Hush, the woods are darker still Read online

  Hush, The Woods Are Darker Still

  The Wicked Woods Chronicles Book Two

  L.V. Russell

  Hush, the woods are darker still © 2020 by Lydia V Russell.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.

  Cover designed by Jorge Wiles

  @JorgeWiles

  www.facebook.com/JorgeWilesillustrator

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  This one is for my girls. To the moon and back, my darlings. To the moon and back.

  Chapter One

  Get up, Teya, we need to go.”

  I blinked as Laphaniel shook me awake, then stretched out my aching limbs until they cracked, willing warmth back into them. The skin over my hands split; the chill bit into the wounds, making them sting.

  For a moment, I lay on the cold ground, staring up at the stalactites dripping from the cave roof. The early morning sun peeked into the cave enough to illuminate them, casting an eerie glow, so they looked like giant teeth.

  Wincing, I shoved myself to my feet and bit into the strip of dried meat Laphaniel handed me, the last piece we had. We had been fortunate enough to stumble across a travelling merchant, purchasing some warm clothing and scraps of food. The food was mostly stale and the clothing old and threadbare, nothing more than a small bundle of roughly woven shirts, trousers, and cloaks with holes in them. We would have likely perished without them though, and the merchant had taken in our desperate state and had charged us extra for it.

  Winter had stopped nibbling at the edges of Faerie and now crept further in until everything was blanketed in unforgiving snow and ice. It was too cold for us to sleep outside, forcing us to seek shelter in caves, if we were lucky enough to find one, or shallow hollows if we weren’t.

  It was too barren for Laphaniel to hunt for food. He would lay traps deep in the snow, and we would wait. Days crept by, but they remained empty.

  The wolves were quicker than us, hunting, unburdened by the snow and cold, to pick off the last straggling animals. Everything else had hunkered down for the winter. The howling would keep me from sleep, always sounding too close to us, despite Laphaniel assuring me we were downwind.

  But we had more to worry about than the wolves. Luthien had sent her fey to hunt us down.

  Three weeks had passed since Laphaniel and I had broken the curse, binding all the Seelie Court to a mortal queen, broken it when we fell in love, just like a human fairy-tale.

  My sister Niven had been chosen to be the next mortal queen, bound to the ruined Seelie castle for fifty years where she would wither and die, and then another girl would be chosen. Again, and again and again, for all eternity. Until, on the evening of my father’s funeral, I had walked into the woods and demanded my sister back.

  But found Laphaniel,

  And fell in love.

  I gave up the chance to spend forever with him, safe and loved beneath the branches that stretched throughout his home. Instead, I traded my life for my sister’s, bargaining with Luthien, the rightful Queen of Seelie, to spend the rest of my life in a dark, abandoned castle alone. I thought it would fix the ruins of my family.

  It didn’t.

  Years spent alone in the castle had ignited a darkness within Niven, a darkness that had lingered in her. She had always been cruel, cold…wrong. The girl I had found in the mouldering tower of the Seelie Castle was a nightmare in ruined silk. I would never forget the look of ecstasy on her face as she plunged a knife through Laphaniel’s chest.

  Laphaniel had not let me come alone.

  He had died in my arms. He died for me, a mortal girl, which broke the curse on the Seelie Court—doesn’t love always conquer all?

  “Did you sleep at all?" I asked Laphaniel, noting the bruise-like shadows beneath his eyes. His face, like mine, was streaked with dirt, his hair matted with it. Stubble darkened his chin, a stark contrast to the pale skin beneath the filth and blood.

  “A little.”

  I narrowed my eyes as I helped to roll up the thin blankets we had, tying them tight as we readied ourselves to move on from the damp cave we had stumbled upon. I knew he barely slept. Every night he tossed and turned ever since we had ended the curse. Something had dragged him back from the dead, a colossal shadow of fury and rage that had descended upon the castle and brought everything inside back to life…husks of flowers in long dry vases…desiccated spiders in the rafters…trapped birds, and Laphaniel.

  I no longer woke screaming from my nightmares, but every night Laphaniel was dragged from sleep by his.

  I woke with him each time, reaching out while he clamped a hand to his mouth to force the scream back down his throat. He would wake, shaking, drenched in sweat until the chill caught hold, and he would tremble. He wouldn’t tell me what he was dreaming, but I could guess, as sometimes the shadowy fingers that had hauled him from death still plagued my dreams.

  With the curse on the Seelie broken, it made me the last mortal queen, with my reign ending upon my death. Luthien had no plans to allow me a long and happy life.

  “You can’t stay awake forever,” I said, taking his hand.

  Laphaniel curled his fingers around mine before shrugging. “I can try.”

