Cascade Wildheart's Arc

Chapter 6 of 7

The boots stopped just outside. Cascade looked back into the shed. Dani leaned against the stone wall, too weak to stand. The white fox lay flat, spent from the storm he had raised. On the broken table the griffon sat still, wings folded, blue eyes fixed on the door. She did not move to fight. Cascade waited one breath for her to rise. Thalia only watched. So Cascade decided. She would not let the one-eyed man reach the door. She slipped out into the gray light and pulled it shut behind her. The man stood by the still pond. This was the hunter who had tracked Dani for days, the leader she had fled. He was broad, with jet-black hair and a patch over one eye. He saw Cascade and stopped. Her aqua hair drifted with no wind. Her green eyes caught the low light. Most people ran. He grinned instead. "A new one," he said. "Hair like that. Eyes like that." He circled her slow, the way a man circles a deer already down. "I've hung stranger things on my wall." "Turn around," Cascade said. "Leave the woods." He laughed once, flat. "No one tells me where to hunt." He stepped in fast and shoved her hard in the chest. Her heel caught the stone rim. She fell backward into the pond. Cold closed over her. The still water swallowed the light. She reached for the bottom and felt none. Then something woke under her ribs, deep and old, like a door she never knew was there swinging open. The water was not around her. It was hers. She felt every drop the way she felt her own hands. Cascade rose. The pond rose with her. She stood in the shallows and the water climbed her arms and hung there, waiting. Korven's grin fell. He reached for the knife at his belt. She pushed. The pond answered. A wall of water tore off the surface and slammed into him. It threw him off his feet, off the stones, back into the trees. He hit the ground rolling, coughing, soaked. His knife spun away in the grass. Cascade walked out of the pond. The water dripped from her but her hair still moved like it was underwater. Korven pushed up on one arm and stared at her. For the first time his one eye held something other than hunger. He got to his feet, backed three steps, and turned. He ran into the trees and did not look back. Cascade stood by the pond, shaking. She knew now what she was. The door in her chest stayed open. Behind her the shed door creaked. Dani stood in it, one hand on the frame, watching her with wide eyes. On the table the griffon dipped her beak, slow, like a thing confirmed. "He'll bring more," Dani said quietly. "Men who saw which way he ran."