Free The Shadow Soul by Kaitlyn Davis Page A

rubbing her eyes.
    She needed to find a new guide.
    "I'm going to show you the world, Jin. It's a lot bigger than you realize."
    That's what I'm afraid of , Jinji thought and tried to relax in her seat. But the city still loomed ahead, growing larger and larger with each step they took, and it was growing harder to understand if leaving the forest would be any help at all.
    Would the shadow still find her behind those tall stonewalls? Would it continue to haunt her? Or would she be discarded, left to live alone, always questioning why and how? Was she traveling toward answers or away from them?
    Clicking noises drew Jinji from her thoughts. They had reached the road.
    Ahead, she saw travelers scurrying to the side, hastily shifting their horses and possessions to make way. As they walked by, Rhen nodded from side to side, but the people were not looking. Their eyes were downcast. Their entire bodies seemed to bend toward the ground. Only the children dared look up, and it was not at Rhen.
    No, it was at her. She felt eyes scan her body, pop open, shocked.
    "Is that a…?" One boy asked loudly, only to be quieted by his mother, pulled behind her skirts. But still, he peeked around her large belly, eyes locked on the Arpapajo riding the horse.
    Jinji looked ahead, tunneling her vision on the city, trying to ignore the gasps chasing down her ears.
    The gates were not far off, wooden slabs breaking up the walls of stone, but they were bolted with metal—nature maybe, but trapped and bound. The doors were open, perhaps welcoming to Rhen, but not to her. To her, they looked like a trap, waiting for the right moment to swallow her whole.
    Jinji held her breath as they approached. Behind the walls, more stone, more people, more noise, more movement. More of everything except the one thing she wanted—trees.
    "Your Highness," four men said in unison, kneeling down on one leg, nodding in respect to Rhen. He continued walking, waving, but not pausing for anything more.
    Jinji gawked at their metal-coated bodies, chinked and chained together, covered by a slight cloth in bright blue over their chest. On the cloth, some sort of beast that she did not recognize in darker blue.
    They did not stand again until Ember had passed fully through the gate, and then as one they moved, alert once more.
    But Jinji's attention was already elsewhere, on the rows and rows of homes filling her entire line of vision. They were wooden and something else, something that looked like mud, but she knew couldn’t be. They slanted on top of each other, leaning, pulling, held up by a mystery Jinji could not understand. Each one had holes, some sort of material she could see through. Movement flashed, some eyes popped through, meeting her curious stare with one of their own, making her feel not quite so alone in her awe.
    The road still held under their feet, hard, but to the side she noticed the mud had returned, catching on people's clothes, the bottoms of their homes, dirtying everything close to it. The people wore clothes that were so different from Rhen's, more like hers, dull and drab to match the dirt.
    And it was loud. People screaming to no one, pointing to slabs of food laid out on tables, holding out strips of clothes or items Jinji did not recognize. Girls talking, giggling as their eyes scanned the streets. Children screeching, jumping, running in front of horses in some sort of game. Men boasting, pushing carts, cursing at the crowd.
    But like a cloud, silence followed the two of them. Conversations paused, everyone stopped to lower their heads, all the while peeking up under hooded brows to watch Jinji on the horse.
    Behind them, noise grew, louder than before, the word Arpapajo crashing like a wave into Jinji's ears. Rhen looked back once, his expression concerned, but that was it. His head scanned slowly from side to side, watching everything.
    Keeping her eyes ahead, she finally saw the stone castle, the one Rhen had mentioned, stretching into