Chapter 27
Chapter
Twenty-Seven
Igasped. Two of his shifters were near death. The only thing holding them to the world was Caelan. I had to heal the Lord before I could heal his people.
“Evie?”
“Mmm?”
He rarely interrupted me when I was in the middle of using my power.
“There’s one more thing.”
I cracked an eye open.
Caelan wouldn’t look at me. “I’ve only used this power once before. There was a consequence I wasn’t prepared for.”
I stayed silent, even as dread crept down my spine.
“The last time, some of the survivors…” Caelan blew out a long breath. “They lost their autonomy. A cruel punishment for anyone, but a death sentence for a shifter.”
His meaning struck me like an ice pick to the heart. “You made them your slaves?”
“I didn’t mean to.” He bowed his head. “Once I cut the power, I thought everything was fine, but afterward, I felt a few of them tied tighter to me than ever before. They couldn’t leave the pack or do anything without my say so.”
“Oh Caelan.” What a terrible burden to bear.
“All of them decided to go out on their own terms.” He swallowed hard. “There was nothing I could do. The mages couldn’t reverse it. No one could help me. I—I don’t blame them.”
“If I see those bonds, what do you want me to do?”
Caelan said nothing for a long moment. “If they are close to death, let them go.”
“Do you want me to try to save them if I can?”
Hope flared bright in his eyes. “I—yes. If you think you can. If they won’t be bound to me, do everything you can. I will be in your debt.”
“There are no debts between friends.”
The guilt on his face broke my heart. Caelan would have a lot of soul searching to do when this was over, but we were finally walking on the right path.
“Anything else?”
He shook his head. I closed my eyes once more and dove back into the web of golden threads.
Danu lurked close, so I decided to claim the land and cast her out first. Easy enough to do. I circled Caelan’s massive territory with a thin band of my power, claiming only the first few feet of his property.
Danu barely had time to shriek her fury before she was sucked out of the place like I’d put the top of a vacuum right over her head. I chuckled under my breath and kept working. The wards shuddered seconds later, Danu trying to take them down.
She might succeed with the wards, but Caelan’s land was officially off limits. Ha. Interpersonal skills and communication for the win!
I never thought Caelan and I would be sitting here together healing our issues, and yet, here we were, trapped in a cage once again.
Every strand of gold led back to Caelan, a shining thread of magic leading to a corresponding wound on his body. His insides looked worse than his outside.
I sucked in a sympathetic gasp and reached out blindly. My hand pressed against his lower abdomen where the worst of the internal bleeding was.
“Don’t move,” I whispered.
Caelan chuckled. “A few inches lower and it’s going to be a party.”
“Ass.” I had to laugh. “If you have any around that area, you’re going to have to ask Rowan to kiss it and make it better.”
Caelan let out a bark of laughter. “I’ve missed you, Evie.”
“Shh. I’m working here.”
I focused on mending the internal bleeding first. Caelan’s sigh of relief and the gold vein disappearing told me I was on the right path. The creak of growing vines and the heavy scent of blooms was the only outward sign of how much magic I was using.
I moved next to a deep cut on his chest, and so on and so forth until every vein but the thicker ones were gone. If Caelan hadn’t said anything, I might not have noticed. A few had that slightly thicker, brighter thread linking them to their Lord.
“I’m not sure what you might feel, but don’t break our contact.”
“Understood,” Caelan rumbled. “How many?”
I counted the threads. “Eight.”
Caelan let out a string of curse words. “Can you unentangle them?”
“I’m not sure. I’ll try. Just make sure we’re in contact no matter what happens.”
“The chance to keep touching you for the last time?” Caelan rumbled. “Count me in.”
“Caelan. Be serious.”
He grunted. “Do your worst, Evangeline.”
I dove back in and examined the threads more thoroughly than the others.
They were all tied to shallower wounds, which was unusual.
I followed the threads back to the shifters.
Six females, two males. The males felt younger to me.
I pulled their bodies down from the surface deep underground and held them there, ensuring they had a pocket of air.
I examined Caelan closely, looking for something to sever their threads and couldn’t find anything. Another scan of his body revealed no other wounds, nothing else I could heal. Frustrated, I chewed on the side of my lip. Could I somehow transfer this bond away from Caelan?
I racked my brain. I’d need something extremely long lived, something I could fortify with magic. Shifters were immortal, so I couldn’t tie their bond to something that would have a short natural life cycle.
I’d need something natural to suit my magic, yet also unnatural.
There were a few trees with unusually long life spans. Not native to Texas but Joy Springs didn’t have the typical Texas climate. I could tweak Caelan’s land a little in one spot—adjust the soil and nutrients, maybe cap his land in sort of a bubble that would keep the tree thriving.
“How do you feel about a new tree?” I murmured.
Caelan stiffened. “As long as you aren’t trapped inside, I’m amenable.”
“If everything goes well, I won’t be. Titania is dead, so the odds are looking good.”
“Don’t even joke about that,” Caelan growled.
“I don’t know if this will be painful. This is all theoretical.”
“Comforting words.”
I sent my power soaring through the world, searching far and wide for a specific seed.
Caelan gasped. “Evie. What are you doing? I feel…”
“Looking for something.”
He sucked in a breath. “Gods. Is this what you feel like all the time? Like you can touch the inner heart of the world?”
