2_-_court_of_mist_and_fury_a_-_sarah_j._maas

Every hair on my body rose. We never stayed out here past sunset.
I took steadying breaths, nocking one of my few remaining arrows into my bow.
On the ground, something sleek and dark slithered past, the leaves crunching under
what looked to be enormous paws tipped in needle-like claws.
Something began screaming. High, panicked screeches. As if it were being torn apart.
Not Rhys—something else.
I began shaking again, the tip of my arrow gleaming as it shuddered with me.
Where are you where are you where are you
Let me find you let me find you let me find you
I unstrung my bow. Any bit of light might give me away.
Darkness was my ally; darkness might shield me.
It had been anger the first time I’d winnowed—and anger the second time I’d done it.
Rhys was hurt. They had hurt him. Targeted him. And now … Now …
It was not hot anger that poured through me.
But something ancient, and frozen, and so vicious that it honed my focus into razorsharpness.
And if I wanted to track him, if I wanted to get to the spot I’d last seen him … I’d
become a figment of darkness, too.
I was running down the branch just as something crashed through the brush nearby,
snarling and hissing. But I folded myself into smoke and starlight, and winnowed from the
edge of my branch and into the tree across from me. The creature below loosed a cry, but I
paid it no heed.
I was night; I was wind.
Tree to tree, I winnowed, so fast the beasts roaming the forest floor barely registered my
presence. And if I could grow claws and wings … I could change my eyes, too.
I’d hunted at dusk often enough to see how animal eyes worked, how they glowed.
Cool command had my own eyes widening, shifting—a temporary blindness as I
winnowed between trees again, running down a wide branch and winnowing through the
air for the next—
I landed, and the night forest became bright. And the things prowling on the forest floor
below … I didn’t look at them.
No, I kept my attention on winnowing through the trees until I was on the outskirts of
the spot where we’d been attacked, all the while tugging on that bond, searching for that
familiar wall on the other side of it. Then—
An arrow was stuck in the branches high above me. I winnowed onto the broad bough.