Hunters of the Lost City by Kali Wallace

Author:Kali Wallace [Wallace, Kali]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Quirk Books
Published: 2022-04-26T00:00:00+00:00

14

Different Paths

Octavia woke with a start, disoriented and confused. She wasn’t in her attic bedroom with Albus snoring on the other cot. There were no bells ringing outside to announce the start of the day. She wasn’t on a bed at all, and she felt overheated from her neck down while her face was chilly. But she wasn’t in a small, drafty watchtower either. The space around her felt too big. There were murmuring voices nearby.

Then she remembered. The washed-out bridge. The Ferox and the spears that made them fall apart. Ira and the Clan of the Furious Dead.

She sat up, yawned, and rubbed her eyes. The large room was quiet, with only one fire at the far end stoked high and bright and a small group of people gathered around it. Octavia recognized Ursa by the size of her silhouette; Brianne, the woman who had saved them from the Ferox, was also there. Rufus and Sima were with them, huddled under a blanket and drinking steaming tea from wooden mugs. From elsewhere in the building there came the sounds of footsteps and voices. The City of the Furious Dead was already awake and starting its day.

Octavia sat up stiffly and untangled herself from the blankets. She was sore from her neck down to her feet. She didn’t think she had ever been so exhausted. It was a completely different sort of tiredness than what she experienced from working in the bakery for long hours, or even from the long summer days she had spent with Hana in the woods. She rolled her shoulders and stretched. She had to relieve herself, so she pulled on her sweater against the chill and hurried to the washrooms. It was even colder outside the long room; she could hear the wind groaning through the roofs and rafters. A glimpse through the windows showed that it was just after dawn, and the sky was cloudless and bright.

When she returned to the long room, Ursa gestured for Octavia to join them by the fire. Octavia squeezed onto the bench and felt a glow of pleasure when Sima lifted the edge of the blanket to share.

“Our night patrols have just returned,” Ursa said.

“They have night patrols,” Rufus murmured, with awe in his voice.

“We never go into the Nyx Valley proper,” Brianne said, “because the monsters are so much stronger there, but we can get a pretty good look from a distance.”

“What do you mean, the monsters are stronger? You mean stronger close to Vittoria?” Octavia asked.

Brianne nodded. “We don’t know why it is, but we know about how far we can go without running into danger we can’t handle. Piper definitely went too far when he was spotted.”

There it was again, the pang of guilt Octavia felt for not telling Piper what had happened to Bram. She knew she had to tell him, but for now she was relieved he wasn’t around.

Octavia had never considered that the Ferox might not be as powerful elsewhere in the mountains.

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