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

54. HE PROMISED

Chapter fifty-four

HE PROMISED

Ornella

“ O rnella! Ornella!”

I was not sure when the person shouting in my face managed to get my attention, but I realized it was Nuala. She was gripping my cheeks so hard that her fingernails were biting into my skin.

“Breathe. Just breathe ,” she instructed me. Her voice sounded so calm, but her mismatching eyes were frantic.

“Sage.”

“I know. I know , Nell! But right now, Rian needs you. Please! He needs you to use Sage’s magic to remove the starlight from inside him. If you—”

“Sage.”

“ Ornella ,” she insisted sternly, looking so desperate as she shook me. “You are the only one who can save Rian. Sage would want you to save his cousin. Please !”

Yes. He would want that.

I felt fractured. Misshapen and wrong. Broken and jagged and shattered all over the place. My hands were shaking badly as I looked around me unseeingly. I wasn’t even sure where we were although I had the vaguest sense that I should recognize it. My mind was blurry.

“Over here. Please hurry,” insisted Nuala as she guided me toward Rian who was laying on the floor. His armour and shirt had been torn off, and there was a bright gleam in his chest. “You will need to reach in for the starlight,” Nuala reiterated helpfully. “éadrom, stay back!”

I could not recall why this was necessary. I knew it had been put there but couldn’t seem to gain enough purchase in my own mind to remember why it happened.

“Okay,” I mumbled and lifted my shaking hands over Rian because all I knew for certain was that Sage would want his cousin healed. “I won’t overdo it. I promised.”

The words trembled off my lips in a mantra that I did not really understand as I tried to heal Rian.

“Ornella, you need to use Sage’s Light magic first,” explained Nuala insistently.

“Sage.”

“You have to use his Light magic to take that thing out of Rian quickly, please, try and focus,” Nuala urged me.

I started to cry. Overwhelmed and not knowing what the hell I was doing and not understanding why I felt like I was completely shattered.

“Sage.”

My home. My mate. He was gone.

“ Please focus ,” Nuala begged me desperately.

I nodded in agreement and tried to remember what it was that she wanted me to do. Then I saw the brightness gleaming in Rian’s chest, the green blood soaking him, and I remembered with a sharp burst of clarity.

Remove the starlight. I had to remove the starlight.

I was still shaking as I put my hands on Rian’s chest and recalled that hot power that had been the only thing that made a difference before. The only thing that had felt strong enough to channel this breaking.

It rose readily, meeting my call and flowing into my hands so beautifully. It was Sage’s magic in my palms.

I made one hand as straight as I could and drove it into Rian’s chest, vaguely aware that Darragh and Ciaran were holding him down. My hand burned him, but I grabbed onto that pulsing power and pulled it free from him.

“Good! That’s good! Can you heal him?” asked Nuala, but I was distracted, gazing at the orb of light in my hand. It wasn’t even covered in blood like my hand because it had burned all of that away, pure and bright.

“Ornella—?”

“I need power,” I murmured.

I did not know how I knew it, just an instinct in this place of groundlessness, but I touched a darkness inside that was foreign. Not my magic nor any that belonged to Sage naturally, but it still came from my anam .

It came from… Rian.

His magic, now unguarded in his state of vulnerability, had passed through the bond of the Wild Hunt.

Unlike the Autumn Prince, who was scalded by Light, I had healing magic to shield his power from the blaze just long enough to use it to consume the Light. To drink it in through my pores and allow it to fill my veins and fuel my own magic.

Then I turned my attention back to Rian, putting my hands on his chest with a growing clarity because it was what Sage would want.

Rian had lost consciousness, but he woke screaming the instant I forced my healing magic into him. I had to keep going, and thankfully his power was so exhausted that Ciaran and Darragh could hold him down because he was charred inside. Raw and hollowed.

It took every last ounce of my power to restore him enough to save him, but I knew he was not wholly healed. Thankfully, I had absorbed the extra magic and could use Sage’s too or Rian would have certainly died.

When I had nothing left to give, I slumped sideways into Darragh who caught me and pulled me against him. Whispering that it was good, I had done enough, as Nuala finally allowed Rian’s frantic vargr to nose at him.

It was a lie . If I had truly done enough then my mate would be the one holding me. And yet Sage was gone…

“We have to get him back,” I murmured.

There was silence in the tent for a moment aside from Rian’s laboured breathing and his vargr whining.

