Chapter 11
Wolfe
“Sins of the Father”
“Adagger to my heart should kill me quick enough. It’s clean.
Less to worry about. But I’ll need to stay dead at least an hour if I’m going to find Arielle on the ghost roads.
After that, Garrick can try to bring me back.
” Bastian balanced the said dagger on his knee, his gaze riveted to Arielle lying in a trance before us.
We sat on the floor across from her, waiting and watching.
Watching for any signs of danger. Waiting for her to return.
Alaric and Garrick were on the deck above, manning the ship with the rest of the crew.
A shield surrounded both Arielle and Elariya, concealing them from sight, sound, and magical detection. It also prevented uninvited spirits from the ghost planes from slipping through.
Although Arielle lay mere feet away from Elariya, she would have had to travel the ghost roads for at least an hour to find a conduit into the dream plane.
But an hour for us could stretch into a day for her. A full day alone with the dead, where memories aren’t just relived but devoured.
She’d been out for ninety minutes already. That was too long. And I didn’t like
it one bit.
My spine prickled with the weight of unseen eyes pressing against the barrier. Tension grew inside me with every passing second. It filled me from the
instant Arielle performed the spell to extract her spirit from her body. The air had thickened, coated in a cold that didn’t come from wind. It clung to our skin, sank into our bones, and stayed there like a warning.
The plan was to give Arielle two hours tops before going in to get her, which meant one of us had to die.
“I’m not going to kill you.” I kept my gaze on Arielle.
I was just as worried about her as Bastian was, and more. If anything happened to her, it would be my fault. More blood on my hands from someone I cared about.
“I have no qualms in killing you, friend. Not if anything happens to her.” He made it sound like killing me was as easy as strolling through the woods on a cool summer’s day. “Just be sure you fight me like a Fae. With your fist and Galdrlore. Not those devil powers you have.”
I tore my eyes away from Arielle’s still form and levelled Bastian a hard stare. He was serious as fuck and speaking to me without the respect of rank or title.
“I wouldn’t fight you.” I tilted my chin and glared at him. “Maybe I’d let you kill me.”
Bastian seethed, shaking his head. “You fucking asshole. You shouldn’t have agreed to this.”
He snapped his gaze to Elariya and glared at her, baring his canines like a rabid dog. Apart from Arielle, Bastian was the only one I’d allowed to see Elariya in this vulnerable state. Alaric and Garrick didn’t even know what she looked like.
“We should have just left your mage in soul sleep until we crossed the Veil.” He pointed the dagger at her.
I didn’t like the way he said your mage, nor the way he pointed that dagger, but I held my tongue. The less I said and did right now, the better.
“Risking Arielle’s life was not worth this.” He wasn’t wrong, but Bastian had the tendency to overreact when it came to Arielle. Whereas I trusted her to grow in her powers and abilities.
She would be the royal advisor of the kingdom someday if I became king. Suppressing her powers would only hinder her growth.
There was danger in everything, but I knew she wouldn’t have suggested the idea if she wasn’t confident it would work without harming her. Then again, Arielle always pushed the limits, dancing way too close to danger for anyone’s liking.
In this instance my judgment had been clouded because of Elariya. I wanted intel about the ring, but I also wanted her unharmed. If Arielle found out what happened to the ring, her idea would be successful in gaining both.
“She’s always pulling fucking shit like this, and you keep letting her, Wolfe,” Bastian continued.
This was the part where I’d tell him to stop acting like her father and admit how he really felt about her. But we were long past the time for jokes.
I hadn’t made one since the curse, and I wasn’t starting now.
“Wolfe, fucking answer me.” Bastian balled his hand into a tight fist. “How can you just sit there?”
“I’m not just sitting here.” I kept my voice firm, my face unreadable. “If I thought she wouldn’t make it back, I wouldn’t have agreed to let her go.”
“Wolfe, it’s the ghost roads. They’re dangerous. Nothing is certain there.”
As children, we were warned to never walk those roads. And if you had to, you were never to speak on them, lest a wandering soul mistake your voice for its own and follow it home, then wreak havoc in your life.
On top of that, no one who walked the ghost roads came back unchanged. They say it’s where forgotten souls whispered in voices no one remembered and where time folded in on itself like a dying star. Madness would come for you. That’s why staying longer than necessary left you open to attack.
