Chapter 24
W hen the world reemerges, I find myself back on the ground, staring up at the dark canopy. Footsteps pace beyond the brush, voices echoing.
“There has to be some way to follow her,” says Victor.
“Wait,” says Charlie. “Did the two of you hear that?”
A rustle in the brush, and Charlie and Victor appear.
“Winds!” Charlie calls out, rushing toward me and pulling me upright. “What happened? You were screaming one second, then gone the next.”
“Yeah, it was like the mountain swallowed you up,” says Victor, kneeling next to me, propping his elbows on his knees and wiping his black hair from his sweat-coated forehead.
I’m about to recount my experience in the Sister’s cottage, when from beyond the brush, Maddox’s voice croaks. “You know, if you all could have your reunion over this way, that would be nice.”
Charlie rolls her eyes, but there’s less disdain in the gesture than there used to be.
Once we reach Maddox, who is propped up against a log, a bandage tied around his still oozing wound, I give them a brief rundown of what occurred in the Youngest Sister’s cottage, though I leave out the part about the fate to which I’ve unintentionally conscripted my husband.
It doesn’t feel just, to tell them before I tell him.
Besides, I’m too ashamed to bear speaking the truth aloud.
I find I regret my silence on the matter when Maddox kicks my ankles softly from the ground and, beaming up at me, says, “You did it, Winds. All by yourself, you did it.”
“Winds, what are you waiting for?”
Victor and I stand outside the door to the room where we left Nolan.
Where I left Nolan.
My hands are shaking, and I don’t know what I’m more afraid of.
That I’ll enter the room and find that it didn’t work and I wasn’t able to save him after all.
That rewriting the tapestry didn’t matter because of some loophole.
Perhaps he was dead before I managed to reweave the tapestry. Perhaps time had already run out.
Or perhaps.
Perhaps I’m just terrified of what it will mean if I did manage to save him.
Victor and I had journeyed down the mountain together, Charlie staying with Maddox until Victor could send soldiers from the village to help get him down.
The guards at the bottom of the mountain had seemed annoyed by the request for a rescue mission, offering me rather condescending looks that had me wondering if they’d spent the entire evening betting on how many of us would fall injured on our trek.
As much as I’m thankful we didn’t leave Maddox to fend for himself with his injuries, I can’t help but think this would be easier if Charlie were here.
“Winds,” says Victor. “I’d bet anything you’re all he wants to see right now.”
I nod, biting my lip, and enter the room.
The door creaks, and immediately, something shifts in the bed.
The Lost Boys are asleep—Smalls curled up at the foot of Nolan’s bed, the Twins laying their heads upon the desk, Benjamin slumped in his stool, a figurine still clutched in his hand.
It’s Nolan who sensed me coming.
He’s craning his neck, staring at me. When I say nothing, his low voice rings out from the darkness.
“I’ve not been turned into a hideous creature in an attempt to keep me alive, have I?
Because if so, I’m fairly sure we addressed something of that consequence in our vows, and you still promised you wouldn’t leave. ”
You promised you wouldn’t leave.
My mind goes back to last night, to Nolan begging me to stay with him.
I stare at him a moment more before Victor places two fingers between my shoulder blades and nudges me forward.
When I reach the bedside, I trace my fingers over the blankets the Lost Boys used to cover my husband. When I pull the blanket down, I don’t gasp. Because I know exactly what I’m going to find.
Nolan’s illness is healed, the graying lines replaced with veins of liquid gold, tracing tunnels across his chest. He’s no longer heaving, no longer wheezing, but breathing steadily.
I hold back a sob, my fingers lingering over the Mating Mark, shimmering and golden and complete, but for the constellation on my cheek and jaw.
“I believe I told you once that you never have to apologize for touching me,” says Nolan, nodding toward his chest, his chin tucking within the motion.
I bite my lip, then run my fingers over the rivulets. There’s a warmth to them, one that’s unlike what I’m used to feeling at his chest, and not just because I’m used to feeling the chill of his illness. The warmth is unnatural. No, not unnatural. Celestial.
“I have to say, this one’s much more pronounced than the one before,” he says. “Did you exaggerate the description of my Mating Mark to the Youngest Sister?”
“The Youngest Sister didn’t do this,” I say, my voice far off. “She wasn’t there.”
“Are you telling me you’re the one who blew up the Mark to twice its size all over my body?”
I nod.
Nolan grins, then settles his head back into his pillow. “I can’t say I mind you staking your claim on me.”
“Well,” I say, shrugging slightly. “I left your face like it was.”
Nolan smirks. “It’s not as if you could have improved upon it, anyway.”
“If you weren’t sickly, I’d smack you in the face with a pillow,” I say.
“That’s just it, Darling,” he says. “I’m not sickly. You made sure of that.”
I wait for the anger. Wait for him to tell me off for leaving him to die alone when he told me not to. I wait for him to tell me of the hours he writhed in pain, resigned to the belief that the last act he’d remember of his wife was her abandonment.
He does none of those things. Instead, he bolts up in bed, scooping me into the bed and onto his chest as he rolls backward.
Faintly, I hear Victor call for the Lost Boys, who sleepily scramble out of the room at his command before he shuts the door behind them.
“What do they think we’re about to do?” asks Nolan mischievously.
When I don’t blush, he takes note, and his entire demeanor shifts. “Darling, something’s wrong.”
It’s not a question.
“What happened on the mountain?” he asks. “Charlie? Maddox?”
“They’re alright,” I say. “Well, Maddox is injured, but he’s going to be alright. There’s no need to worry about him.”
“But there is something to worry about,” says Nolan.
I pause, then he cocks his head at me.
“Darling, why were you the one to weave my healing into the tapestry? Isn’t that the job of the Youngest Sister?”
“She wasn’t there,” I say. “She hasn’t lived there in centuries. They locked her away—the other two did.”
“Seems like the kind of thing they’d do, from what I’ve surmised from our brief interactions.”
“Yes, well, they know how to make an impression, don’t they?”
“And is that why you’re so concerned?” asks Nolan. “Because your empathetic heart cannot stand the idea of the Youngest Sister being locked away? You’re not wanting us to go on a journey to save her, are you? Because if you are…”
“It’s not that,” I laugh, “It’s just…”
I watch Nolan. My sturdy, wonderful husband. Alive and well.
I fight for the words, for the truth. But try as I might, I don’t know where to start. “It’s just that I can’t believe that you’re here. That you’re alive.”
Nolan smiles. I try to hide my grimace.