Darkness Drops Again

Part Eight

A hand pushed through the rubble and darkness, hovering out in front of Audrey. Disorientated, she grabbed it and let Aric pull her from the wreckage at the base of the hollowed out tree. She coughed and stumbled, but Aric righted her with an annoyed look and disappeared back into the tree where Chard still was.

Above her, the trees glowed orange and smoked poured into the pitch black sky. Screams were distant and she pulled in a shuddery breath, wrapping her arms around herself. She hoped Gregory was OK. She hoped everyone was OK and she dwelled on fault.

The city of Atrium, perched in the trees unlike anything she's seen, burned. Did those soldiers look for her? Or did they look for Chard? Either way... they both led them back to the city. She squint out into the shadows of the forest and felt the forest staring back. A tremor ran down her spine.

"We have to move," Chard's voice was gravely and her eyes were bloodshot when Audrey glanced her way.

She didn't know what to say – her father would be OK, right? – so she only nodded.

"This is ridiculous," Aric snubbed, stepping along side of them.

A soft breeze of smoke tickled her nose and Audrey pressed a hand there to keep from sneezing. Voices echoed all around them.

"If it's so ridiculous, then go on back," Chard snapped. The trees around them moaned.

He stepped up to her, eyes glowing like that had back in Gregory's burning house. "If you didn't notice, the guards saw me."

"Oh yes, the duke's son," she laughed.

"They think I'm with you two. I can't go back and risk being in chains like your father!" He wrung his wrists and glared at her.

Chard didn't reply, jaw ticked closed, and turned like she was just done with him to lead into the forest.

Audrey turned a hot look at Aric. "You're a douche, you know that?" And she jogged to catch up with Chard, ignoring his confused look. The trees towered over them, but the branches and roots leaned this way and that to avoid them, well except for Aric. He stumbled and hissed curses from behind them.

They didn't follow a path, just moving quicker and quicker through the increasingly dark trees. Audrey struggled to keep up, blinking hard against the pitch black. It wasn't like any darkness she'd ever seen before – even when they went camping when she was a kid. Despite it, the voices followed. The soldiers were hunting for them, their dogs baying echoing through the night. How were they going to get out of the forest? But then her stomach sunk when she remembered the map Chard showed her. There was no end to the forest.

A hand gripped her wrist from the left and yanked her. A scream almost burst from her, but then Chard murmured, "Quiet." They three crouched in the roots of a large tree. It seemed as though Chard had cocooned them some, but her attention was focused elsewhere.

Heart beating like she'd just run miles, she shot a glance at Chard who had her back turned to Aric and her, fiddling with something further under the tree. Audrey shifted, the backpack jabbing her in the back. Cool air hit the patch of sweat and she shuddered.

"Here," Aric pressed the handle of a small blade into her palm and Audrey swallowed.

It felt so foreign and she nearly dropped it.

"Just in case," he murmured, turning his sharp gaze back out to the dark forest.

Clutching the dagger to her chest, Audrey felt a momentary panic. She would be getting ready for work – her overnight shift in the front of her mother's once jointly-owned Fortune Telling Hut – but instead she was hunkered down in a tree hoping soldiers don't find her while smoke filtered through everything around her. She sucked a deep breath in, letting her lungs expand, and then blew it out into silence. She couldn't panic.