Chapter 42
I lay awake, hoping Torgrin would come back. If he returned, I would promise never to hurt him or touch him until I had control of my Curse. I would tell him about the deal I had made with his father and that my mother was Queen Yaris. I would tell him I loved him and needed him.
The inside of the tent lightened as dawn drew close.
He’s not coming back, I thought, and my damned pride would not let me search him out. Could a broken heart break again?
I gathered my few possessions, including Iain’s sword. I ran my fingers over the hilt and the entwined lines. Two worms. He had been trying to tell me about my brother. Not alone, two worms. I wiped my eyes and exited the tent.
It was quiet. Looking over the ridge there was a lightness to the sky, telling me dawn was moments away. So, I waited, listening to the birds’ morning chirps and the crickets’ lullaby. The peace ended when the general and his men began breaking camp and readying the horses.
‘Well, I’m ready!’ Mae came to stand next to me.
‘You’re coming?’ It didn’t surprise me that she knew I was leaving today. She probably picked up all the information she needed by reading the minds of everyone in the camp. I rubbed my tired eyes to look at her. Someone had given her a travelling cloak to wear over her not-so-white dress.
‘Of course! I promised your mother I would serve you as I did her.’
‘You don’t need to serve me, Mae. You are free to do as you please.’
‘Well, I’m well overdue for a visit home, and I wish to travel with you, so I am doing what I please.’ She smirked at me.
‘I’m happy to have you with me. One less person to miss,’ I admitted.
‘You’ll have a few more friends joining you as well.’ She gestured to the horses, and I could see the curator’s rotund figure standing with the general. Striding towards us was Tomas, his sandy blond hair waving in the breeze.
‘You’re travelling with us?’ I asked when he came to stand next to me.
‘If that’s okay?’ he asked cautiously.
‘Of course, but why?’ I was pleased he was coming with us, but Torgrin and Atlas were his family. They were preparing him to be a captain one day.
He smiled sadly. ‘I’ve too many memories of Murus. I’m not ready to return yet.’
I thought about Cillian’s forge and blacksmith shop and our happy times together there. Going back and seeing it empty, cold and his tools covered in dust – I understood Tomas’s reluctance to go back.
‘I’ve never travelled much. Murus is the only home I’ve ever known. I’d like to see the mountains and the snow,’ he said, looking over the ridge covered in woodland that would change little in winter.
‘Yes, I would love to see the mountains too,’ I said, thinking of Torgrin’s drawings I’d saved.
‘Well, you will both regret saying that after spending weeks climbing those bloody things in the snow. Before you know it, you will be begging to come back here to the warm south.’ Mae shuddered in her borrowed cloak as if she were already in the snow.
Tomas and I smiled at each other. We took a few minutes to watch the sun break the horizon.
It was time to leave, and I had not seen Torgrin or Atlas.
I looked around the camp one last time before mounting Nightmare.
Only a few tents remained, and no-one came out to stop me from leaving.
I wasn’t sure if I was relieved or sad. General Toro and Braya were in front, followed by the curator and Mae. Tomas and I rode with the soldiers.
The road ahead of me seemed narrower than it first appeared. Nightmare sidestepped slightly as my body tightened in response to a feeling of unease.
Was I doing the right thing?
It was my sense of honour that had guided me to make an oath to Lord Warwick – an oath to protect his children that I was breaking for the second time in a matter of days. I had left Bethel to her fate in Capita, and now I was leaving Ania and Wolfe in the middle of Danu Forest.
Who was I without honour? I didn’t have the sense of purpose that I once did. I had sustained myself on thoughts of revenge since I was eleven winters old. There was one question that was loudest in my head: Would I ever see Torgrin and Atlas again?
I slowed Nightmare, letting the riders surrounding us pull ahead. With every step Nightmare took down this road, Torgrin and Atlas slipped further away. It was like they had wrapped threads around my heart, and they were now pulled so taut that they cut me painfully.
