Adda's mother's face swam in front of her. Usually, mother was soft and passive, with a ready smile for anything that pleased her. Now, however, her eyes brimmed with hatred and sharp angry tears.
“You betray us,” she accused.
Adda shook her head. For a reason she couldn't remember, she was surprised by the action. She could feel her body now, but why that was news she struggled to understand.
“You have. You could change this for us, Adda, the pack is infected.” Mother turned her head, as if listening to something, and Adda got a full view of long ragged gashes along her pale cheek. She fixated on them. What was happening? Was her pack, her family dying...or losing their souls to the Quatori while she...what was it that she was doing?
“Lisrith,” she whispered in return. Lis was the only one with medical training, she was the only one who might do something.
“Lisrith is useless to us, we need you, Adda. Only you can command the shadows, but you must hurry.”
Adda blinked at her, confused. Controlling shadows, yes, she remembered. She had used the shadows, and something important had happened. Yet she didn't see how that would help the pack in any way.
Mother's face contorted, as fury bloomed across it.
“You will lose, Adda,” she warned, her teeth bared. She opened her mouth wider and rats poured forth from it. Sickly rats with the same diseased yellow teeth as the one Adda had seen before. They crawled over her, and she realized that she was bound, she couldn't even raise her hands to defend herself.
She screamed, unable to keep the terror from shutting down her thought process, and fell to the ground. Or had she been on the ground all along? It didn't matter, she needed to get the rats off. She rolled desperately, not caring that there were sharp stones scraping her flesh, so long as it rid her of the rats. She ripped her nails into her wrists, where she was bound, she needed to get free.
“Adda.”
Scet appeared next to her, replacing her mother.
She was dreaming again, she had to be.
“Scet, help me, please, I have to get them off.”
She whimpered as one of the rats sunk its teeth into her side. Scet tilted his head, regarding her, but made no move to help.
“Please,” she begged. “I cannot do it myself.”
“I am sorry, Adda, but it is my duty.”
Scet stood and she watched with horror as he raised a spear, one of the antiquated things that their hosts carried. The bone tip hovered just above her face. It gleamed as it raced down toward her. She squeezed her eyes shut. She was dead, she knew it. She could almost feel the raging pain. She was done for.
Except...it never happened. She lay, curled into a ball, but she was not dead. She knew because she could still feel the rats running all over her body.
Sleep Adda, let me handle this. I will keep you safe.
Nex.
There was something wrong, though. Wasn't she dreaming? She shouldn't trust Nex, he didn't help her, not without gaining something in the bargain.
Another rat dug its teeth into her, ripping the flesh from her upper arm. She tossed and rolled, but the creature held tight with claws like sharp pins.
She cried out, thrashing against the ground. She couldn't take it, couldn't let them eat her alive.
Yield control to me Adda.
She almost did it.
Almost gave Nex what he wanted. She could feel him inside her mind, putting pressure on her consciousness, willing it to move over for him.
An icy wind of alarm jangled her senses. Suddenly, she knew the rats were nothing, even tearing at her flesh, compared to what lurked inside her.
The very real danger she was in pulled her mind. This was a dream, but the consequences of it might be very real, and very deadly. Nex made no comment on her internal thoughts, a condemnation in itself. Adda fought to awaken, to push through the veil of reality.
She gasped, sucking in a deep breath of morning air. Her eyes flew open, but darkness still smothered the shelter's interior. She lay on the grass mats, in front of the chest where it appeared she had fallen asleep. Her breaths heaved in long pants, the heavy scent of forest floor curling its way past the woven grass and into her nostrils.
She did it, she had awoken.
Outside of the shelter, she could hear movement, several sets of feet and low murmurs. Were her guards still standing without? If so, they had been joined by others.
Adda pushed herself up, back into a sitting position. Fear leapt about in her chest. So close. She had come so close to ceding control to Nex. She could not trust her dreams, obviously, or that her sleeping self would have the sense to resist. With shaking fingers, she pushed her matted and tangled hair back from her face and tried to assess the situation. Her skin stung in several places, she didn't need light to know that she had torn wounds into her arms once more. The scent of her own blood confirmed the fact, and her worry grew.
How could she fight against something that attacked while she slept? That attempted to bargain with her subconscious? Her lips pulled into a tight line.
The curtain at the door wavered, allowing in a waft of smoke tinged air from without. The shadows in the shelter shifted and danced, the sky outside brighter than the space within. Dawn was approaching. Adda watched a slight looking Shifter girl push aside the grass mat, a timid looking youth with a bundle in her arms. Her wide eyes darted around the shelter, nose flaring.
Adda watched from her position on the floor, knees curled before her. She retained a sense of the shadows and she knew that they concealed her, for the most part, from view. But she could tell the girl smelled her, and the bitter remnants of fear from her dream.
The youth stepped tentatively inward.
In a normal situation, Adda would have risen, greeted her, and shown her that she was no enemy. At the moment, she felt like doing nothing of the sort. It seemed that everyone wanted her dead, and the only way she could see keeping alive was to remember that.
Finally.
Don't be so smug, Nex, you are my enemy, as well.
Naturally, but for a while I thought I might die due to your soft-hearted stupidity.