“Yes,” said the Autumn Prince at last, his voice hoarse, placing his hand on his vargr’s head to try and calm him. “We will get him back, Ornella.”

“Balor—” snarled Ciaran, stopping himself with a shake of his head.

“Yes. He doomed his court just to save his place as a hapless king,” Rian acknowledged.

“And the griffins made a deal with the Sylvan. I knew we could not trust them!” Ciaran shouted, throwing one of his gauntlets so hard it shattered wood somewhere.

I felt Rian’s eyes on me but was too numb to respond.

The Autumn Prince made a pained grunt, and Nuala rushed to help support him as he sat up. Then I felt him brush my cheek. Normally such a touch from a male who was not Sage would send me into a fit, but I was too hollow to react. I simply raised my eyes to his and found them bouncing between mine as if he were looking for something inside me.

“We need you, Ornella. Sage needs you.”

“I will get him back,” I said. Clinging to the only thing that was certain to me at that moment. The only thing that made sense because there was no alternative.

“Good,” he said, nodding in approval.

There was a commotion, a flurry of movement that made us all look toward the door as the other vargr began rushing inside. Each of them panting and whining as they ran to their rider to nuzzle and lick. Pyrope and Gealach seemed to be competing for which of them would crush me and Darragh as they rubbed themselves all over us.

But I was distracted by Serafin who darted around the room with frantic whines that wrenched on my heart.

“Serafin,” I whispered, one hand on Pyrope’s head to placate her while I held out the other to Sage’s vargr with his nose to the ground to find his rider. “Serafin,” I called him more firmly, and he finally looked up with haunted purple eyes because he already knew…

Carrick barged into the tent next, breathless as if he’d been running for some time, and my heart cracked anew when I saw the relief in his eyes when he found us.

“Oh, thank the gods! The vargr have been tearing the camp apart looking for all of you! It was all I could do just to stop… Where is Sage?” he asked, his eyes running over all of us again and again as if confirming his son was absent from among us. “Sage?” he called more loudly.

“He is gone,” I whispered, and Carrick blinked.

“What do you mean he is gone ?” he demanded as he looked to Rian for an explanation. “Where is my son ?”

Rian wanted to answer. He opened his mouth over and over again, but the words would not come out.

“The Griffin King had a Sylvan blade he used to call the Sylvan to the Vale,” Darragh began to explain softly. “They almost killed Rian and took Sage. We do not know what they want with him yet, but he is still alive.”

Carrick was silent, swaying on his feet like he might fall over as he processed this news.

“His Light,” he realized with dread.

I got up, still feeling numb as I walked by Carrick with Pyrope and Serafin slinking behind me.

“Where are you going?” asked Nuala nervously.

“Home,” I told her simply, because I did not have the strength to comfort anyone else or bear witness to their grief when it felt like I was still bleeding out.

It occurred to me that Darragh was following us at a safe distance, but I didn’t attempt to lose him as I returned to the place where I had last been close to Sage. Where just that morning, I’d awoken perfectly nestled up against his warmth and felt like my world was complete. When I’d looked up at him and realized that he was still asleep and was unable to help touching him.

I passed into the tent, and the sound of the camp faded beyond the ward as the scent of him hit me like a physical blow that nearly brought me to my knees. I almost could not make myself step forward, but I did, walking into the main room where our plates from breakfast were sitting on the floor. Where I had left a pile of crumpled paper while trying to write the perfect letter to Amira.

Amira who had a hand in what happened to Sage.

I could not think about it as I walked across the tent to the bedchamber, drawn there like a magnet, like a puppet on a string. I began stripping out of his armour and my clothing until I was naked as I parted the curtains.

Only to be confronted by the mirror and the reflection of a body that was covered in Sage. His teeth. His kisses. His proxy claiming that would all fade far too fast.

A sob tore out of me. It wrenched free with a force that had me doubling over immediately, clenching my gut as it twisted with the anguish. I hit my knees and slumped over my thighs as my forehead smacked against the floor.

And I cried. Allowing the pain to bleed out of me so hard it felt like I turned inside out. Raw and painful.

The vargr were blissfully quiet, curling up on either side of me once I finally managed to crawl into the bed. Wrapping his blanket around me and cocooning myself in his scent, I closed my eyes and tried hard to pretend it was his bulk behind me. Anything to stop this crushing sense that my world was fractured and incomplete.

I could pretend. At least for long enough to cry myself to sleep. To find a blissful dream where my mate really was still in the bed with me.

He was not gone. He promised. He promised me.