Chapter 15 #3
Not even a day to say his goodbyes. Bran breathed around the ache in his chest, words a jumbled knot in his throat.
He had so much he wanted to say to Cillian, to ask, but none of it deserved an audience.
He wouldn’t give Ainmire that kind of ammunition to further hurt Cillian wherever they ended up.
And maybe that was cowardice on his part because then Bran wouldn’t have to know what Cillian would say to him when they were like this.
So Bran held him, bracing them both against the jolt of the carriage as it rolled through and out of the town, onto a road that would deliver them to a king who had no love for either of them.
They never made it.
Hours after their departure, when Bran’s stomach was protesting the missed morning meal and Cillian was sleeping fitfully in his arms, the wind picked up with a howl that sounded like a roaring freight train.
A line of fast-moving clouds blotted out the sun, thunder rumbling in the distance and growing louder.
The Fae outside started shouting, Bran unable to understand them, but Ainmire and Damarus certainly did. Damarus swore and flicked his knife free as the carriage jerked to a halt. “They know he has returned.”
“Impossible,” Ainmire snapped. “No one would breathe a word that we have him.”
Damarus grimaced at his lord, one hand reaching for the handle that would open the carriage door nearest him. “My lord, the Wild Hunt—”
Terror at knowing what was outside slammed into Bran the way the wind slammed against the carriage, rocking it hard, tipping it onto two wheels.
Bran fell off the bench to the floor, unable to brace himself, dragging Cillian down with him.
His bruised ribs throbbed, and he couldn’t stop his head from smacking against the door on his way down, tangled up as he was with the other man.
The windows shattered from the force of the howling wind.
Too late did Bran realize it wasn’t the wind but the spirits riding it.
The carriage door he half leaned against was yanked open. Bran cried out as he and Cillian fell out of the carriage, slamming to the ground. All the air was driven out of his lungs as fire erupted inside the carriage, wielded by Ainmire’s gloved hand.
“They are mine!” Ainmire snarled, staring right at Bran as the carriage was picked up by a horde of hideous specters that started tearing it apart. Ainmire was forced to defend himself and his right hand against the dead with magic that burned wildfire hot.
A spirit riding a macabre ghostly horse with missing flesh exposing its ribs settled to the ground by Bran, face vacillating between that of a lady’s visage and the skull beneath it.
Bran wriggled out from beneath Cillian’s deadweight as the spirit dismounted, stalking toward them with lethal intent.
Heat from the burning carriage made the air waver like a mirage as he got one knee beneath him, holding on tight to Cillian.
Then the spirit was suddenly right there, ghostly, clawlike hands reaching for them.
Its touch burned worse than the fire, and Bran yelled in shock, jerking back—right into the hands of another spirit.
He was wrenched off the ground, taking Cillian with him, refusing to let the other man go.
The spirit rider helped lift them into the hold of another spirit that pulled them into the sky with a thunderous scream as lightning forked to the ground.
Bran got a glimpse of a horde of the ghostly dead swarming the carriages and horses on the road beneath them before they hit the low-lying storm clouds, what had to be the Wild Hunt spiriting them away to some new and unknown terror.
He didn’t know how long they flew, how far the storm reached, only that when they finally descended, Bran couldn’t feel his fingers, and he was soaked through from rain, teeth chattering painfully.
The clouds started to thin until they left the sky behind.
Bran got a glimpse of a river and a tall-masted ship before he had to close his eyes against the nausea welling up in his gut as the Wild Hunt spiraled down to earth.
The ghostly, clawed hands that had carried them away from Ainmire’s clutches deposited them on the deck of the ship, into the hands of a Fae whose arms were outstretched to the ceiling of storm clouds, eyes burning like molten gold in her beautiful face, the long braid of her blonde hair lashing around her body.
Bran collapsed with Cillian in his arms, heaving for air, trying to stop the world from spinning around him. The roar of the wind died down, its absence ringing in Bran’s ears. He watched the Fae with lightning at her fingertips and golden eyes approach, something like reverence in her raw voice.
“My prince,” she said, staring at Cillian as she knelt beside them, reaching for his slack face with one shaking hand. “It is truly you.”
“Don’t hurt him,” Bran got out, already resorting to begging because it had worked before, and maybe it would work again. “Please.”
She looked at him, this beautiful Fae, and the incandescent joy in her teary golden eyes changed to something harder, something full of bitter distaste when her gaze dropped down to the collar he still wore. “Witch.”
Before Bran could respond, a familiar caw from above made his entire body jerk, head snapping up.
He stared in disbelief as Jupiter dived to meet him on the deck of that ship, bond flaring open between them despite the collar locked around his neck.
His familiar landed on the deck beside them and hopped onto Cillian’s lap, spreading her wings in hello.
“Jupiter?” Bran said, voice cracking.
She cawed at him again, pushing safe, safe, safe through the bond.
After everything they’d gone through, he wanted to believe her—he did—but he couldn’t, not when they were surrounded once more by Fae who all looked at Cillian like Ainmire had.
Like they knew him, when Bran was beginning to think he hadn’t known Cillian at all.