She ignored his jibe. She was feeling more than a little betrayed by the outcome of her adventure last night. She was too complacent to him, it was too easy to forget that she must guard herself against him at all times. But the truth was, she was wearing down. She could not be awake and alert against every threat for very much longer. And though she had learned much about the Alpha the night before, she hadn't learned the location of the orb, which meant that she had to construct another plan before it was too late.
She focused her attention on the Shifter. The girl must have felt Adda's gaze upon her, for her face seemed to pale significantly. With choppy movements, she lay down the bundle she carried and then fled through the curtain once more. Two of her guards entered immediately after she left, as if they had been waiting for an excuse to do so. Adda's muscles tensed, ready for the fight she was certain would come.
She was surprised when it didn't. Instead, the guards carried two deep steaming bowls of liquid. Water, for washing, she realized. They set the bowls next to the bundle that had been provided. These men were not as skittish as the woman with the bundle, but they did not seem at all comfortable in Adda's presence, either. After long hard looks in her direction, they, too, exited.
She sat for a while, breathing and willing her emotions to settle enough to think clearly.
Scet was nowhere to be seen, and it stood to reason that the Alpha had swayed him to stay away from her. Or maybe it hadn't taken the Alpha's words, at all. Perhaps he had come to his senses now that he knew her secret.
A deeper feeling of betrayal, or maybe loss, writhed through her. In truth, she had never felt quite so alone. Even in the depths of the Quatori's camp, it had been those still clear of infection against everything else. They had little choice but to band together. Now, she was isolated. Instead of fighting together against the enemy, she was the enemy.
A deep wave of sadness and longing nearly overcame her before she shook herself from it.
What was she doing? Sitting there feeling sorry for herself? That was unlikely to get her anywhere. True, things were looking far worse than anything she had faced before, but allowing herself to wallow in self-pity would not change that.
Positives, she needed to look at the positives.
First, she had resisted Nex. It might have been a close call, but only since she had been unconscious. That meant he had not gained too much ground and she still had time to work with, time she planned to use to rid herself of him. Second, she had some information. She knew that the Alpha wanted Scet in order to fulfill some cave painting prophecy.
She blinked stupidly, recalling what she had seen. There were temples in the painting, and that was new, but the heroes held light, circular light that represented a weapon.
They were orbs, she was certain of it, and they had been shown chasing the shadows from the forest. If it could do that, then wasn't it possible it might chase a shadow from within someone?
Excitement filled her. She believed it could, and it made sense then, if she was getting closer, that Nex would push his hand when she had fallen asleep. All she needed was to figure out where to find the thing, and how to use it, before he got any closer to his goal. She needed to get back to that cave, to study the painting in more detail, with her own eyes. And she was going to do it with or without help from Scet.
She locked her mind on that determination.
It took more effort than it should have to raise from the floor. Her muscles screamed their protests. It felt as though she had been dragged across the mountains instead of hiking through them. Her robe had twisted and it sat against her body now, too tight in some places and loose and disgustingly droopy in others. She resisted the urge to rip the material from herself. In her current mood, she would shred it, and she still had to face this pack of Shifters. She would prefer to do so with clothes on.
Half crawling, she edged her way closer to the bowls. Steam curled lazily from the surface and the scent of mint and some jungle flower she should recognize but couldn't remember reached her. Beside the bowls, in the bundle the young girl had dropped, lay a soft piece of leather, well worked until it was subtle and slightly absorbent.
As much as she didn't want to take anything from these people, the lure of cleaning herself, even with a cloth above a bowl of water, won out. She struggled with the robe, ignoring the way it stung as she pulled the fabric off.
The cool morning air rose gooseflesh along her skin, tightening her nipples until her breasts ached from it. She closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and then took stock of her injuries. Blood caked her arms, dripping from at least four long gashes she could see and one along the back of her right arm that she could only feel. She touched one of the injuries, sending a sharp sting up toward her neck. They should have begun to knit. Shifter healing was fast, quicker even than that of the Dragon Lords. Yet, her wounds were fresh and open, still seeping blood. One, on her shoulder, was a great pock, the flesh gouged out from it.
Bile rose at the back of her throat. There were others this time, too. Three long scratches along her ribs, where she had felt a rat tear at her flesh. She must have clawed right through the cloth. It was enough to deflate her determination.
Methodically, she dipped a corner of the cleaning towel in one of the bowls and started wiping the blood from her arms. She hadn't paid much attention, but the sleeves of her robe must have been ruined, too. She couldn't walk around with torn and blood stained clothes. It looked like she was without clothing, after all.
She eyed the rest of the bundle the girl had deposited. She couldn't tell what was left, only that it consisted of leathers and skins. Whatever it was, she hoped it would be large enough to cover her; it would be a bright day in the underworld before she strode out of that shelter naked.
She wasn't prepared for someone to stride into the shelter, so, of course, she flinched when Scet did so, sending a wave of heavy water droplets scattering everywhere.
He paused just past the curtain, his gaze locked onto her, finding her in the dim shadows. She wanted to be able to say that her womanly attributes attracted such a focused look. Sadly, however, it was her bloodied arms that held his attention. His nostrils flared, and his eyes narrowed, as he met her gaze.
“Six, Adda,” he cursed.