Lola stood in the middle of the quiet clearing, the air thick with the smell of blood. She ignored the bodies around her. She pulled the small, dark orb from her pouch and looked at it again. It was still dead, no light, no warmth. Just a cold, empty rock. Every time she looked at it, the knot of ice in her chest got tighter.
'Leila, you idiot,' she thought. 'You were supposed to be careful.'
She had followed the faint trail for two days, a broken branch here, a scuff mark there. The tracks of a Sun Elf and a human whelp. They were sloppy, easy to follow. They were in this forest somewhere, and she was going to find them. This was not about Gorok's contract anymore, this was about the cold rock in her hand.
A rustle of leaves from above was a dead giveaway.
