Chapter 46 #3
My chest burned hot, and the world around us wobbled and blurred. The library faded into muddy shadows as something inside me pulled taut.
“Your mate is looking for you.” He turned back to the library. “I think I might stay in my brother’s realm for a while. Perhaps read a few books.” He ran a finger along the heartstone embedded in Sorrow’s Edge. “There is so much to learn.”
He strode toward the library doors, but when I tried to follow, a tether reeled me back—and back, and back, and back—as my consciousness dragged back toward my body. Distantly, I heard someone call my name.
“See you soon, Daughter of the Forgotten.”
Something seized me by the arm, and Ophiucae vanished. The flames of Sophos smoldered back into the leafy, wooded moonlight of Lumnos.
“Diem?” a voice called out.
One hand flew to my chest, where my mating mark felt like it had been set on fire. “Luther?” I murmured groggily.
“Diem!” the voice said, louder.
My mind cleared, and I jerked upright. Someone was crouched at my side, holding a knife—and they definitely weren’t Luther.
I lifted a hand to cast a shield, but my magic reserves were as dry as the Ignios deserts. On instinct, I reached for my sword, though my scabbard was still empty.
“Diem,” the woman said again. She followed my stare to her knife, and she blanched and hid it behind her back. “I mean, um—Your Majesty. Are you alright?”
I awkwardly scooted away. I recognized her as one of Enness and Runa’s group, a Faunos Descended I’d freed from prison. She’d always kept to herself, never joining in festivities or training. She never joined any of the battles, either. I wondered—a little too late—why she’d come to Lumnos at all.
“I was on my way to the stream to bathe,” she said.
“In the dead of night?” I asked skeptically.
Her eyes dropped low. “I don’t like bathing during the day. Sometimes the guards get too close so they can watch.”
My suspicion was obliterated by a scowl. I would have to tell Alixe to find the offending guards and threaten to pluck their eyes out with a dirty branch.
“I’m fine,” I muttered, climbing to my feet. “Thank you for checking on me.”
I felt the Meros compass click and whirr against my leg. I’d used the kiss to distract Luther so I could steal it, hoping to keep him from chasing me down. From the panicked fury simmering over the bond, he must have just realized what I’d done.
“You have a mate,” the woman said, her eyes growing wide.
“What? No, I—” I followed her stare to the glowing mating mark left on display by my half-unfastened leathers.
Fuck.
I clamped a hand on top of it. “Please don’t tell anyone you saw this. I’m not mated—I’m a stranded mate.”
She looked horrified and, oddly, a little relieved. “How terrible. I’m so sorry.”
My jaw tightened at the reminder that what I so deeply valued was seen as an awful burden to everyone else. “I should get back,” I said, a little curtly. “Enjoy your bath.”
She moved to stop me. “Actually, there’s something I was hoping you might help me with.”
I glanced toward camp. Now that I knew where Ophiucae was, we needed to gather soldiers, arrange ships, warn everyone in Meros . . . gods, it might already be too late to save them.
I tried to edge around her. “I’m sorry, I really must go.”
“My niece is missing,” she blurted out.
I stopped.
“After I was arrested for helping the mortals, my brother was driven out of Faunos,” she went on.
“I spent sixty-five years in that prison, and he died in the Umbros attack two days before you freed us.” She laughed—a choked, heartbroken sound.
“If I’d been a little earlier, I would have seen him one last time and met his mate .
. . but then I probably would have died with them, too. ”
I took her hand. “I’m sorry. The gods can be so cruel.”
“I found a survivor in Umbros who knew him. She told me his little girl was one of the children they took. He named her Kéani—after me.” Her amber eyes gleamed with brimming tears. “He never forgot me.”
I squeezed her hand and held it to my chest. “I promise, I’ll do everything I can to bring Kéani home.”
“I asked Blessed Father Faunos to give me a chance to save her. When Enness asked me to come here, I thought it was an answer to my prayers. I was sure that if anyone could find her, it was you.”
A heavy pit lodged in my chest. I’d been stretched so thin between so many other problems, I’d done nothing to find the missing children.
Her hand pulled from mine and fidgeted at her waist. “I sent letters by hawk to every realm. I used my magic to make the hawks keep looking until they found her. I wasn’t sure where she was or what she looked like, or even if she was still alive, but I had to try.”
A twig snapped behind me. I glanced over my shoulder, eyes narrowing on the wooded shadows.
“This morning, I finally got a response.”
I looked back to the woman. “Your niece wrote to you? Did she tell you where the children are?”
She swallowed. “The letter wasn’t from my niece.”
Her fingers twitched. Grass rustled by my feet, and something sharp pinched my calf. I looked down to see a green-scaled snake with reddish rings and a black diamond on its head, its long fangs embedded in my flesh.
I yanked it from my leg and hurled it into the brush, but another snake slithered from the grass and launched for my ankle.
“I’m so sorry,” the woman whispered.
A snake dropped from the tree above and landed on my shoulders, sinking its fangs into my neck. I gasped at the scorching heat of its venom entering my blood. Within seconds, my eyelids felt impossible to lift. I reached into my pocket and closed a hand around the compass.
Then my body hit the soil, and everything went dark.