  Staring out of the cave mouth, I noted the fresh snowfall and the heavy skies, thankful at least that our footprints had been erased.

  “You can talk to me,” I said as he shoved a hand through his filthy hair, making it stand on end. I doubted mine looked much better. “I just wanted you to know that.”

  He nodded, his voice cracking as he spoke, “Every time I close my eyes, I feel like I’m dying all over again.”

  The words came out in a quick rush as if they had been pressing against his lips for too long. He wouldn’t look at me, staring instead at the hostile landscape before us. I reached for him again and hesitated, terrified he would pull away, but he wrapped his arms around me and held me close.

  “I wish I could take your nightmares away like you once did for me,” I said against him, not letting go until he pulled away.

  “This helps,” he answered. “Thank you.”

  “The talking or the hug?”

  He gave me a small, wonderful smile. “Both.”

  “Can I ask you something?” Laphaniel nodded, so I continued, “If you had the choice and you found me again in the woods, would you force me to turn back,
knowing where it would end up if you helped me? Or would you still take Niven, knowing this is where it would all end?”

  Laphaniel said nothing for a few agonising moments, but then he leant forwards, his lips moving close to my ear so I could feel each word he whispered back at me. “I would choose you, Teya—for every day of forever, it will always be you.”

  I closed my eyes against the words, knowing how much choosing me had already cost him. In the days following our flight from the castle, we had circled back to Laphaniel’s house for supplies...only to find it engulfed in flames, fire licking the dark clouds like they were trying to set the sky alight.

  I could smell it burning before I saw it, could hear the dying trees as they were forced away from the walls, turning to kindling as the fire consumed them. Glass shattered...nothing was left but the stone, a cold and brittle shell that offered only helplessness.

  It hurt more than I thought it would, to know we would never make a home there together.

  “Are you ready to go?” Laphaniel asked. “We need to keep moving.”

  I took his hand and followed him out of the cave, wincing as the wind hit me. The snow crept over my boots, soaking the hem of my cloak. The surrounding trees offered no shelter, all the branches stripped back, so they resembled spindly naked limbs. The lakes were frozen too, some of the ice so deep in places, we could walk across it.

  Laphaniel kept trying to summon a flame in his hands, flicking his fingers until they were raw. Nothing came, nothing had come for the past week.

  He was too tired,

  too hungry,

  too cold.

  “We’re not going to last the winter,” I said.

  “We just need to keep going.”

  “Until we can’t go on anymore?” I asked, eyeing the heavy white clouds overhead. “We are either going to freeze or starve, Laphaniel.”

  “Then what do you want me to do?” he snapped, turning to me. Against the blinding white of the snow, his eyes were as black as coal. They were always black. “Luthien has hunters everywhere. If we stop, she will find us. And you’re right. If we go on, we’ll likely starve, so what do you want me to do, Teya?”

  “I didn’t mean…”

  “No,” Laphaniel interrupted. “I’m really asking you, what do we do?”

  I shook my head. “I don’t know.”

  Laphaniel sucked in a breath. “There is somewhere we can find food, somewhere warm we could stay until we think of something.”

  I knew he would never suggest such a place if we had any other choice if death wasn’t chasing us down.

  “No.”

  “Then we are going to die.”

  “No, Laphaniel. I am not going back there.”

  “I haven’t found food for days,” he said, exhaustion hissing through his voice. “Luthien won’t need to catch us soon; she’ll just need to wait until winter finishes us off.”

  I stepped away from him, wrapping my arms around myself as the bitter wind tugged at my ragged clothes, biting the raw skin beneath. I wanted to scream at the unfairness of it, at knowing he was right and that we had no other choice. I had to go home.

  The thought of it would have once been a relief to leave the chaotic world of Faerie behind and return to my quiet village. Now it only filled me with dread.

  “Niven killed you.”

  “Luthien wants to kill us,” Laphaniel answered, bringing his cloak up over his face to ward off the wind. “I have been thinking about it for the past few days, trying to come up with another plan, but there’s nothing. We need food, Teya. We need warm clothes, a night spent away from the frozen ground so we can think. If there was any other choice...”

  “There isn’t,” I said, knowing he was right. “I’m sorry.”

  “What for? This isn’t your fault.”

  I shrugged. “I should have chosen to stay with you.”

  Laphaniel caught my arm, his hands coming up to rest against my face, his touch icy cold. I could feel the calluses as he stroked my cheek, his fingers as raw as mine. “That wouldn’t have made you happy, I made sure of that. But I’m right here now, I’m not going anywhere.”

