55. Chapter 55
F rom this path to the top of the mountain, the stone keep looked small and fragile against the immensity of the mountain peaks.
Ren stopped to draw in the view and to catch her breath. The air was thinning with every step higher, her lungs burning with exertion. Ahead, Lucan’s steady stride didn’t falter, his broad shoulders cutting a path through the cold.
Then came a vicious gust barreling through the vale. It caught Ren full force, nearly knocking her off her feet. She cursed under her breath, fumbling for balance.
Lucan half-turned, one brow lifting in amusement. “The wind is stronger up here,” he said over his shoulder.
Before Ren could snap back, a gruff, rasping, and entirely unwelcome voice barked, “And you two call yourselves soldiers? Pathetic . They’re training a bunch of ninnies nowadays. When I was a young soldier, I went headfirst into challenges, not stumbling around like milk-fed kittens in a breeze.”
Ren glared at the leather pouch in her hand.
According to Zakhar, the thing had once belonged to an ancient Vaelaran drill sergeant whose stubbornness had apparently outlasted even his flesh.
Now he lived on as a cantankerous wisp bound to a pouch, tasked with “encouraging” anyone who carried it.
Unfortunately, “encouragement” translated to endless insults, unsolicited advice, and occasional attempts at marching cadence.
Lucan glanced back, lips twitching as though he were suppressing a laugh. Ren tightened her grip on the pouch and muttered, “If I throw you into a snowbank, will you finally shut up?”
The pouch sputtered indignantly. “You’ll address me as sir , you insolent whelp. And I’ll not be telling you my name. That is a privilege that must be earned.”
“Fine. Sir Pain-in-the-Ass , then.”
Lucan chuckled under his breath as Ren caught up to him. Soon enough, with the climb growing steeper and the air thinner, the game became a welcome distraction.
“If he won’t give us his name,” Lucan proposed with a sly grin, “let’s guess. He looks like a… Percey.”
Ren snorted. “Percey? Too noble. He’s more of a Bert. Or maybe… Clive.”
The pouch vibrated with indignation. “How dare you! I’d sooner leap into a beast’s maw than answer to Clive!”
Ren smirked. “So not Clive, then. Maybe… Buttercup?”
Lucan nearly choked on a laugh, his shoulders shaking as he pressed forward up the icy slope. The pouch wailed in outrage, cursing them both and insisting he’d once commanded a hundred men in battle.
“James?” Lucan guessed.
“Andrew?” Ren prodded.
“Bah!” the pouch barked. “The youth these days toss names around like dice in a tavern. No respect, no gravity. In my day, a name carried honor, weight, dignity. Now it’s all James and Andrew, as if titles were something to be plucked from a tree!
A disgrace, that’s what it is. No one respects authority, no one respects – ”
But Ren and Lucan had both fallen quiet.
The rant dimmed into a faint drone at the edge of her awareness as the path crested suddenly, and before them the vale stretched wide, carved between the ribs of the mountain. The wind howled, tearing at their cloaks, and far, far below, the world spread out in dizzying swathes of white and gray.
Ren felt like she was standing on top of the world. The peaks pierced the clouds like blades, the land below a toy map – distant and unreal .
Ren’s stomach dropped at the sheer height, and regret rushed in. Why had she agreed to this climb? Her knuckles whitened on the pouch’s strap, every instinct screaming to back away from the edge.
Lucan glanced at her, brow raised. “You’ve gone pale.”
Ren forced a laugh that sounded more like a choke. “Turns out,” she said, voice tight, “I’m not much of a fan of looking down.”
The pouch cackled. “Afraid of a little drop! When I was alive, I dangled from cliffs by my fingertips for sport !”
“Do you know of a spell to shut him up?” Ren asked Lucan.
“I wish I did.”
The pouch fell silent for the first time since they’d started climbing. Ren almost sighed in relief until it muttered, voice darkened with irritation. “There it is again… a voice. Lovely, lilting, insufferable. Singing like a thrush in springtime. How it irks me.”
“What voice?” Ren asked.
“Don’t play coy, girl. I hear it plain as daylight. She hums in the back of my skull, soft as silk. I loathe it. Don’t get me started on the bells.”
Lucan and Ren exchanged glances but said nothing, and the pouch’s grumbling dwindled to incoherent curses as the wind carried them down into the vale.
The descent was trickier than the climb up.
The path narrowed, the ground pitching into steep, uneven stone.