“She’s my advisor. I have to trust her,” I said with a certainty I didn’t feel, maybe for my own ears. “You should, too.”
“I do trust her,” Bastian muttered, then clenched his jaw and locked his gaze on Arielle again. His features softened, worry overtaking his sneer. “But I can still be pissed at you for putting my mage in danger.”
My mage.
Those words weren’t lost on me. Said with less venom than when he’d called Elariya mine, the warrior was showing the cinch in his armor.
Arielle would have loved to hear those words herself, but Bastian only spoke so freely because she couldn’t hear him.
The truth was, we were all overprotective when it came to Arielle. We grew up together. Or rather, she grew up with us.
She was a seedling beside us, who were centuries old. And she’d already survived more than most with the traumatic loss of her family.
Her parents, grandparents and aunts were massacred in her home when Arielle was eight. No one knew by whom.
Arielle only survived because she’d been hidden within the shield of her mother’s powers.
Most suspected her parents had seen or heard something they shouldn’t have. Some, like my family, believed the Conclave of Shadows had something to do with it.
They were a syndicate of powerful lords who’d been pooling resources in secret for ages. My father had been a member right up until Arielle’s parents were killed.
Since my parents were close friends with hers, they took her in and decreed her part of our court. As Arielle grew up and into her powers, she became one of the few I trusted most in my life.
I bit into my bottom lip and swallowed hard.
Fuck. She’d been in the world of the dead for too long. And this side was too quiet. Not the kind of quiet that came with a tranquil silence. It was the other kind. The kind before a scream. As if something was waiting and listening for the right moment to strike.
The shield shimmered abruptly, as if in answer to my sinister thoughts.
Bastian and I straightened. The shield had been reacting occasionally, pulsing with light whenever a spirit brushed against the barrier from the other side.
That shimmer could have been the same thing again. But we didn’t know. It could also be Arielle either trying to get back to us… or crying for help.
The shimmer became brighter, each ripple a heartbeat. We waited. And waited. But it wasn’t her. Not yet.
Bastian and I exchanged nervous glances.
Then it happened again. This time, the shimmer was so bright the shield cracked and shards of glass splintered everywhere.
We were on our feet that instant.
Swirls of smoke with deadly faces leaked out.
They were Whisps. Haunting spirits from the other side.
The worst sorts of evil in life, condemned to die with no hope of penance.
They always lingered on the edge of the realm of the dead, waiting for any opportunity to free themselves.
They’d possess a being and rip their soul apart to steal their bodies.
They soared toward Bastian and me with a howling shriek that would melt our brains if we weren’t who we were. The vicious malevolence they exuded left no doubt they would destroy us.
We grabbed our swords, readying ourselves for battle, but the spirits never reached us. A force of white light as bright as pure starlight pulled them back, like a vacuum.
It was Arielle.
She was on her feet, her hands raised in a spell. She said no words. All that power of beaming light came from her hands.
It was times like these that she impressed the hells out of me. And reassured me in every decision to trust her.
With a flick of her wrist, she sent the spirits back through the void from where they’d escaped. They never even managed to get out another shriek before she sealed them away. But her efforts were not without consequence.
She collapsed, drained of her energy.
We rushed to her side and Bastian scooped her up into his arms.
“Arielle!” He took her face and observed her. She was shaking and panting as if she’d been running for her life. “Gods, she’s frozen.”
Bastian pulled his jacket off and fixed it around her shoulders.
Arielle’s eyes fluttered open and she looked at both of us, her breaths short and ragged but steadying.
“Are you okay?” I asked her.
“I’m okay. Just weak.” Her voice quivered.
“Go and get some rest. We can talk later,” I said with a nod to Bastian. No one was more eager than me to learn what she’d discovered, but it was clear she needed a moment of reprieve.
“No.” She gripped on to my arm, her eyes wide. “We have to talk now.”
“Arielle—”
“I saw the ring.”
That grabbed my attention.
She stared at me intensely, then looked past me to Elariya, still suspended in the air across from us. I glanced at her, too, then back at Arielle.
Her gaze was shadowed, rimmed with fear and something close to grief. A look that told me her news wasn’t one to rejoice. Whatever she was about to unleash would change everything. And not entirely for the best.
“Where did you see it? Does Elariya have it?” I tried to conceal the emotion in my voice but failed.