Bane of the Wild Hunt (Heart of the Tithriall #2)

14. NOT READY TO RIDE ALONE

Chapter fourteen

NOT READY TO RIDE ALONE

Ornella

W e reached another clearing in the camp where there was an arched doorway cut into the ravine wall. Sage placed himself in front of me to climb the spiralling staircase so he could warm the cold draft that drifted down the stairs. The heat of his fire magic caused the frozen air to grow heavy with moisture which clung to the exposed roots in the walls of the stairwell.

Finally, we reached the summit, and I shivered hard when we emerged from the ravine under the shadow of the ancient pines. Their boughs were heavy with snow, bowing toward the barren earth covered in the needles already shed and patches of frost. The air was crisp and stagnant, and it felt so heavy with the consciousness of the old forest that I could barely draw in a full breath.

“There is a clearing ahead where we can fly from,” Sage informed me, clearly unaffected by the oppressive presence of the trees as he took my hand again.

“You can’t portal to the village?” I asked.

“There is no telling what we would portal into if the Fuath have remained there. It would be better to approach the village from a safe distance,” he explained.

I was exhausted and chilled to my bones after a long day of helping the aes sídhe move. All I really wanted was a hot bath and a day of uninterrupted sleep, but that seemed unlikely for some time.

We reached the clearing that Sage seemed to have indicated, and I almost stopped dead when I saw Ciaran waiting with his golden vargr already saddled.

Sage glanced back at me over his shoulder, and I shot a frown up at him before I allowed him to drag me over to the other rider.

“What took you two so long?” asked Ciaran before he climbed into his saddle. “We are losing the daylight.”

“We are here, and we have time,” Sage replied before my sharp tongue could lash at Ciaran for his callousness. Were we really supposed to abandon that poor mother whose cart Sage helped me unload?

Sage turned to me and Serafin gave us his flank so his rider could lift me up into the saddle.

Pyrope immediately gave an anguished yip of protest that was directed at me. She lifted her lips in a silent snarl at Serafin who nosed at her shoulder as if he were trying to determine what was wrong with her.

“We are going to need to get your saddle from Rian,” Sage observed before he pulled himself up behind me.

“Not sure that I am ready to ride alone,” I told him, quietly relishing the feeling of his arms and thighs around me as his broad chest pressed against my back.

Ciaran snorted in evident amusement before he and his vargr sprang into the air. Heavy wingbeats resounded off the trees as they began to climb into the sky.

“Ready?” Sage asked, and I nodded, leaning forward with Serafin and bracing as he leapt.

It took us longer than Ciaran to gain altitude, the two of us were heavier, but soon we were soaring over the snowy mountains and pines of the eastern Suridin Valley. The setting sun made the sky gleam orange and yellow and pink which was reflected beautifully on the smooth, white slopes of the mountains.

I heard a sudden bark and turned my head to the left to see Pyrope flying abreast of us. The sun seemed to set her red wings aflame just as it did to the golden feathers of Ciaran’s vargr flying just ahead of us.

I hated Ciaran, and I was still anxious about my bond with Pyrope, but I could not keep the smile from my face as the six of us soared together above the world. And a part of me could not help but wonder how it would feel when all ten members of the Wild Hunt flew as one.

I leaned into Sage, resting my head back on his chest, and closed my eyes with a smile while the wind rushed over me. It was still chilly, but during our scouting trips, Sage had started using his fire magic to emanate heat and keep me warm. It allowed me to focus on the amazing experience of flying, and I’d slowly come to enjoy it.

Sage’s chin bumped against my head, catching wisps of my hair on his unshaven stubble, and I could tell he had tilted his head to look at me when he laughed.

“It’s not so bad anymore,” I defended myself.

“I am glad you feel that way. We do a lot of flying.”

I grunted in agreement and rested my hand over his forearm when it banded a little tighter around me.

“You said that your family never actually wanted you to become a rider. I assumed that they must have been so proud of you for joining the Wild Hunt.”

Sage breathed in deep and slow, his chest expanding against my back before I felt him nodding as he exhaled.

