by Mary Weber
“I told the council that was my offer in the War Room, and Sedric agreed.”
“He may have, but approving it and deciding when to announce it are for the Court to do, not you.”
I turn on him. “Why? So they can go back on it as soon as the war’s over?”
His face pales.
“Just as I thought.”
“You ssshouldn’t have done it.”
I give a caustic laugh. “Which is exactly why I did.”
CHAPTER 25
THE WORLD IS FADING IN AND OUT, BLENDING INTO ONE OF MYLES’S visions. The same he fed me a million times last week when we were training. Images of bodies and blood and the almost-end of the war.
I reach out with a final lightning cut to destroy the monster who would own this world—would own all of us. Except before I can reach him, he shreds through Eogan’s skin, and I don’t have time to scream or feel horrified because I am slitting both their throats at once and they are falling falling falling dead at Myles’s and my feet because we have fought and succeeded. We have saved the Hidden Lands.
And just like always, we are standing over the multitudes of people and they are cheering and screaming for us, their saviors. I shudder at the sound of it even as Myles steps forward to embrace it, hand raised, with a black mist swirling around his wrist and fingers. What the—? As he does, a movement beneath him snags my attention, but I’m too slow as suddenly Draewulf reaches up and somehow he’s still alive. I catch the flash of an eye opening, its black pupil glinting in the sun. “No—”
My warning comes too late. Draewulf’s hand flashes up and with it a knife that slides across Myles’s stomach, slitting open his gut.
Myles’s face pales and a gurgling sound bubbles from his mouth as he jerks from Draewulf, then swerves his gaze to latch onto mine.
Oh hulls.
He stumbles as Draewulf pulls himself up to stand at his full wolf height and peers down at me. His face ripples, as if his body is groaning beneath its skin—hungry, strengthening. His real man’s form coming to the surface as his wolf image fades away. I watch the slit in Draewulf’s throat mend and heal and seal itself shut.
He’s healing? How?
I look down at Eogan’s shredded skin.
Too late. Draewulf reaches for me and his hand is more sinewy and stronger than it ever was in wolf form. He leans over me.
I whip down a flash of lightning, but it’s feeble and pathetic against the mixture of Uathúil abilities he’s absorbed.
And I am the last.
His jaw opens to snap down on my neck.
I shove an ice pick against his skull, but it bounces off as—
Crack.
I awake to pitch black, drenched in sweat and shaking. I can’t stop shaking.
The night fire’s gone out and the cold is seeping up through the ground, making the embers smoke.
Crack-crack.
I freeze.
The sound comes again, but rather than indicative of Draewulf breaking my neck, my hazy brain recognizes the noise as branches crunching underfoot. Someone’s walking. Thieves?
Worse. Did my owner stalk us?
I roll over and squint through the dark to where Tannin and both Cashlins are sleeping around the fire and near them five guards lay snoring. So is Kel beside me. I look farther in search of the other five soldiers standing watch, only I don’t see anything but the thin trunks of a nearly stripped fir tree and the starlit sky beyond.
I slip my knives from my ankle belts, then slide out from the bedding and onto my haunches. Voices are muttering now to the right of me, talking to each other while someone kicks things around. What in—?
Two men come into focus, creeping toward the fire, arguing about something. I lift a blade as the first man stops right above Tannin’s sleeping head as if unaware the guard is there. His face is set toward the second man, who’s clearly upset about something. Then they’re ducking down as a third body approaches.
I squint. This one has the shape of a man but—bleeding hulls, he’s larger than humanly possible. I grip my knife tighter and prepare to throw it—at who I’m not sure yet. The two men near Tannin appear to be trying to scramble away.
I almost lunge to keep them from stomping on his head.
There’s an odd roar, and the man stalking them emerges from the shadows. I see why his size is so strange. He’s not a man—he’s a wraith.
Litch.
I keep my body between it and Kel and aim for the undead’s head just as the two men cry out—until it occurs to me the sound is coming from my right again rather than from their open mouths. Next thing I know they’re falling and crawling over Tannin and the fire, but without disturbing either.
I am about to throw my knife anyway. Keeping my eye on the wraith just in case, I glance around for Myles. Really? Again? It takes less than a moment to locate him at the base of the tree, but when I do it’s clear the cries are coming from him. And the cracking noises aren’t from feet. They’re him peeling bark off the tree.
Blast it all, Myles.
I stand and storm over to shake him, but although the whites of his eyes widen, he doesn’t respond. I smack his cheek, which does nothing besides alert me to the fact that his body is shaking heavily beneath my hand. And he’s burning up.
Placing my hand on his forehead, I blink and peer through his created visions to locate Mia.
“Mia!” My whisper is loud enough that the guards on watch outside the perimeter are promptly striding through the trees.
“Miss? Is everything all right?”
“It’s Myles. Wake Mia.”
