Chapter 41
Von
S age and Harper had their arms looped around one another, conversing and giggling as we all made our way through the forest, traveling on foot. Lyra’s hand was in Harper’s, an excited bounce in her step. She, too, was happy to see Sage.
We all were.
I hadn’t been able to take my eyes off her since the battle had ended a couple hours ago.
In truth, a very large part of me wanted to grab her and fly her away somewhere private so I could hoard her to myself.
But when I saw how happy she was to be reunited with the others, I refrained just so I could see that smile of hers a little bit longer.
Sage and I had much to talk about, and some things were not going to be easy. Right now, all that mattered was that she was alive. Safe. Happy. We’d get to the rest after.
Artemesia led the group, her gryphon walking with her, Kaleb beside them. After them came Fallon and Ryker, separated by Soren, who had spent the last two hours reliving his heroic efforts in the battle—most of which we all took turns calling bullshit on.
Apart from a few bumps, cuts, and bruises, we’d all fared rather well.
Well, everyone but Folkoln, who had been as quiet as a temple mouse ever since the fight ended. Quiet and Folkoln—it was an oxymoron.
My brows raised slightly as I glanced his way. “What’s going on with you?” I asked, voice low.
No reply came at first.
Then, “She’s my mate,” he whispered, eyes fixed ahead.
I traced his gaze, landing on Artemesia. “How do you know?”
“Because I want to snap Kaleb’s neck for talking to her.”
I chuckled at that. “That doesn’t mean she’s your mate.”
“She is.” His tone was serious, yet another strange thing for the God of Chaos to be.
“Explain.”
“It’s like I said before—ever since we arrived here, I’ve felt this constant tugging.
When she was falling, I didn’t just go to her because you asked.
I physically felt compelled to do so. And when Sage asked me to set her down, it was like .
. .” He glanced down at his hands. “My body had a will of its own and wouldn’t listen. ”
“Like you couldn’t physically part with her,” I said, recalling the time when Sage had fallen unconscious and I had taken her to Ezra. Ezra had asked me to lay her on the bed, but as hard as I tried, my body would not comply. It felt as if she were safer in my arms.
“Yeah.” Folkoln sighed. “And I might have growled at Sage when she tried to get close to us.”
That was something I, too, had done multiple times. Although, it had nothing to do with Sage getting closer to me; it was always because she was trying to squirm her fine little ass away from me when I wanted another taste of her.
“It does sound like the bond,” I admitted, rolling my neck and tipping my face toward him. “So what are you going to do about it?”
“I don’t know yet,” he said as we passed through the last of the trees and stepped out into a clearing.
A rolling landscape stretched before us, the grassy hills bathed in the golden light of dawn. The group fell quiet, cut off from their private conversations, as the uncertainty of what to do next weighed on all of us.
“So . . . now what?” Soren asked, pressing his hands against his hips as he stretched out his back.
Artemesia rubbed the gryphon’s neck as she said, “Vatara needs to rest before she’ll be able to fly us anywhere. I also don’t think she’d mind if I washed her side, since Sage vomited on her. Again.”
“ That’s what that smell is!” Fallon exclaimed, batting her hand in front of her face.
“I wouldn’t mind washing myself too,” Kaleb tacked on, his gaze sliding accusingly to Sage, telling the rest of us all we needed to know.
“That’s so gross,” Soren said, unable to help himself from chuckling .
Sage crossed her arms over her chest.
“I could use a bite to eat,” Ryker tossed in, taking some of the heat off Sage. She shot him an appreciative look, and he gave her a wink.
“Okay, Weyfern is a small city, about a forty-minute walk”—Artemesia pointed to the west—“that way. There’s an inn I’ve stayed at before. Beds aren’t anything special, but the food is good, and the innkeeper doesn’t ask questions.”
“Will it be safe for us?” Harper asked, slinging an arm over Lyra’s shoulders.
“Define safe ,” Artemesia responded.
“Will the winged horse riders be there?” Harper clarified.
“Although I can’t guarantee they won’t be, I honestly doubt that they will.
I imagine they’ll be rushing back to Avolonia, scrambling over one another, hoping to be the first to tell the empress what they witnessed today,” Artemesia answered, turning away from Vatara to face me. “That Nockrythiam has returned.”
