Awakening (Born From Shadows #1)
Chapter Thirty-Nine

She followed Nylif through the long grass, hoping what they replace wasn’t something horrific but deep down she knew it would be. A dead body was placed at her feet, it sings out that something was wrong. Eventually she started to smell the familiar musky scent of the dead and knew they were close.

One by one they appeared. Dozens? Hundreds? Tatianna could not tell, nor did she want to know. It was like a graveyard for children except they forgot to bury the bodies. She didn’t want to look but she couldn’t rip her eyes away. Children…

Freya didn’t say anything as she turned away from the sight, walked away from it unable to stomach it any longer. None of them said anything. A bird swooped down and pecked at the corpse and that was when Tatianna shut her eyes trying to numb the pain. Yet even with her eye lids shut she could still see them all lying there helpless. She wanted someone to slap her, to tell her to wake up but when she opened her eyes, they were all still there.

The ground beneath her feet started to shake, snapping her out of her mind. She looked forward at the mountain of bodies and noticed something shifting within it. The birds fluttered away as something began to stir. Beneath the bodies she spotted an eye, dark red and larger than her hand staring at her. Shock rooted her feet to the ground, and she watched the bodies separate as a creature emerged.

It did not look like any animal she had ever heard about. Its body was covered in brown fur, its feet had massive talons that she knew could rip her to pieces if its razor-sharp teeth didn’t do it first. Saying it was big would have been an understatement. It growled like a dog protecting its food.

A hand clasped onto her arm and dragged her away from the sight. Far away they ran, back to the horses which they mounted. Still letting the silence rule over them they continued South. Running yet again from an enemy they couldn’t fight; she was beginning to feel like some useless coward.

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Hours had passed still not a single one of them had spoken, letting everything sink in. Tatianna had a strong belief that the Lady of the Night was behind each and every one of those death. She was the one stealing children after all, but why take them away from their families to feed them to such a gruesome monster? It seemed like such a waste of potential, killing off humanities future when Tatianna thought she was on the humans side. Was that not why this Lady of the Night was using the Hunt to get rid of Elves?

Tatianna was so tired of not knowing anything. She didn’t know what happened to her parents, she didn’t know why she suddenly became an Elf, she didn’t know who the Lady of the Night was or what her motives were. It felt like she didn’t know anything and that frustrated her to no end. How can you fix things if you don’t know what you are trying to fix? She thought to herself. Trying to replace a solution to all of her problems when she didn’t know the source was impossible.

“Are we going to talk about…what we saw?” Nik bravely spoke the first words since encountering the bodies.

“No,” Freya immediately replied.

“They were the children that this Lady of the Night was taking from the villages,” Tatianna told them what she thought she knew. The small conclusions that she had come to in her mind.

“I was thinking that too,” Nik replied. “But who would kill…children?”

“My father would,” Riley grimly pointed out. That there were such people who could commit such hellacious atrocities.

“That creature, it was from the Dark Lands. I am sure of it,” Nik said. “That means they are spreading to not just Haveenté but across Crénia.”

“They are like a plague that no one can fight. They don’t care who they kill,” she replied.

“Please can we not talk about it,” Freya begged trying her hardest to repress the thoughts.

“Sometimes we need to face what we can’t stomach in order to stop it from ever happening again,” Tatianna told her.

Still, they didn’t say another word on it and continued in silence just listening the horses hooves clatter against the dry dirt. Tatianna looked up at the sky and saw a bird flying over their heads. Her keen eyesight depicts its small frame and blue feathered wings. Recognised its shape and colour as the same bird that came to her before.

It still amazed Tatianna how nature seemed to call towards her. It was an anomaly that she couldn’t get out of her mind. Do animals always do this to Elves? If so why would all the animals be spread out across Crénia if they are drawn the Elves, would they not reside solely in Lyracris?

She stared the at blue bird, gliding its wings over her head and for some reason something felt off about it. It was like her sixth sense was trying to tell her something, but she couldn’t decipher what it was. Maybe it was because the bird watched her, no studied her unlike every other creature with such focused eyes. Nylif did the same at first, perhaps she was just being paranoid for the wolf had since then risked it’s life for her. The bird caught her looking at it and glided away as if caught in the middle of a crime which did not ease Tatianna’s suspicions in the slightest.

“What are you looking at?” Nik asked her, scanning the sky that she stared at.

“A bird,” she replied. “It’s been following us.”

“Perhaps it is drawn to you like Nylif,” he told her. She only hummed in response not raising her fears.

“The plains have been getting greener, have you noticed?” Nik said looking down towards the ground.

Tatianna followed his gaze and noticed that he was right. The once fully brown, crunched grass seemed to have some life into it, patches of green following the brown. “Does that mean we are getting close?” she asked.

“I’d assume so,” Nik replied with hope so clear in his voice.

“Where will you go…once we get there?” She dared to question his actions despite the hurt she knew he could inflict upon her with his reply.

“Wherever you want me to go, I love you. Whatever you wish I will do,” he said repeating the word she could not say back to him. Love, love someone loved her. She still didn’t know what to think about it but never once did he demand her to say it back. He was being patient. She felt an ecstatic shock as her eyes contacted with Nik’s deep emerald eyes that were staring intently at her. It was a look that no one had ever perceived her with, utter devotion. It made her feel empowered, confident yet seconds away from breaking down into tears of joy. How could he even love her when she didn’t love herself? A body of scars, a mind of tangled cobwebs and a personality of destruction and paranoia.

He would do as she wished, yet everything she wanted was selfish. He was a Prince, a kingdom needed him, and she wanted to beg him to stay with her. If anything, she was the toxic girlfriend in this relationship holding him back from a life of wonders.

“Why?” she said, looking back down towards the necklace that laid on her chest.

“What do you mean?” he questioned curiously.

“Why do you love me?” she asked the very thought constantly going through her mind since he spoke those three words to her.

“Love is an emotion like all others, you don’t get to choose when you feel it you just know when you do. Every time you smile, every time you glare with strength and fury at the enemies, I can’t help but fall even further. You may not see it, but you are strong, beautiful, smart and maybe a bit paranoid, but you wouldn’t be you without your flaws. You are everything I ever wanted in a woman, Storm.”

His words clawed at the bars around her heart, trying to break through. She wanted so desperately to tell him that she loved him, yet the words were caught in her throat. She couldn’t open the door to her heart because she threw away the key. Now she searched desperately to replace it before Nik completely shattered the bars around her emotions with just one glance of his eyes and made her completely vulnerable.

That’s how she felt around him, vulnerable and she hated every minute of it yet she carved every bit of attention he had to offer her. This is why she always tried to listen to logic because emotions were too damn complicated.