urgent: to hide or to flee.

I will not hide, I resolve, rebelling against the first stings of numbness, the coolness spreading through my limbs. I will not flee.

I step forward.

The forest opens up into a grassy clearing peppered with wildflowers. I hover at the perimeter, several paces behind the tree line, melting into the shadows as the scene before me sharpens into focus.

There are three men—one of them only steps away from me—in uniforms of navy blue, with red detailing on the cuffs and collars. Eradain colors.

One of them is on the ground.

It’s hardest to look at him, at the narrow face contorted in anguish, the deep crimson patches staining his front. The maimed stomach that’s been ripped to shreds, flesh and intestines spilling onto the grass and coating the knife at his side. Bile collects in my throat.

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