The guards recoil even as I say it, and when I look to see why, the vision is showing the wraith gutting both of the frantic men now splayed out on the ground. I turn away. “Ignore it and do as I said.”
One of the guards goes to get Mia up as I continue to press my hands against Myles’s shuddering body and forehead.
Mia murmurs from her blanket even as her eyes light up red. She glares around until her focus locks on me.
“Myles is having another of his visions.”
“Can you jolt him out of it?”
I allow static to rush down my skin from the sky and send the shock straight into his bones. He jumps and utters a cry, but the vision continues. Until a moment later, when he blinks and suddenly looks around. At me. At the Luminescent and the guards standing with their swords out.
“He was seeing his past again,” the Luminescent says.
“Can anything be done for him?”
She gazes hesitantly from him to me. Then closes her mouth. She nods to Gilford, who promptly lifts his wristlet with the potion he used on us back in Cashlin.
“As I recall, that seemed to make my visions worse.”
He shrugs at me. “That’s a possibility.”
“Will it slow the poison in his blood?”
He peers at Mia, who pulls her gaze from Myles to stare straight at me but says nothing.
“I encourage you to speak freely lest we lose what valuable time we have pampering him,” I say.
“There is nothing you can do.”
“That’s not what I asked. Can anything be done for him? Lady Isobel seemed to think so. I had this power before he did and it was released. Can’t he release it too?”
“Your body was made to handle strange and strong elements—hence the weather. However, with him, his body is rejecting it. Or rather, the more it attaches to his blood and becomes him, it is rejecting his body because his mi
nd doesn’t know what to do with it.”
“You’re saying it’s going to kill him.”
She nods.
“I mean no offense, but we already knew that. What I need to know is—”
“Lady Isobel is right—there is another option.” Gilford looks at the Luminescent as he says it. As if prodding her to spit it out. “Two, in fact.”
When she refrains, he continues for her. “A swift death being the first and most logical.”
I shake my head as the words of my father slip into mind. “Never destroy what simply needs taming . . .”
“But otherwise, it is our belief that while he can’t get rid of the dark ability consuming his blood, due to his Cashlin heritage he could possibly learn to control it. Because it’s not his actual blood that’s rejecting him. It’s his mind that is fading and will lose control completely. When that happens, he will be gone and the ability will be all that is left. Until . . .”
“It kills him.”
“Until it begins killing others through him.”
Just like it would’ve through me.
The queen’s words come back. “Lord Myles stands on the edge of a decision. One choice will send him over a precipice and turn him into a lesser Draewulf. The other will most likely cost his life but will help the Hidden Lands survive.”
Mia nods.
“So he might survive because he’s Cashlin—if he can be tamed. So how do we do that?”
She peers over at Myles, who’s huddled up against the tree staring at us. Whether he’s listening or not, I can’t tell. He already looks more than gone.
The guard leans in and murmurs, “A stronger Luminescent would be able to help him learn to control it.”
I glance at Mia.
“Not me. It’d have to be either the queen, one of the Inters, or . . .”
“Princess Rasha.” I study her as if to say I’m no daft fool.
She nods. “The question is, how do we rescue her?”
At first dawn we pack up our bags and horses and leave for the next town. The fog has come in heavy, surrounding us so thick it’s hard to see anything but the road in front of us—and even that is only visible for a number of feet. Thus, the pace is a bit slow, lending to our already quiet moods.
“Care to do anything about this cloud?” one of the guards asks after an hour of riding in silence.
I glance up. Oh.
Tannin leans forward from the other side of him. “It might help us move quicker.”
Right. “Sorry.” I whisper up a breeze to blow a clean path from us to the lights glimmering one by one in the far distance. Behind me Myles begins murmuring, but when I turn to see what his problem is, he’s not directing it at me. He’s not directing it at anyone. As if he’s here but he’s not, and whatever he’s seeing is keeping him stuck inside his pale head even as he’s looking around frantically.
Every once in a while a low moan escapes his quivering lips, indicating the images in his mind are of torment. And every so often a few escape to startle the horses and scare the hulls out of the guards and Kel. I shiver and glance away to Mia and the male Cashlin.
“He’s getting worse,” she says.
“How long?” is all I reply.
She shrugs. “The longer he stays in his visions, the more chance he has of getting lost in them forever. Until he ceases to function at all.”
I nod and press the fog back even farther. “If I get us to the northern border . . .” I drop my tone. “Do you think you could get a read on precisely where Rasha’s being held?”
“If we can reach the scouts. Or better yet, wraiths.” She looks around. “But how would you even rescue her? You’ve no boat or airship, nor have you nearly enough people.”
I don’t mention the airship over the waterway. I merely glance back at Lord Myles, who’s stopped muttering long enough to eavesdrop on us. “I’m working on that,” is all I say and hurry us toward the next main village.