Silence fell. Eyes shifted toward me.
Nockrythiam . The name wasn’t foreign to me, but the past it was connected to was.
“Von, were you from here ?” Ryker asked, his tone full of wonder as he tried to fit the pieces together.
But it was Sage who stepped forward and said, “We both were.”
Ryker paused, examining this new bit of information. “Wait a minute.” His eyes shifted from Sage to Artemesia. “Are you two sisters?”
“We are,” Artemesia answered .
“I thought you were just helping Sage,” Ryker said with a gentle shake of his head, as if he couldn’t believe he hadn’t figured it out before. “Although now that I look at you both, I can’t unsee it. You two share resemblances. Namely the white hair.”
“They do,” Harper agreed, her tone less amazed than Ryker’s.
He turned to his twin. “You already knew?”
“I didn’t,” Soren stated, not that anyone cared.
“I’ve been walking with Sage for the past two hours. What do you think we were talking about?” Harper chuckled. “Although the one thing we didn’t discuss . . .” Curiosity lifted her eyebrows. She looked at Sage. “Why were the riders after you?”
“Because the ruler of these lands, Empress Avena, condemned me to have my soul crushed, from which there is no coming back,” Sage answered, voice soft as she revealed this truth, turning my bloodless veins colder than the glaciers themselves.
“Wraithlike creatures known as vuleeries rescued me from the arena. The riders were sent by the empress, tasked to collect me.” She shrugged. “There’s a bounty on my head.”
An image of her appeared in my mind, of how broken she had looked when I saw her collapsed in the sands of the arena. My muscles tensed, realization stringing them taut.
“The day Soren linked us to you. That was the day you were going to have your soul crushed, wasn’t it?” I asked, my voice sharp.
She didn’t look at me as she answered, “Yes.”
Anger flared red-hot, branding the truth into my skin. “ You were just going to give up .”
“I was dealing with a lot ,” she fired back at me, pain lacerating her words.
I took a step forward, shadows breaking off from me. “What if I hadn’t shown up that day? What would you have done?”
She didn’t respond. She didn’t need to.
She had been ready to give up.
Confliction slit me open like a knife, gutting me where I stood.
I wanted to grab her by the chin and roar at her that she wasn’t the only one dealing with a lot. That we both had lost so much.
But how could I?
I’d had centuries to process the loss of our child, but she had only just found out. Naturally, the weight of it crushed her, just as it had me.
“I hate to break up this lovers’ quarrel, but we should probably decide what we’re doing next,” Artemesia cut in.
While the group discussed traveling to the city, Sage and I held one another’s gaze, so many unspoken words floating between us. For a brief moment, we faded from the discussion.
I’m sorry , I said, sending the words down the private river that once linked our thoughts.
And although I knew the words hadn’t reached her, I could tell by reading her eyes that she was saying the same thing back.
“Alright, it’s settled then. We’ll spend the night at Weyfern,” Artemesia said.
She gave a low whistle, and Vatara, who had been sitting beside her, lowered down to the ground.
Artemesia unbuckled one of the saddlebags, flipped the flap open, and began to rifle through it.
She started taking out ropes, dropping them on the ground.
“Since you all are new here, let me give you a rundown of how things work in the Mother Realm. By law, males have no rights. Most are sent to the arena, where they have their souls crushed for sport. Some are allowed to live as slaves—it’s less expensive to keep ones who are not .
. . intact. The extremely pretty ones who know how to handle a sword, both cock and weapon, become part of the empress’s harem.
So—” She tossed the last rope to Kaleb. “While in public, you will have to act accordingly, otherwise you’ll risk getting all of us into trouble.
” She began to search through another saddlebag.
She pulled out a handful of scarves, consisting of various patterns and colors.
“Males are not allowed to show all of their faces either, so you will have to wear these.”
“So, what exactly are we supposed to do?” Folkoln asked, arms crossed, a tattooed hand playing with a lip piercing.
She walked over to him, shoved a pink scarf against his chest, and said, “Be a good male, look pretty, and shut up.” She winked at him. “Us females will take care of the rest.”
I cracked a smirk. Folkoln was going to have his hands full with that one.