“Challenging a rider for their place in the Wild Hunt is a dangerous gamble. It is not only a matter of cultivating the necessary skill to kill the other rider, which took me almost four hundred years, but one must also be accepted. You must be chosen.”

“Chosen,” I repeated, recalling an earlier conversation with him in which he had refused to explain how the rider chose a new body to inhabit. “How?”

“The armour makes us all nearly invulnerable until it chooses another rider to defeat us. That is why Aodhan was so cocky attempting to apprehend you. He believed himself to be infallible, but his armour betrayed him.”

I suddenly recalled my own incredulity after seeing the armour of the riders that looked like a freakish replica of a mortal’s rib cage with too many ribs. I had not understood how I managed to stab my knife so perfectly between all the bands of bone.

“I didn’t get lucky with my aim,” I realized aloud.

“No,” Sage confirmed. “I told you that only the worthy can become riders.”

“Where does it go when you’re not using it? The suit that Aodhan was wearing disappeared after he dispersed.”

“We believe it exists in a sort of in between place from which it is readily accessible at will. It is a similar place in which riders communicate with one another.”

“And you just call it to you mentally?” I verified.

“I do. You probably could too, if you tried. The armour is as bound to you now as Pyrope is,” Sage assured me.

I glanced at the vargr flying along beside us, and she glanced back as if sensing my attention had shifted to her. Rather she knew it since there was some kind of mind link between us that I didn’t know how to mute yet.

“But how does the armour know ? What makes it want to choose a new rider?”

“That I cannot answer. I don’t know,” Sage admitted with a casual shrug. Evidently unbothered by the fact that his armour was sentient and could, on a complete whim, betray him and get him fucking killed!

“Can anyone challenge me at any time?”

“They certainly could, but they will not have a chance to do so before I cut them down.”

“But would that not be an interference—” I began.

“I don’t care, Summer, you are my anam . If anyone is foolish enough to challenge you, then they challenge me as well. And I will respond as such,” Sage insisted.

I breathed out a quiet sigh of relief and squeezed his forearm in appreciation. I was not ignorant of the fact that I was the newest rider and therefore likely to be perceived as the most vulnerable. Nor was I naive about the reality of being the only female in the group which would also undoubtedly single me out to be challenged.

“The same goes for me,” I assured him with certainty. “Challenging you means challenging me too.”

Because the thought of someone trying to hurt him, trying to replace him, made me want to rage. It made my claws itch to extend and my magic roiled dangerously. Which in itself was terrifying to me, caring so much about someone again, but we were far beyond the point at which I could turn back now.

“I am glad we understand one another,” Sage said with a hint of amusement in his voice.

“Why did you defy your parents?” I asked, steering the conversation back to him. It had occurred to me earlier that I didn’t actually know much about his personal life and his relationships. He was very set on uncovering my secrets, and I wanted to know more about him too.

“I knew very early in my life that I did not want to be stuck in Aes Suri. I never wanted to be forced to settle down and lead an ordinary, uneventful life. And when Rian came to visit, he would tell such incredible stories about his adventures in other worlds,” Sage told me.

We could not be more different as people. He had been raised in a safe place by a warm, loving family that he’d only ever wanted to escape. While I had been born into a virtual war zone with a father who saw me as a means to further his own power. All I ever craved was everything that Sage had been freely given.

“Were they really unhappy with you?”

“Very unhappy. My mother shouted at Rian the next time she saw him after I made the declaration as a child,” he revealed in amusement.

I had not realized Rian was so much older than Sage, but that was not unusual. Fey were virtually immortal and most of us did not grow old in ways that made it easy to discern our ages.

“What about Orlaith?” I asked him.

The topic of the silvery-blonde female who had been a previous lover of Sage’s was one that I had been skirting around for a couple weeks now. I knew things had to be complicated between them since they still seemed to care about one another; but she smelled of another male which meant that she was mated to someone else.

Sage was quiet for so long that I wasn’t sure he would indulge my curiosity, and I sensed his mood had shifted.

“Orlaith is a… complicated subject,” he hedged.

