Fire in the Woods

Prologue

Mist hated daylight.

It wasn't the only thing she disliked about living in the Tree Haven, but it was the most aggravating at the moment.

But she had to bear it. More than one life depended on it.

She glanced down at the two babies nestled in her arms as she raced nimbly through the forest, avoiding the light beams striking down from the sky like glowing swords, and sticking to the pools of shadow.

Mist stopped for a moment. Not to catch her breath, as none of her people had been quite that weak. No, she needed to check on her twins.

Because unlike her, they were quite weak.

A girl and a boy. Both had ebony skin , tinted with frosty blue, like all of their kind. They had their eyes tightly squeezed shut against their wrinkly skin and were staying remarkably quiet.

Good. "One never knows what would be happy to find one vulnerable," was something her brother used to say.

Fog liked to say a lot of things.

Her didn't anymore. Because of her.

Mist gritted her teeth and kept running. If she surrendered to her guilt, she would never make it. But it had been her fault. She had been the one to let the monsters go instead of fighting back. They had threatened her twins.

And then they had slaughtered her entire people.

She had been scared. She had been a coward. Mist could almost see her mother Raven's harsh, disappointed face, almost hear her reprimanding voice.

Even though Mist was the one keeping her babies alive, she held on to them like a lifeline as she squinted her eyes against the light of day. They were the one reason she wasn't sobbing in the dirt. Because she had something to live for, if not herself.

Mist kept running.