Free The Spirit Rebellion by Rachel Aaron Page A

asked her to promise something. She thought about it a moment, weighing the weight of a secret against the necessity of her coat and her own growing curiosity, and then she nodded.
    Slorn turned and walked up the slope, motioning for her to follow. Nico did, slowly, fighting against the growing certainty that she should turn around and run while she still could. She was so focused on putting one foot in front of the other that she almost didn’t see Slorn’s shape flicker ahead of her, as though he’d walked through a curtain of water. A step later, Nico felt it rush over her as well, intensely cold and strange, as if the air itself was moving to let her pass. It was only for a moment, and then the world around her changed. She was standing beside Slorn, still on the slope, still surrounded by the strange trees, only now she was balanced on the edge of a knife-sharp ledge looking down at a valley that had not been there a moment before. It was a small, narrow thing, barely fifteen feet across and maybe thirty feet long, more like a fissure in the slope than a valley. There were no trees growing nearby, yet the light was somehow dimmer than ever. When she looked down into the cleft, shadows flowed like a river, making it impossible to tell how far down the crack in the stone went.
    Nico frowned. She wasn’t used to shadows hiding things from her. But as she leaned forward to get a better look, a familiar, terrifying feeling crashed into her. It took her over, passing through her senseless body like a spear and landing hook first in her mind. No, deeper. This feeling, the sense of grasping claws, of an endless, gaping, ravenous hunger, of being trapped, of being crushed, was deeper than mind or thought. For an eternity, it was all Nico could do to hold on to the tiny flickering light of herself until, inch by inch, the darkness subsided. Rough, warm hands were shaking her shoulders. She didn’t remember falling, but Slorn was helping her to her feet. Already the feeling was fading like a dream, but deep inside her, something curled closer, drinking it in.
    “I’m sorry.” Slorn sounded genuinely upset. “I didn’t know it would affect you like that.”
    “What is it?” Nico whispered, shrinking away from the ledge. Yet even as she asked, she knew. She knew the demon hunger as well as she knew her own breath. Slorn’s answer was to step aside, and very slowly, Nico looked again. The gully was the same; so were the shadows, but the overwhelming wave did not come back. Relieved, Nico stared into the darkness until it gave way, and the dark bottom of the valley came into focus. It was a dry, dead place. The bottom was sandy, as if water had flowed there once, long ago. Now there was nothing but rocks and the scattered leaves of the dark trees lying dry and brittle on the sand. And at the farthest, deepest end, sitting cross-legged on a large, flat stone, was a woman in a long, black coat.
    She sat very still, her head bowed so that her hair, wispy and dark, fell to hide her face. Her hands, skeletallythin and pale, were folded in her lap, while at her wrists, gleaming dully in the dark, a pair of silver manacles trembled. She wore a silver collar at her neck as well, and rings on her ankles. All of them were shaking, buzzing like bees against her skin so that, even this far away, Nico could hear the faint, hollow clatter of rattling metal.
    The woman gave no sign that she saw Nico and Slorn on the ridge above her. She sat as still as a doll, the shaking bindings at her wrists the only movement in the gully. Yet the more Nico stared, the more the woman’s very stillness seemed to move and crawl. The cold feeling began to gnaw at Nico again, and she was forced to look away.
    “Is she alive?” Nico said, looking back at Slorn.
    “Oh yes,” Slorn said, looking down at the woman with a sad look in his dark, animal eyes. “Very much alive.”
    “She’s a demonseed.” It scarcely needed to be spoken, but Nico said it