  He pulled me closer, his mouth pressing against mine in a moment of warmth that made me remember how wonderful it felt to be alive. I moved my hand beneath his ruined shirt, searching out the miraculous thump of his heartbeat. My fingers stilled over the smooth scar tissue, and he tensed at my touch, his hand coming up to pull mine away.

  “I just want to feel your heart beating,” I said, and his hand stilled. He moved mine back over his chest so I could feel his heart thump against his ribs, beating the same wonderful song I had fallen in love with. I swallowed a sob, leaning my head against our entwined hands.

  “Don’t cry,” Laphaniel breathed, pressing a kiss to the top of my head. “Your tears will freeze.”

  I smiled, not moving away. “What’s the going rate for frozen tears?”

  “In winter? I think they’re pretty worthless.” He kissed me again. “So, stop.”

  Even now, I could barely believe he was mine, that I belonged to someone who would follow me through death and darkness and still be eager to hold me...to know he was mine as much as I was his.

  We walked and walked, on and on. Even when the skies above darkened and let loose a storm made of snow and despair, we carried on. We walked even when the blisters on my feet popped and my boots squelched. When Laphaniel fell, his feet slipping from beneath him on black ice, I dragged him up, and we kept on moving.

  “Where’s the edge of the wood?” I called out over the relentless storm. “How far until we leave Faerie?”

  “There’s a path this way that is rarely used,” Laphaniel called back, the wind snatching away his voice. “It should take us near your home town...if we’re lucky.”

  “And if we’re not?”

  “Then I don’t know where we’ll end up, or when.”

  I skidded to a stop. “When?”

  “If I misjudge the path, Teya, we may end up in China a hundred years from now.”

  “You didn’t think to mention this to me until now?”

  Laphaniel shook his head, grabbing my hand to help me through the snow that was piling up around our feet. “If we don’t find shelter from this storm, then it won’t matter.”

  I understood why he hadn’t said anything. Our future was measured in hours...days if we were fortunate. There was no use in finding something to worry about too far ahead; it was a bleak outlook, but an honest one.

  “Teya, look,” Laphaniel said, quickening his pace as he hauled me uphill. “There’s a house up there.”

  “Who on earth would live all the way out here?” I asked, squinting past the storm to see the dark outline of a crooked hut shrouded by twisted trees.

  “I think that was the home of the Harp Witch,” Laphaniel answered, wiping the snow from his face to get a better look.

  I stilled, remembering all too clearly the last time I ended up in the house of a witch. “Please tell me she was a nice old lady who just loved her music.”

  Laphaniel gave me a grim smile. “She strung her harps with heartstrings, so when she played them, they would reveal the secrets of those she had butchered. Don’t look so worried—she’s long dead.”

  I followed Laphaniel up the narrow, winding path to the witch’s house, torn between the desperate need to find shelter, and the terror of what might still linger in the Harp Witch’s home. Even though Laphaniel said it was empty, I could still sense the horror that had taken place within its walls, the terrible deeds so dark they left an echo that had bled into the eaves and timbers and begged to be left alone.

  We reached the gate, and I placed my hand beside Laphaniel’s on the railing, noticing too late it wasn’t made from wood, but bone. Bones surrounded the cottage in a grotesque parody of a fence, all yellow with age, all picked clean. I couldn’t fathom how many lives had been snuffed out to create it. Atop each post sat a skull, the tops cracked open to allow a
candle stub to be wedged within.

  “Those aren’t adult bones,” I said, recoiling as Laphaniel swung open the gate and walked into the courtyard.

  “No, they are not.”

  I hurried after him, ducking under the low doorway as we entered the cottage, my heart hammering against my chest at the darkness within it. Laphaniel grabbed hold of my hand, pulling me close.

  “There is nothing here but bad memories,” he said softly. “It’s a horrible place, but I won’t let anything happen to you, I promise.”

  I nodded, taking a breath to calm the fear that threatened to overwhelm me. I had faced worse than a dark room and had come out fighting.

  “I need to light a fire,” Laphaniel said, rubbing his hands together and blowing into them. I took them in my own, trying to warm them up. “Grab one of the candles.”

  I did as I was told, plucking a candle stub from a nearby table. Slimy, yellow wax squelched over my fingers, but I held the wick under Laphaniel’s hand and hoped. He clicked his fingers over it, furiously blowing into his hands to get some warmth behind them. A flame flickered and faltered. He clicked again as I cupped my free hand around the candle to ward off any breeze.

  Flame finally danced over Laphaniel’s fingers, weak and stuttering.

  “Go light the rest, don’t let it go out.”

  I ignited the rest of the half-melted candles around the cottage, collecting a small handful to take back to the table. After lighting them, I took Laphaniel’s hands and held them over the flames.

  “Do you think you’ll be able to get a small fire going after you warm up?”