“She still loves you, but she is mated to another male,” I stated confidently. “Do you still love her as well? Is that why it’s so complicated?” I asked him. I knew I was being nosey and insensitive, but Sage would tell me to fuck off if he needed to. Although I really hoped he didn’t because I badly wanted the answers to my questions.

Sage heaved a sigh, and I could tell he was reluctant to have this conversation with me, but I did not give him an out by assuring him that we didn’t need to talk about it. The truth was that I was dying of curiosity about Orlaith and her time with Sage, and I needed to know more about the current state of their relationship. So I waited.

“She was my first love, so I will probably always care for her in some way. Even if only as a friend. And she is still a close friend to Shay,” Sage told me.

“Is that why your sister hates me so much? She said she had a quarrel with you that she was taking out on me. Was she displeased with how things ended between you and Orlaith? And then you returned home with another stunningly gorgeous female, and she got the wrong idea,” I pieced together with a playful arrogance.

Sage laughed, but then he was quiet for a long time. “Something like that,” he finally admitted.

“Did you do something to her to make your sister so angry with you? To Orlaith,” I clarified suspiciously.

“You mean aside from breaking her heart when I left?” he asked sarcastically, and I hesitated in confusion.

“But you said you knew early that you wanted to be a rider, that you didn’t want a quiet life, so she must have been expecting that. Or were you dishonest with her?”

“No, I was clear about my intentions,” he assured me.

“So she knew you were leaving. Shay knew you meant to leave. Why would Orlaith allow her heart to be broken by something she was expecting from the start?”

“I don’t think she allowed it, I think she hoped I would love her enough to stay. I am the one who allowed it to go on for too long after realizing how she felt.”

“But that’s not fair!” I objected, abandoning even my miniscule attempts to be sensitive with him. “If you were clear and honest about your resolve from the beginning, then neither of them had a right to put those expectations on you. Much less be upset about it after. You didn’t break her heart, Sage, she broke it herself.”

The moment the words were out of my mouth, I knew they were wrong. They tasted cruel and judgemental and a little unfair, especially after Orlaith had saved my life.

But that did not mean they were untrue. Right?

Sage did not respond right away, and the prolonged silence killed me. I began to agonize over whether I had overstepped and upset him, but I was too afraid to speak, so I simply held my breath and waited for him.

“Like I said, it is very complicated,” he reminded me, dismissing my assertion with his usual gentleness.

He was not willing to villainize his ex, even if she was in the wrong for putting the exact kind of pressure on him that he’d admitted earlier to loathing. It was frustrating to me that he would not admit it, but upon reflection, it was also unsurprising. Sage was much more likely to take on the blame rather than make accusations of other people.

I had no such qualms.

“It does not sound all that complicated.”

“It is much more complicated than I wish to discuss. Relationships are never easy,” he insisted.

Perhaps it was jealousy that my anam was upholding another female that left such a bad taste in my mouth. Maybe it was the defensiveness in his tone. Or maybe I was offended by his assumption that I did not understand relationships. Whatever the reason, my back went up.

“You must think someone like me couldn’t possibly know anything about love.”

“I did not say that—”

“I’ve been in love too, you know. The kind that leaves scars on you forever,” I informed him sharply.

Sage was quiet for a moment, and I could not be sure what he was thinking, but I was too agitated to ask.

“It is not that I think you won’t understand. It is that I am ashamed of my actions,” Sage clarified more calmly.

“Ashamed?” I repeated in shock. “Why?”

“Do you not have things of which you are ashamed? Do you want to tell me all about them?”

“Sage, you probably could have been an absolute monster to her, and I’d still…”

I trailed off in uncertainty of whether I really wanted to voice those feelings out loud to him, but I had already said enough that he understood my sentiment.

“I would rather you condemn me for my actions when it is necessary,” he told me, but I was not sure I could make that promise. He’d offered me unconditional safety and acceptance, and I wanted to offer him the same.

There were several moments of silence before his hand tightened on me as if to garner my attention again.

