Change of Darkness (The Change Series Book 3) by Jacinta Jade (best new books to read txt) 📕

fact that her hand felt odd. She opened her eyes and looked down. A long front leg and hoof met her eyes, slightly raised. She blinked for a moment, confused and tired. Bit and pieces of the previous night were coming back to her: Raque peering down and laughing at her … flickering torchlight … a leap over an enemy …

She connected the memories and lifted her head, but she was reassured before she even had the chance to be worried. She could both smell and feel where Baindan’s warm, furry body was pressed against her own. She might have laughed a bit deliriously if she had been in her normal form as she pictured what it must look like—a cripwof and a yeibon sleeping side by side. In the wild, one of them would have torn the other apart already.

Assured as to where Baindan was, Siray turned her head. And flinched when her eyes fell upon the carcasses. A part of her had remembered that they were there, but seeing them in the burgeoning light of day gave it some new kind of horror. She swivelled her head away from the sight quickly, squeezing her eyes shut in the hope that the cool blackness of her lids might erase the image and the heat building in her body. But instead, it seemed to make the memory sharper, letting her mind pick out the insects she had just seen that were starting to find their way onto the bodies and into the rips of bloody flesh, and see in greater detail the swelling of the limbs that had begun to take place already.

Something in Siray’s stomach writhed, and she staggered to her feet, Baindan’s body sliding away from hers as the missing support of her shoulder made him fall. She stumbled quickly towards a corner of the pit, trying to use the rising dirt walls to block out the light that seemed to make her roiling stomach worse. Once in the corner, her head was so close to the exposed soil of the walls that her horns began digging furrows, and she pressed her eyelids tightly closed. Silently, she repeated over and over to herself, not our fault, not our fault.

‘Siray?’

The words startled her, and she whipped around quickly, dirt tumbling from the gouges her horns made in the walls as she did so, her ears back and down, her lithe body trembling. Her elevated alertness made her ears flick back and forth as she listened to the sound of soil hitting the ground around her feet, some of it landing on her back and shoulders, making her large limbs twitch.

Baindan raised his hands, palms upwards, towards her. ‘Easy, Siray. It’s okay. We’re okay.’

Siray looked at him, but the world still seemed too bright, and she blinked a few times.

‘Siray, why don’t you Change back? Your shoulder should be a lot better, and you must be mentally drained from maintaining that form for so long.’

Siray couldn’t really focus on Baindan’s words as he spoke, but it was his soft and soothing tone that made her trembling subside.

‘Change back, and then you and I can sit together and talk. It’s probably a good idea, before they come for us.’

Baindan’s cool logic finally found purchase in Siray’s mind long enough for her to grip on to the thought of Changing. And, although she could feel a slight pressure in her mind, almost as if the yeibon in her was fighting back, when she blinked again, she was looking at Baindan through her own eyes. She squeezed her hands into fists, though, just to make sure.

‘Baindan,’ she croaked. She grimaced at the weak sound of her own voice, swallowed, then started to try again.

But he saved her the effort. ‘No movement above yet, but they’ll be down at any time, given it’s dawn.’

Siray nodded and tried to ease her sore muscles by rolling her shoulders, and she hissed when her right shoulder protested sharply.

Already tracking her every movement, Baindan didn’t miss her reaction. ‘Let me see,’ he said firmly but with an underlying softness to his voice.

Siray obediently turned the affected shoulder towards him and pulled down the neckline of her shirt. It was still odd to her that her flesh could be injured in her animal form but her shirt could remain whole—yet she knew within herself that the shirt wasn’t the object that had received the injury. So it wasn’t that surprising that she hadn’t projected a torn shirt when she’d Changed back.

Siray looked fixedly straight ahead as Baindan’s calloused fingers brushed her skin, and she felt a shiver go down her spine.

‘Well, it’s healing quickly but not quite sealed yet, so you’ll be sore and bruised for a day or two still. Thank the Mother that the bone wasn’t broken.’

Siray frowned down at the laceration, noting the serious scrape that had replaced what was previously a deep wound. And as Baindan’s fingers left her shoulder, she tested the range of movement again. Although it hurt if she moved it too fast or too far in any direction, she could move. Yet although the pain was bearable, the injury was limiting. Which was dangerous here.

Siray lifted a hand to brush dirty strands of her long red hair back from her face and then froze when bits of red flaked off against her hand—blood. Oh, Mother. She was covered in blood.

She turned to Baindan and knew from the look in his eyes, knew from the itching skin of the scars on her face, that it was smeared across her. She took a deep breath, getting a grip on the panic rising within her. ‘Like you said, could have been worse,’ she said with forced casualness, referring once more to her shoulder.

Baindan held her eyes. They both knew what an injury here could mean. Knew she would have to hide any traces of it as much as possible. ‘I’ll worry about it later,’ she continued, turning carefully away from the remains of the