Ren placed each step with care, boots crunching on frost, her breath shallow as the drop loomed to her left. Lucan walked ahead but slowed his pace.
After a while, Ren asked, “Why’d you come with me? You could’ve let someone else deal with Zakhar’s errand.”
“I’ve never been this far north. I thought I’d see it for myself. My family’s lands are to the east of Vaelaran. Rolling hills, good pasture, vineyards as far as you can see. That’s the world I grew up in. I’ve spent little time in the north.”
Ren studied him as they walked, noting how his words carried both pride and distance, as though speaking of a place that belonged to him but no longer felt like his.
Behind them, the pouch muttered sourly, “Blasted singing woman, following me still.”
Then, Lucan said quietly, “I also came because you never ask for help, and I thought maybe you’d like someone to stand with you.
I’ve seen good soldiers break when they’re left to carry everything alone.
With all the vineyards and gentle hills back home, things are comfortable, safe.
I was raised to believe duty was a thing you could manage from a chair at a table.
” He glanced back at Ren. “But out here, I’m learning it’s different.
It’s walking beside people who don’t expect you to.
It’s showing up.” Then his lips tugged a little higher, amusement flickering in his eyes.
“Besides, you’re far too stubborn to ever ask for help.
I thought I’d save us both the trouble.”
Ren adjusted her grip on the pouch. “Remind me again why we didn’t take the horses? Seems to me their footing might be better than mine right now.”
“After the journey to even get here? This path would break them. Too steep, too narrow. They’d fight the incline every step, and by the time we reached the vale, they’d be spent or worse, injured.
” He turned forward again, voice carrying easily over the stillness.
“Besides,” he added dryly, “I’d rather not explain to Kaelin why her favorite mare tumbled off a cliff because you thought it might keep your boots steadier. ”
Ren scowled at his back, muttering, “Would’ve at least cushioned my fall.”
The pouch broke the silence with a snort. “Soft as butter, the lot of you. I’ll take honesty when it’s earned, not dressed up in sentimental nonsense.”
Ren shot it a glare, but her gaze lingered on Lucan’s broad back as they pressed onward.
Lucan said, “My father used to sneer at the west, call it barren, useless. He said these lands weren’t worth a damn because they didn’t yield coin.
” He paused as the wind tore past them, flinging snow like shards of glass.
Lucan tilted his head back, inhaling deeply, as if the cold itself carried something worth keeping.
“But standing here…There’s a beauty in it.
A strength that doesn’t bow to anyone’s will. My father was wrong.”
Ren studied him as he walked ahead, shoulders squared against the wind, and for the first time, she saw not just a soldier beside her but a male fae trying to unlearn the weight of his bloodline.
Behind them, the pouch huffed sourly. “Bah. Poetic drivel. Next, you’ll be kissing the rocks and whispering to the trees.”
They continued their descent for what felt like an eternity.
The path narrowed, twisting along the mountainside, and more than once Ren’s boots slid against the icy stone, forcing her to steady herself with a curse.
As her gaze swept the vast sweep of white, she realized not even trees dared to grow here.
They had climbed above the treeline and into a realm claimed only by stone, snow, and sky.
“Should be almost there,” Ren muttered, teeth chattering despite her effort to sound casual. Lucan didn’t answer, just pressed forward, his steady tread crunching over the frost.
Then, without warning, the wind died.
The sudden stillness made Ren’s breath sound too loud.
For the first time since their trek, sunlight broke through the smothering gray above, spilling in golden shafts that danced over the snow.
It was dazzling; shards of light struck the white crust until the mountains glimmered like a sea of diamonds.
Ren slowed, struck with the eerie awareness that she was standing in a place few mortals had ever reached. She should have felt wonder. Instead, a prickle crawled across her neck.
That’s when she heard the faintest chiming of bells.
At first, she thought her ears were betraying her. But the sound grew clearer, closer, the delicate jingle carrying like a lullaby through the still air.
The pouch twitched against her side, then growled, “There it is again! That cursed woman’s voice. Sweet as honey, vile as rot . Do you hear it, girl? Singing, always singing…”
Lucan had slowed to a stop. His broad back was stiff, his head tilted as though he too were listening. And then, so low she almost missed it, she swore she heard him murmur, “Mother?”
The word sliced through her like a blade.
Before Ren could speak, the snow beneath them trembled.
The bells were no longer distant. They were all around them.
And then all hell broke loose.