“Stop,” Bairgus croaks.

I turn around to glare at the raven who’s been my only friend for years. Stop? Here? In this level of the Deep, at this time of night?

“Great plan,” I rasp. “What, you want tea?”

My voice is still wrecked from the effort of pulling so much magic through my body, and my arms and legs are shaking from the climb down to this level. 

Still, we’ve got to move. I spent the better part of the past hour lashing thin little branches together to make a litter so I can drag the woman along the branch paths until we reach my island. My magic is all but spent, so that leaves my muscles.

Bairgus tilts his ebony head at me in a way that feels remarkably condescending.

“Look at her,” Bairgus caws.

I turn away from the sloppy-ass litter I’m making and turn to the woman. Her dark, elaborate braids spill across the thick moss and tumble over the dusky skin of her throat. Some of the training I received about life on the Inner Plains comes back to me in a low whisper. Those braids mean something, rank in the village or marital status or something else I can’t remember.

I watch her face in the thin, flickering light of the phosphorescent creatures flying around us. She’s got full lips, this woman, and high cheekbones, like a lot of the women living in the villages dotted across the Inner Plains. Her brows are drawn together in a frown, making her look like she’s still trying to fight the sleep magic that dragged her under. She’s wearing a simple green tunic that looks like maybe it belonged to the man she was traveling with. It’s a threadbare, simple outfit which seems at odds with her elaborate hairstyle, and damn, I really shouldn’t be staring at the way her curves fill that shapeless fabric.

I shake my head and drag my attention back to the shitty litter I’m attempting to make. Bairgus hops closer to the woman.

“Look at her,” he croaks again.

“Yes, I did,” I snap.

Bairgus makes a little tsk sound in the back of his throat.

“Look at what she’s wearing,” he says.

I grit my teeth and glance at the woman one more time. Her chest rises as she breathes, pulling the green fabric tight across the swell of her breasts. I turn away.

“Yup,” I mutter. “I saw.”

“Around her neck, you idiot,” Bairgus croaks.

With a sigh, I set down the branch I’m trying to tug through the poles of my litter and turn to Bairgus. He’s staring at the moss beneath the woman’s neck, beside the flutter of her pulse. One of the phosphorescent insects drifts toward the moss beside her. A flash of yellow washes over her full lips.

“She’s not wearing anything around her neck,” I growl.

And then I see the dark band crossing her skin. With a groan, I come to my feet, step carefully around the pool of her cloak, and kneel where Bairgus is pointing with his ebony beak. I peer through the shadows and into the thick moss, following a leather band as dark as her hair as it winds over the smooth skin of her neck, drops into the moss beneath her, and—

My breath dies in my throat. 

I jump back like I’ve been burned, stumble blindly through one of the spindly bushes, and land on my backside just as the branch begins to curve downward. Panic howls through my skull, screaming like all the White Riders of the Towers combined. 

Bairgus tilts his head as he stares at me.

“She’s hunting you,” he croaks.

Monster of the Deep Forest comes out on September 17th!