The first time I saw them, I had followed them along the river’s edge, watching them play and laugh with each other.
When they’d left the river and disappeared into the woods, I experienced the same uncomfortable sensation I did now.
Three souls bound across eternity and fated to find each other in every life.
There was a loud crack and the sound of a falling tree. I looked up at the clear blue sky. Was that lightning?
Nightmare reared up, and I struggled to stay seated in the saddle. Just as I got her to calm down, there was a clap of thunder and another lightning strike.
The general swore loudly.
I turned in my saddle to look back the way we had come. A gust of wind whipped the trees into a frenzy, and thunderous grey clouds gathered behind us. My ears twitched as I heard creaking trees swaying in the ferocious wind and then a deep howl of pain – or was it anger?
Torgrin was yelling my name.
I sucked in a panicked breath and raced back to the camp. Ignoring the general’s swearing and the sound of hooves chasing me, I urged Nightmare through the swirling leaves and broken branches flying through the air.
There was mayhem in the camp.
A tree was on fire, and the small group we had left behind was cowering in fear.
As I got closer, I could feel the air crackling around me. My skin prickled as the little hairs on my exposed skin rose and trembled.
With a hand on her heated neck, I attempted to calm Nightmare, who was pawing the ground with her hooves.
In the middle of the chaos was Torgrin. He stood alarmingly still, wearing his leather trousers low on his hips and a scorched, shredded shirt. A peculiar, ethereal glow flickered beneath his skin.
I cried out when a bolt of lightning burst from the sky and struck him in his chest. I watched, stunned, as it exited his body into the dirt beneath his feet, leaving him unharmed.
His outstretched hands sparked, and when he looked at me, his ordinarily dark eyes were a luminous white.
The scars etched across his face and shoulder resembled jagged crevices, radiating with a light that illuminated the camp.
He pulsated with an otherworldly glow, raw lightning coursing through his veins.
‘Storm Weaver,’ Mae said in awe, coming up beside me.
Atlas emerged behind Torgrin’s glowing figure, and I held my breath, afraid a lightning bolt would strike him.
Then Atlas raised a large tree branch and hit Torgrin so hard he crumpled to the ground. I moved to go to him, but General Toro grabbed Nightmare’s reins.
‘Don’t! You will only make it worse,’ he growled.
‘I can’t leave him!’ I tried to pull the reins out of his powerful grip.
‘Yes, you can. We have a deal, and we can do this the hard way, or the easy way.’ He looked at me determinedly, and Braya and their soldiers closed in around me. I looked back and saw Atlas checking Torgrin’s unconscious body.
‘He’s all right. Go, Caris, before he wakes and stops you!’ Atlas shouted.
The general let me have the reins back, but I hesitated.
Torgrin had kept this secret from me despite knowing what I was from the moment we met. What else had he kept from me? Last night, he had let me believe I caused the shock of power between us. He had left me all alone, thinking I had done something wrong. And Atlas had helped keep his secret.
The general’s expression was one of impatience rather than surprise. He had known his son was a Storm Weaver. The only male Weaver born in centuries? Or ever? The general had tried to warn me when we made our deal. He had said Torgrin would not let me leave him.
Torgrin had called me back here with his lightning, but why? Was he angry I left him? Because he had left me first. A moment ago, I would have taken the consequences of breaking my word with General Toro, but the longer I thought about staying, the more I wanted to go.
There was only more heartache for me here.
There was no way of knowing what awaited me in the north, but I wasn’t willing to risk any more of my heart here in Pedion.
Torgrin was slowly getting to his feet. The glow beneath his skin was gone. His eyes fixed on mine as Atlas helped him stand on unsteady legs. Torgrin’s eyes had returned to obsidian, and they were pleading with me.
It was like when we were children. I was on the riverbank again, but now there was no-one to push me into the rapids. This time, I was jumping in alone.
I turned my horse back to the road, leaving the Storm Weaver behind me.