“It’s a recent thing, no thanks to that hooker Danu.”
I stopped at something familiar, paused, and examined. Close but not exact. Discarding it, I kept searching.
There. A teeny tiny, dormant seed. I pulled it to me, yanking it from its habitat toward me. “Where do you want it?”
“Back of the property,” Caelan said. “There’s a dense canopy of trees and no structures. Few go back there.”
I searched until I found the spot, carefully cradling the seed in my magic. “Alright. Here goes nothing. Hang on tight.”
Caelan gripped my thigh.
I changed the soil, adding more limestone and rock, and built up the space as closely as I could to its natural environment. “Your land in this spot will be colder. Can’t be helped.”
Caelan gently squeezed my thigh in the affirmative.
I nudged the seed to grow, smiling when I saw the seedling break through, encouraging it to grow, grow, grow.
The seedling poked through the dirt, growing and spreading, its trunk twisting like a braided vine.
Ten feet, twenty, thirty, it climbed until it slowed at forty-five, fifty, then sixty feet. Mature, but still young.
“I’m going to try to transfer the bond.”
Caelan went still. “To what? That tree?”
“Yes. I’ll know if it worked in a moment. Stay quiet.”
I gently plucked those golden threads, double checking to ensure all the wounds were healed. Once I was satisfied, I gently unwound the threads from Caelan’s psyche, holding them tightly in my mind.
Caelan let out a sharp breath and sagged.
“Easy,” I whispered. Slow, ever so slowly, I moved those threads across Caelan’s land, stretching the golden threads across the earth. A thought occurred to me.
“Shit,” I cursed under my breath.
“Evie?”
“Hold on.”
Holding onto those threads with one part of my mind, I searched again for one, two, three, four more seeds, planting them at various corners of the United States, hoping against all odds this would work.
I set one on my property, one on our joint property, one right at the edge of Thorvin’s, Ethan’s, Soren’s, and Ben’s.
I’d ask them later if I could move the trees onto their properties, but if I left only one, Caelan’s shifters would never be able to leave.
If they wanted to move Packs, they couldn’t, and I wouldn’t do the same thing to them that Caelan had all those years ago.
I shifted the nutrients in the soil once more and changed the atmosphere, encasing the tree in a small, self-cycling bubble. Once that was done, I carefully transferred all eight of those threads to the home tree on Caelan’s land.
They resisted at first, but magic like this only needed a life source, one rife with magic, and it had one in these trees. When it realized I’d offered a good substitute, those threads settled and entwined with the tree. Once I was confident they’d stay, I let go.
But I wasn’t done yet. Carefully weaving a strand of each thread together, I created one extra thread and attached to each one of the other trees, creating a nexus of a sort.
The shifters would be able to travel to each of the other Lord’s territories and their surrounding areas. I’d need to check the magic periodically, but as fixes went, this one wasn’t bad.
I waited a while, ensuring nothing would come loose, and when I was sure, I carefully let go and returned to Caelan’s land, once again plunging down into his land to find the source of Danu’s poison. My influence had scattered her magic and finding everything felt like gathering lost marbles.
After several sweeps, I was confident I had it all. The last step was Caelan. I shifted, briefly opening my eyes to face him, startled to see his eyes wide open staring at me with molten gold burning in his irises. I swallowed hard and looked down.
“You’ve become quite skilled since I last saw you.”
“Training with Dad.”
“This power suits you. I wish I would have seen how great you could become and how lucky I would be to bask in your light sooner.”
“We’re almost finished,” I said quietly. “One more thing.”
I reached up to touch his face and closed my eyes. Danu’s poison still lived inside him, a sentient, evil thing. Focusing on that darkness, I encapsulated it and slowly pulled it from his skin. Caelan grunted when I freed him, his hand tightening on my leg.
I crushed that power in my hand, dark glittering ash falling from my palm when I opened it.
“There.” I let my magic go and removed my hand from Caelan’s face. When I opened my eyes, he was still staring at me.
I dropped the cage, sending the roots of the flowers out onto his land. A riot of blooms covered the ground, a carpet of color brightening the night. “I need to get back to Rowan.”
Caelan smiled sadly. “Thank you, flower girl. I’m not sure I would have survived this night without you.”
I wasn’t so sure he would have either, but I shook my head in denial. “Your shifters might sleep for a while. When they wake up, I want you to call me. I’ll need to explain what I’ve done.”
Caelan unfolded himself and rose, holding out a hand to help me up. I swayed, the amount of magic I used catching up to me. He steadied me with a firm grip on my waist.
“Need help walking?”
I shook my head. “No. Just give me a moment.”
He waited until I took a few baby deer-like steps, firmly taking my elbow to escort me back.
“What exactly did you do?” he asked. “I feel the new tree. Lots of magic pouring off that thing.”
I knew what he was asking, but explaining my process was too much for me right now. “I took the links from you and put them in a long-lived tree.”
Caelan’s eyebrows flew up. “It worked?”
I nodded. “With some caveats.”
“Alright,” he said slowly. “Anything I need to worry about?”
“Not really. I’ll need to—”
Caelan’s phone buzzed several times in rapid succession. He let out a low laugh. “What are the odds this is about you?”
“Pretty high.”
I offered him a sheepish smile. Caelan let out a loud laugh and sighed. “Come on, flower girl. Let’s get you back to your mate.”