We’re met by a similar crowd as before. And the common-house speech goes almost exactly the same, minus the disgusting ex–slave owner. It’s a room full of doubtful then cheering patrons—only this time the people are edgier.
“We convinced them and that is enough,” Tannin assures me as we rush out the back doors again, just like last evening, before the crowd overtakes us.
The same happens again at another village in the evening. But this time people are waiting when we attempt to leave the common house in an atmosphere that seems strange. It’s the expressions on their faces. These people don’t merely look admiring; they seem desperate. Like the people in the High Court.
A bump against me and I’m tripping into Tannin, who flips around and pushes his sword out farther. “Hold steady and do your jobs, men!” he yells.
They’re too late, though. I already feel the knife against my tunic, slicing clean through it, and I’m reaching for mine in a flash as I push Kel out of the way and turn to shove my blade toward the man who’s lunged for me, but he’s already backing away, taking a piece of my cloth with him. And a lock of my hair.
What the—?
I reach up to grab at my thick tresses—still there aside from one chunk on the right side. When I look at the man, a fight has broken out between him and the other peasants who are bartering over it and the tunic piece as if they are good luck tokens.
Two guards fall upon them until I yell to leave them. It doesn’t matter.
Abruptly I’m being placed upon Haven and all I can hear is Tannin’s shouting at them to get us out of here.
We ride and don’t speak of it because there’s nothing to say.
At least until Kel decides there is. “Perhaps you should give them your undergarments too, Nym. Wonder what those would go for on the market.”
A chuckle emerges from the soldiers even as Tannin snaps, “Young master, that’s highly—”
I hold up a hand. “He’s fine.” And then a chuckle of my own is slipping out.
Soon the idiocy of such an awkward event and Kel’s suggestion overtakes us fully, and our laughter is ricocheting through the Valley.
“Can you imagine?” Humor dances through the boy’s eyes.
“No, and you shouldn’t be either,” I laugh back. “Perhaps Lord Myles might lend us some images, though.”
“Ah, I would, my dear. But in my visions the poor men would give them back, I’m afraid.”
Half of us flip around to stare at him and the fact that he’s somehow coherent before the bursts of hysteria shoot even louder. He extends me a weary smile through the dim, and something about it—the smile, his humor, his bleeding insulting jabs—makes me miss him terrible-like.
Which might be the strangest feeling I’ve ever encountered.
“How are you?” I ask when I’m finished clutching my stomach from the laughter.
“Insane. Got anything to drink around here?”
Mia looks at me and starts to speak, but I’ve no time to react before a sensation hits my blackened hand veins and I feel a tug in them as I swear a wisp of black seeps from Myles’s chest. It shutters around him like a fog and his eyes shimmer darkly.
Kel jumps. “Holy mother of—”
Myles’s eyelids flutter. “No worries, young man, I’ve not lost my head completely. Soon enough you’ll see the ability heighten my creative power. And that will give us the upper hand in this whole bleeding war.”
I nod at Tannin to pull out a small flask of watered-down wine for the Lord Protectorate, who nods his thanks and sets to nursing it while I stare at his eyes.
They’re set and scheming, even if they look like hollow caves in his face.
After a moment he hands the wine back and goes back to watching the road, seeming unaware of the wisp clinging to him like death.
“Nym, what’s—?”
“Not now, Kel.”
We ride, and I continue to watch Myles under the stars until our horses are finished and we’re forced to stop for another night. Haven makes her annoyance known as Tannin and I work to unsaddle her. She wants to keep going. I can feel her excitement in her tense muscles and neck. I can relate. Being out in the fresh air and the wind whipping through our hair and smelling her musky scent brings a whispered longing for freedom.
Freedom.
Ha. Everything seems to lead back to that word lately.
Something about it sparks the recollection of my father shaping my little sword with his big hands. “The blade isn’t to rule with, Nymia. It’s to bring freedom.”
I bite my lip and cough at the weight it brings to my ribs. I didn’t even know that memory existed. Bleeding Inters.
I place my blankets beside Myles’s, then glance up to find Mia doing the same. She shrugs and tips her head toward him, indicating the images flickering around him so fast they’re like apparitions. But ones he’s clearly in control of. They are images of multiple ways Draewulf could die.
“He’s calculating all the possibilities,” Mia murmurs.
The horses are aware of the pictures too, which makes them spook and whinny. Myles is scratching his veins as pictures of himself holding a blade come in and out of focus. The guards draw closer to the visions before I notice Kel backing away as they portray Myles going through a room and slitting throat after throat of people tied up.
“Kel, close your—”
But Tannin has already slapped a hand over Kel’s widening gaze for me.
Thank you, I mouth. And when I turn back to Myles, his face is dripping with sweat.
“Nym, this is incredible,” he murmurs just before he lays his head on his mare’s mane and shuts his eyes.