“Were they an elf? The person you loved,” he clarified, and my heart shot into my throat. It was some time before I could decide whether to share with him. Whether I even could manage it without becoming too emotional.

“My first love was another dryad in my first century. But my second was an elf,” I began tentatively.

“A female dryad?” Sage guessed.

“No. His name was… Cathal,” I said, whispering the name I had not spoken aloud in four hundred years.

“You fell in love with a male dryad?” Sage verified in confusion. I understood his doubt after the conversations we’d had about how male dryads treated females.

“He was not like the others, Sage. He was… a slave.”

Sage was silent, waiting for me to go on, but I shook my head when an unbearable anguish threatened to rise.

I will not allow them to do that to you.

I could no longer recall the exact cadence of his voice, the sound that had once been the most comforting thing in my world, but his words still haunted me nonetheless.

I will not allow them to do that to you.

“I’m sorry, but I really can’t talk about him,” I blurted, fidgeting in agitation when the emotional turmoil evolved into a physical discomfort. The same as it had on the day I’d marked Sage accidentally and memories surfaced.

“It’s okay, Summer,” Sage reassured me immediately. “What about the elf?” he redirected the conversation with a gentle and encouraging squeeze around my midriff.

“Phiala. She made these bracelets,” I told him as I lifted my arm to show him. “Only this one was originally meant for me,” I said as I touched the faded red silk band. “She was supposed to wear the purple one, but I… I took it off her body when I found her on the battlefield.”

Sage squeezed me again, leaning against my back as if to hug me from behind. “They are beautiful. Are they made from moon moth silk?” he guessed, and I nodded.

“I helped her and her brother, Finnavar, to collect it. Did you know that moon moths can bite ?”

Sage snorted a soft laugh as he shook his head.

“No, I didn’t know that,” he admitted, and then he was quiet for a moment while I stared down at the bracelets. “Will you tell me why your father wanted to kill you so badly that he slaughtered the elves?” he asked.

“He didn’t want to kill me,” I corrected before I could censor myself. “He just wanted my power,” I explained. “Eldar Riona was a renowned warrior among the Foraoise who took me in and trained me herself. She knew what my father wanted, and she was willing to doom her own people to ensure he never got it.”

Sage hummed. “But I thought you were exiled?”

“I was sentenced to death by my… By someone else. But my father would have hidden me until he figured out how to take my power for himself. It is a lot of history.”

“It’s alright. When you are ready,” he assured me.

“Same with you about Orlaith,” I replied, and he gave another laugh as he nodded.

“Alright, deal,” he agreed.

We were really starting to lose the light, but I could now recognize the forest beneath us as the vivid autumn colours from the southern Suridin Valley. We were getting close to the Aes Suri village, and I still did not see any more smoke or the unnatural cloud of darkness the Fuath mage had used to protect their vile army from the sun. That boded well for our hopes of finding the village, and more importantly the tablets, unmolested.

We began to descend quickly, and at first I was unsure why we were getting so low until I saw Ciaran collecting shadows from the forest to cloak himself and his vargr. Within seconds, they had both disappeared.

“What if we fly into one another?” I asked in alarm as Sage began to gather shadows to hide us as well.

“I can still sense Ciaran down the bond, and Pyrope will be able to sense you. She will stay out of our way,” Sage assured me as I glanced back in time to see the red vargr fade from my sight. “We need to be quiet now.”

I nodded in understanding and reached down to grip the pommel of the saddle beneath me readily as the tree canopy thinned around the village below.

I stared in astonishment, cautiously relieved as we passed over the rows of untouched yurts that seemed so eerily silent. I could still see the remnants of the battle that had been waged there the night before, but it did not seem as if the Fuath had taken the opportunity to pillage. Perhaps the plumes of smoke we’d seen that morning had come from somewhere else, and Rian really had scared away the Fuath before they could do more damage.

For the first time, I wished I could speak directly into Sage’s mind the way the other riders could communicate to know what he was thinking.

We flew over the village and all the way to the training field before landing. I assumed we’d be moving in slowly to assess the situation under the cover of shadow.

But the second my feet hit the ground, I knew that something was not right…